The Bipolar State

3:00 PM


4:00 PM

Oh the difference an hour can make...

The Tree In Our Yard

August


September


October


November

Daddy's New Job

Dad got a job! He is working at Covington's Nursery where he someday might become a landscape architect. Right now he is just a normal worker so he can learn all the new Texas plants. Mom, Ms. Carol and I went to go see him the other day so we could see where he worked.


Covington's is HUGE. They use golf carts just to get around there. They sell all sorts of plants from pansies to trees. The trees we bought for our backyard are from there(It was in that trip to buy trees that Dad asked, "Hey, how do you get a job here?" which is a whole other story entirely.).


Right now Dad is just working to learn all the plants, while also learning how to deal with the Texas elements(it's pretty much all outdoors), and the crazyness of Texas that we like to call "Nature." So far Dad has found one of the most dangerous of all poisonous caterpillars(Nature makes poisonous caterpillars! Crazy, I know.). Its called the Asp Caterpillar(like the snake, because its poisonous...) or the Puss Worm Caterpillar, and it looks like a Bantha from Star Wars, minus the horns(or like a headless, legless Persian cat.). Apparently contact with its hairs causes severe pain which can radiate up the limb. Dad pulled it off his jacket and put if on a napkin without getting stung, before he even knew what it was. He is very pleased with himself.



He is enjoying work and having fun learning all sorts of stuff. We are very thankful that he has a job(not that it means that all our financial troubles are over with) and it will be very exciting to see where this takes him.

Some something actually happened in our lives again. We got trees for the backyard! Since we gave the playset to a neighbor our backyard has be amazingly, obnoxiously bare. But now we have two trees that are supposed to grow fast, and the yard has some visual interest.


The first tree is a Brandywine Maple(which i refer to as a "hobbit tree," not because it is small, but because in the first Lord of the Rings movie the hobbits have to escape the ringwraiths by crossing the Brandywine Brige and getting on the ferry thing. Also, Merry's last name is Brandybuck. So, long tangent, but it's a hobbit tree.)


The second tree is a Red Oak, similar to the one in our front yard, and it is supposed to turn really pretty colors in the fall, so that should be fun.

The Harbor

We went on an adventure to find the Harbor in Rockwall. I like it because it looks like California. Except it's not the ocean. It's Lake Ray Hubbard.


It's a lot more crowded in the Summer, but it was virtually empty when we where there. So we got to go around taking goofy pictures and no one was there to care.


Dad, being "Captain Elbow"( but not "Captain Fidget", because that's T.J.) because of his habit of standing with his hand on his hips so that his elbows are dangerously in the way. I was copying him.




We walked around and ended up going the The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory to get some chocolate. Mom got a dark chocolate pecan cluster, Dad got a raisin cluster and I got a pumpkin pie truffle, which really just tasted like a chocolate truffle that was pretending to be something else. But chocolate is chocolate, so no complaints here!


While we were eating our chocolate this guy just walked up to us and started talking to us. In California he would have had to be crazy or a homeless person or both to do that, but he wasn't. He was just a normal guy. People in Texas are just friendly like that. Really friendly. He talked to us for about a half hour. Then we went to Costco and got new phones! yay!

The Symphony

Oops! I haven't posted on here for a while. But that's because nothing was happening. And now everything is happening all at once! When it rains, it pours(especially in Texas..).
This picture is from when we went to see the Richardson Symphony Orchestra at the Eisemann Center. We had to go for one of T.J.'s music classes. They played all Beethoven, and did a really good job, but the orchestra seemed small. There was a strike going on, so that might have been part of it, but I think I'm just used to the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra. Despite their size, they still sounded great, and we had fun.

Happy Late Birthday T.J.!

So my big brother is no longer a teenager! He's a grown up now...kinda.


For his birthday, T.J. got the various delicious foods(because college boys like to eat.), the movie Tombstone, and some sort of computer thing I don't understand. But he was excited about it.


So Happy Birthday Big Brother!

Dad, Wildlife Extraordinaire.

Dad found more wildlife. According to Dad this is a leopard frog, and it was found in one of the drainage pipes in our back wall in our yard. Just hiding out and chillin'...

Blueberry Muffins

The other day I made some blueberry muffins from pretty much my favorite recipe on Allrecipes.com. These muffins are good because they taste good, they look good, and they have a crumb topping(delicious!).


I've been having one for breakfast each morning, but they're really good anytime. Though, if you try to make them, be careful, because if you fill them too full, the crumb topping can spill over and fall on the bottom of the oven and burn, which ruins the normally delicious smell of muffins baking. Other than that, they're really easy. You should totally try them!

Lightning!

So while the weather in Texas has more mood swings than a middle school girl, and is generally frightening and impossible, it does make some really good pictures.







I took these pictures by standing in the car, and balancing my camera on top of the car...right next to a tall, metal lightpost(in a mall parking lot). In hindsight, this was possibly, probably really stupid. But I didn't get struck by lightning, and accomplished a sort of photographic goal for myself...


I finally got a picture of lightning! I feel so accomplished. Like I have photographer street cred now. :P

I can live here now, they have a Yogurtland. It's been, like 2 months since my last trip to Yogurtland, and I don't know how I survived.


But the new Yogurtland is finally open, and I can finally get some good California eatin'. (Yogurtland will always remind me of California, and the beach, and Cerritos Mall. How I miss them all...)


Also, this Yogurtland has a Pumpkin Pie flavor(which is next to the cheesecake, so you can mix them.). Delicious! But strangely void of color...

The Death of a Toad

So the rain has been driving out all sorts of new Texas wildlife. Including toads and tree frogs. Every time I see a toad in the backyard it reminds me of the poem we read in A.P. Literature...

The Death of a Toad
Richard Wilbur

A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsbleed goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.



It's not the most cheerful of poems. But I literally think of it EVERY TIME I see a toad, or hear about a toad.

So we've been having some terrible weather here because of Tropical Storm Hermine, which pretty much just made its way through Texas in the last couple days. I swear it rained more here in the last 3 days than it has in the last 3 years in Southern California(I has rained more that 15 inches in some places!). We had a rather scary moment where there was a tornado in Dallas. There is a video of it on CNN's website.


It was pretty scary because we could see the storm on the radar, and the projected path of the tornado, and we could tell that it was headed right in our direction.


Thankfully, the tornado pulled back up into the storm clouds before it got to us, but it was a tense moment! We weren't close enough to see it ourselves(that ok, really, I'd rather see one heading away from us than towards us...), but we had some pretty severe rain and wind ourselves. It cleared up for a little while, but then started pouring again around 2:00 a.m.(pretty much exactly around 2:00 a.m. I was awake.)The storm has gone now, so we're enjoying some peace now, until tropical storm Igor comes around...

Girl Time

Yay!! Shopping Day! Mom and I both had the day off today, so we decided to go shopping! I think we needed it.


Ack! I was getting rained on. It rained a lot today. But it didn't matter to us, because we were in a mall. (Oh wait, I just remembered, there was a tornado warning for our county I think. Nothing serious. Just a warning.)


Drinking chai tea to keep our strength up...


Okay, this mall has an ice rink(and a movie theater, and about five department stores...).That means this mall is too big.


Yum! Sbarro's Pizza. I love pizza...


Mom got a quiche.


And cookies for dessert!

We each bought a few shirts, but I haven't taken pictures of those yet, so if I ever do, I'll show them to you.

Chai Spice Recipe

Found the recipe I used for the Chai Spice CookiesChai Spice Cookies on the Better Homes and Gardens Website. The link will take you to it. Let me know if you try making them. :)