Saturday, August 30, 2008

Mosaic of Me


I found this idea on another blog. It is a mosaic of ME. You answer 12 questions. Using the answers, you search photos on flickr. You must choose a photo from the 1st page, and place it into your collage. Using the mosaic maker, on the flick site, you put it all together!

Here are the 12 questions:

. What is your first name? (Pam)
2. What is your favorite food? (Mediterrranean)
3. What high school did you attend? (Rogue River)
4. What is your favorite color? (Reddish Brown)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (Orlando Bloom)
6. Favorite drink? (Cabernet)
7. Dream vacation? (Italian countryside)
8. Favorite dessert? (Fallen Chocolate Cake)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (Architect)
10.What do you love most in life? (Hugs)
11. One word to describe you. (Warm)
12. Your Flickr name. (Pammy)


Now when you look at mine, I must mentioned that I inadvertently put my pics in from bottom to top! So the answers start at the bottom right hand corner. Call me original........

Friday, August 22, 2008

Our Pet Menagerie

We are not pet people. Oh, we want to be. The kids REALLY want to be. But I don't want to have the energy to train a puppy. I won't have rodents or snakes in the house and I am allergic to cats. I hate the noise and mess birds make. We had some goldfish. I ended up cleaning the disgusting tank. Spiders freak me and the kids out and turtles are boring.

It doesn't leave us many options in the pet department.

Fortunately, my mom, who lives a mile from us, got the cutest puppy last year and she has filled the pet niche for the boys. This is Lily.....

About a month ago the boy's buddies, Will and Jake, were going on vacation. They had recently adopted a gecko and needed a babysitter for two weeks. N and A were asked to do the honors and we soon had a really cute gecko named Shadow and a habitat of crickets in our midst.

The boys had a great time taking care of Shadow. We would feed him a live cricket each night and watch him hunt and capture it.

The next week, Grandma had the boys over for an afternoon. She had acquired a tadpole environment and was planning to order the eggs online. Unfortunately they can only be sent in cooler weather. So off to the pet store they went.

And they brought home these:


We are now the proud parents of two fire belly toads. We have a cricket habitat and fixed up the little terrarium with rock and driftwood. I do enjoy watching the toads aggressively go after the cricket and chow down on them! (not sure what that says about me?)

We also adopted a guppy last week. A friend was moving and felt better about giving us the guppy than flushing it down the toilet.

We were at the pet store the other day purchasing more dinner for the toads. There were some cute geckos hanging out in a little pool. We already have to buy crickets each week. I started thinking "A gecko wouldn't be any added trouble." I stopped my self. For now.

I see our classroom soon becoming overrun with small animals.


And only a month ago I was breathing a sigh of relief that we were pet free..........

Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Olympics

Having two young sons and a futbol/football loving dad in the house, you would think we would watch more sports around here. But we don't. DH does make a point of watching the Steelers play and uses the DRV on boxing matches and the World Cup. But that's about it.

This year the Olympics have caught our attention. I think the boys are at the ages where they can start to appreciate the strength and abilities of the athletes. They also are showing a sense of patriotism in rooting for the American athletes.

It has also helped us reinforce nutrition, endurance and commitment. Both boys play non-competitive soccer. We have made a point to teach them that what goes into their bodies will effect their performance. N has been working on his endurance by running on the treadmill each day. And we decided that they would pay the fees for soccer and we would reimburse them if they showed commitment through the season.

I know what you are thinking: they are awfully young to be in training! No, that's not what we are doing. We are trying to teach good nutrition, importance of exercise, fiscal responsibility, and follow through. These are life lessons and we are using soccer as the vessel.

Anyway, as we watch the human interest stories about the athletes, it enables us to reinforce all these things. We also have been able to talk about genetics as the commentator analyzed Michael Phelps' body. Long upper torso and short legs makes for a good swimmer. We looked at the runners and noticed that long lean bodies make good runners. The gymnasts were smaller, but extremely muscular. The boys analyzed their own physiques and we decided A has a runner's body and N would be a great swimmer or weight lifter!

So we have enjoyed the swimmers and the gymnasts over the first part of the week. When we sat down to watch the Games on Thursday, women's beach volleyball was on. Nick was excited. "I like volleyball!" he said

"I didn't know you knew what it was."

" Yeah, Mommy. When I was in school I think we played it once."

(I think they hit a balloon over a net. Potato, potahto.....)

Soon A shows up. First thing out of his 7 yo mouth:
"Why are those girls wearing bikinis?"

N just giggled. And giggled. (Usually bringing up the subject of girls in any fashion results in anger or denial of interest.)

I said, "N, is that why you wanted to watch this?"

Again giggles, giggles and no denial.

Hmmmm.....I think my 9 1/2 y.o. is on the brink of puberty. I thought I had a few more years.

Yes, The Olympics have been eye opening in many ways.........

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Saturday Movie!

Tonight I watched "Little Children" by director Todd Field.

I have a bit of trivia. I lived in the same dorm as Todd my freshman year of college. He dated a girl named Sharon ( who was really good friends with a girl named Heather) who lived on my floor. He played trombone, he was cute, he was creative. We all lived in Diamond Hall, the "arts" dorm.....lots of people form the theatre, music and art concentrations. It wasn't a huge dorm, I lived on the ground floor, well the basement really, and we had maybe 16 girls on that floor...probably 20 tops on each of the other 3 floors.

Anyway, I never had much interaction with Todd, but my two close friends, Janet and Tricia knew him from theater classes. When Twister came out, we all recognized Todd as one of the scientist. Then he was the piano player in Eye Wide Shut. After that, the big break in directing In the Bedroom. Well, that's my brush with fame, I guess....not that he probably remembers any of us!

Now to the movie. It was different in that the movie was narrated, not by a character, but the author, if you will. It was third person narrative. Very different for a film, and it really worked. It helped give the characters depth in a few seconds.

It is about suburban life. Mothers who take the toddler to the park everyday and have not much to look forward to. Families who look perfect on the surface, but are not. Families who have apparent problems. Men and women, some crushed male egos, aching to be young. The film is touted as grown ups who haven't passed adolescence. Yes, that about sums it up. and there are a couple of scenes that you could have stuck in the middle of a teen film and yet it would no seem out of place in either. There's even the bully and the kid whose picked on.

I can't tell you too much or it gives it all away. If you like characters and observations of people you will enjoy this movie. I think I will find there was more to it that I saw tonight. It's always movies like this that catch me be surprise the next day!