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...