Here is the result of our visit to the cake shop. NDM produced this for a coworker's son's fourth birthday.
Everything was edible except for the wire holding up the stars.
My favorite parts were the roaches, which the children misidentified as crickets. I was not permitted to correct their identification.
NDM has drawn me off to downtown Orlando to wallow in cake supplies. While she runs down the aisles oohing and aahing, I thought I would see if I could blog from my new phone. What do you know?
NDM's dream of a real koi pond have finally come to fruition. Four feet deep with a waterfall and a stream, the deed is done.
As many home improvements do, this one began with spray paint.
Here I am pretending to help dig the pond. In reality it turns out that I actually could have -- even four feet down there is nothing underneath the Saint Augustine grass but sand.
I liked the pond well enough as a simple quarry in our front yard, but we had to press on.
It took about two weeks from start to unlandscaped finish.
The top of the waterfall gives us a nice view over our HOA battlements.
Up close it still looks like a bit like construction zone, and it will clearly take us some time to naturalize in the pond's margins.
We have seven small koi in the pond right now. After a week acclimating they are just beginning to feel confident enough to show themselves.
The fantail makes it really obvious that these things are basically trumped-up goldfish.
So far we seem to have one day-blooming and one night-blooming pad. We'll see how many water plants we can stuff in there once the pond gets more established.
The wife had a confirmation ultrasound yesterday and sure enough there was an few pixels of proto-heart fluttering away. Our tech zoomed right past some pretty decent shots of the 6 mm blob several times before finally settling on this nondescript smudge, but presumably we'll get slightly more interesting pictures in the next year or so.
NDM has accepted a new job at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando starting at the end of August. Finally, some blessed relief from our hot and humid Chicago summers :-) We'll be moving down sometime about the third week of August. If anybody wants to buy our house in Westmont, don't be shy!
I recently stumbled upon the description of an old game I played in grade school -- one of TSR's "minigames", tiny little board games in Ziploc bags. The game? They've Invaded Pleasantville. The description?
NDM turned out another cake for work this week. This addax even had moving parts.
Pulling the tongue triggered a recorded message utilizing the repurposed innards of a greeting card.
Other than the tongue-mechanism and two wires used to support the rice krispie treat horns the entire cake was edible. Or so I am given to understand -- I never get to eat these cakes :-P
NDM made this flamingo cake for a co-worker's birthday this week. If she had her way she would have made it genuinely three-dimensional, but sanity and lack of time prevailed.
Some additional fondant manufacturing was required due to a particularly naughty (and tall) puppy, who made off with a Ziploc bag full of illegal fun.
The insides are the same red velvet cake I made for this V-day.
I'm not sure what particular genus of grass the Phoenicopterus is loitering in. NDM is clearly prejudiced against plants.
We all gathered around our massive red counter for the Dawn of the Stockings. This picture was actually taken by yours truly, so doubtless has many issues of composition, lighting, and et cetera.
Líle needed help with her stocking. She's such a gentle little girl when she isn't knocking people over at the door and licking them to death.
'Dolon, on the other hand, yanked out the best part of his stocking and ran away with it in about three seconds.
My parents' visit was exhausting for the dogs. Besides the excitement of different people, 'Dolon was on high alert during all of the cooking and baking we did. There are risks associated with close inspection of my wife's endeavors in the kitchen, however, as you can see above.
After almost a week of fun 'Dolon has become a passive and unresisting pillow.
The parents came for a visit last week and gave us an excuse to cook a few things we haven't for a while. The first night we made a deep-dish pizza with spinach and zucchini. It might look a little Abby-normal because of how the real buffalo mozzarella melts. Unfortunately, I went a bit overboard saucing it during construction so it was a little messy to eat.
After LEM left for California, leaving only seafood lovers in the house, NDM made fantastic fish 'n' chips out of some tilapia fillets. These are as good as any fried fish I've ever had.
We finished up with some seafood gumbo made with scallops, shrimp, krill, mussels, clams, and tilapia.
For desert one night NDM whipped up some cashew brittle. This is the second time she's made it and she has it down pat -- delicious.
To welcome LEM back at the end of the visit we made some household-first caramel corn. First NDM threw about a half cup of popcorn kernels in a covered bowl and microwaved it for about 4 minutes on high until they were almost all popped. Then she made a caramel sauce on the stove out of brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup and brought it to the soft crack stage. The sauce and popcorn went on a baking tray in the oven for an hour, allowing the sauce to bubble and cover all of the popcorn. I'm not one for caramel corn myself, but it was certainly the best I've ever had.
NDM managed to get a lot of good studying done in the hammock this year. A huge amount of studying if she was dreaming about zoo boards. But the hammock isn't just about work; it is also Líle's rocking magical licking cradle and puppy gas emporium.
Until next year, hammock!
It is that time of year again when my wife descends into seedling madness. The bulbs are flickering and humming down in the basement, paying tribute to those things she loves best. Like this proto-asparagus, which she is so attached to I doubt I will ever be permitted to eat it. I'm actually always amazed that she photographs things like this -- and don't think this is her only seedling portrait, not by a long shot!
Where is my wife's right arm, I hear you ask? Don't ask. The rhino probably shouldn't ask either.
Here is a rare picture of the vast majority of our family. Hagar is too wet to be pictured here, and I'm the reason the photograph is poorly framed, badly lit, and out of focus. From top right clockwise, we have long-suffering NDM, little white hissy Scylla, leaky-eyed Molpe, crammed-in Líle, and snoring 'Dolon.
