Someday My Prince Will Come

Until then I can just play with frogs.

A House to Match Our Thumbs

We were determined to avoid the typical long cold spring of the Pacific northwest this year so we invested in a little greenhouse.

Everyone was very excited to plant their seeds and watch them sprout.

Look at them grow!

I can almost taste the cucumbers now.

Now who will help me weed the garden?

Lego My iPod

Grant is very interested in the latest gadgets. He's got a knack for building his own devices.

He built his own computer out of an old keyboard and a flat panel Lego display.

He built his own iPod and listens to his favorite music on it. He tells me his favorite is a song called "Bustin' Burgers". He claims he wrote the song himself. I believe him.

He built his own cell phone. We get great reception in the house but it's a little hard to hear when he's outside.

And he built his own iPad. Here he said he's playing "The Cookie Game". Sounds delicious.

Chez Crunchers

A few weeks ago I arrived home from work to find that a restaurant had opened in my living room. There were only three diners and they were all eating strawberries and cream and drinking out of fancy glasses.

If you'd like to dine at our exclusive establishment, reservations are recommended.
18% gratuity automatically added on parties of 6 or more.
Our dress code doesn't require pajamas, but they look pretty comfortable to me.

Spring Has Brought Me Such a Darn Surprise

We drove by our neighbor's house and observed the ground beneath their cherry trees covered with petals.

Sue: Look! It's pink snow.

Grant (mad about an unrelated topic): It just a bunch of darn blossoms.

The Luveing Book

I think this is Cole's kindergarten masterwork. He brought this to me tonight and asked if this was how to spell "loving". I lovingly explained the slightly more correct spelling and then read the rest of his book, filled with more loving phonetic misspellings.

The cover is simple enough: the author's name, the book's title, and a sticker with a picture of a pill bug. Nothing says luveing like a pill bug.

Inside the front cover is the first real hint of brilliance. The protagonist declares that, "I Go with My Mom to my friends hoAoos."

Turning the page we see a series of wavy lines. We can't know what they might mean until we look at the facing page.

"I an t i ritinge crsiv." Now it all becomes clear. He is writing cursive and the wavy lines obviously represent lines of cursive text.

On the next page and its facing page we see a chiastic couplet, entirely free of creative spelling. "I love Mom."

"My Mom loves me." Even the pictures are mirrored.

Another page, and our hero is blasting off, "I am fiinGonArockeT", the words compressed as his body experiences the G-forces typical of space travel.

This rectangular motif on the facing page may represent something to do with flying on a rocket but the symbolism escapes me at the moment.

Turing the page we see the astronaut back on earth and going from outer space to the inner space of a body of water. "I Am swimming." he declares, as if he dares anyone to contradict him.

The page facing the swimming has a very abstract feel, similar to the rectangle of the previous page but more random in its execution, and the single word title "celr." declares that this image is the author's homage to color.

We turn another page and the colors from the rectangle and "celr" have organized themselves into a pointed arc overlaid with a bold declaration containing my favorite creative speeling of the book, "I like ranboose". Despite the non-standard color spectrum (not to mention spelling) it's easy to see that he does, in fact, like rainbows.

Facing that page, the rain gives way to sun and he is back in the water. "I amm swimming." The crooked purple smile reveals that he enjoys swimming very much.

As he returned to his beloved swimming hole, he also returns to writing in cursive with the soothing green waves of stylized writing and his final declaration, "I am ritinge crsiv."

I hope you have enjoyed Cole's book as much as I did. Look for the sequel to be released soon.