We love to read. From day one we’ve read to Illianna. One of her favorite books is Peek-A-Zoo. It’s been a great book that’s grown with her. It’s more of an activity book. Dr Seuss has been great as well. My Many Colored Days is not a well known Dr. Seuss. Illianna has loved Oh The Places You’ll Go from when she was little. I think the illustrations catch her eye. It plays with black and white and bold patterns, which is good for babies. Recently Horton Hears A Who was turned into a movie. I haven’t seen the movie, but the book has a great message. Your tounge will get twisted when you read Double Trouble in Walla Walla, and The Cranky Sun has beautiful artwork. A Day With No Crayons is very creative and helps encourage children to see art in everyday things.

We live in a fairly new neighborhood with all the amenities we could want. We have a water park, lots of trails to walk, play grounds, a spray park, good schools, and freaking paper hanging doorbell ringing sales folk. More than once in the last couple of weeks, Illi was down for less than 15 minutes when the doorbell rings, Mydrinn goes crazy, and it is just some moron selling something stupid with the same pitch everyone else uses. “I was just over at __________ (some generic name)’s house, and she loved this and bought a ton. But first, let me bore you about my company and other crap you don’t care about.” I mean really, we don’t give a rat’s who bought what, assuming the rather dubious assertion is even true. They never take no for an answer, and just keep talking (I assume) after the door is closed.

So, we researched the laws of Fort Worth, and found out that putting up a “No Soliciting” sign means that anyone that puts anything on our door, or petitions us for any reason can incur a $500 dollar, per incident fine. The only people exempt are government officials. We looked around online for something tasteful (and affordable), couldn’t find one (this one came up on our search many times - yuck), so we just put up a paper sign in the window with the following:

No Soliciting
Violation of this notice may result in a $500 per incident fine.
City of Fort Worth (Ord. No. 15245, § 1, 9-17-02) & (Ord. No. 17829, § 1, 10-9-07)
This includes Handbills and Religious Petitioning

Hopefully that will get the point across. If not, I will just start turning everyone into to the City for code violations. We like our sleep around here, and our “guard dog” Mydrinn will not be deterred from his solemn duty, so do us all a favor, just go away, we aren’t buying anything from you anyways.

There were several good stories around on the net about this topic, but one of my favorites was this girl’s. Her blog name and motto are just so good, I had to link back.

If you didn’t notice, the website has a new look. We are still working on getting all the features online like the new gallery, but you get the point.

I am sure it is only a joke, but no wonder the German’s lost WWII and WWI, there is no German word for Blowjob…

Well, we took our first family vacation to New Mexico. Illianna did great on the airplane. Here she is checking out the view from the overhead.

We did a lot of hiking.

See that hole on the right. I climbed through there with Missy Moo along for the ride. That was darn difficult. I couldn’t just get down on my hands and knees because just the day before we were hiking around in the snow and I fell and bruised my knees.. bad.

We didn’t do any intense hikes this time because it was the first time I’ve worn a pack since I was a teenager at summer camp . I’m glad we stuck to the easy stuff because that’s all Illianna could do anyway. She is at the age now where she’s too interested in everything to fall asleep anywhere other than her bed. Towards the end of the trip she was doing better to sleep in the car, but that was out of total exhaustion and desperation. I’m not sure how long it will take her to catch up on missed sleep. Nor am I sure how long it will take us to catch up. She woke us up everyday at 5AM, which is 6AM her regular time. Usually when she wakes up early at home, I let her hang out in her crib until time to wake up, 7AM, but you can’t really do that when you’re in a hotel room.

Maybe if I have a little more time or energy I’ll blog a bit further about the whole thing, but right now I’m not that into it. more pics

It’s tradition to take photos in the blue bonnets. For some odd reason they only seem to grow on the side of busy highways, except for the crazy guy who plants them in his front yard in Southlake, only to spend all his time on the front porch chasing people away.

We were on the side of a highway, actually where two meet, but it was off the road quite a bit.

Illianna was far too interested in the flowers and grass to actually look at the camera, but I figure I’ll have many years of blue bonnet photos where she’s looking at the camera. Only one where she’s actually fascinated by the flowers.

We’ve been busy with lots of firsts lately. This weekend we managed to make it to the zoo. It was Illianna’s first time. I wasn’t sure she’d enjoy it just yet, but she sure did. There was a lion who was not in the best of moods and kept pacing back and forth and roaring. She *loved* that. Here’s this big intimidating lion giving it his all and she’s giggling at him. It was so cute. I now know a new noise to make to get her to giggle.

There was also this cool avery that had tons of birds flying around. You could go in and feed them. Ryan took Illianna in while I stayed with our stuff. When the birds would get spooked they’d all fly from one end to the other and the wave of ooooh’s and ahhhh’s from all the kids watching was adorable. Here’s a photo of Illianna checking out the birds.

Today was our second week of swim class. Illianna loves it. With her love of bath time, I thought she’d enjoy swim class. Illianna was chatting with another little girl, Sophie, during class. They were cooing back and forth. Sophie started splashing and giggling and then Illianna started kicking and giggling back. I wish I had a video camera. I did manage to get a pic of us after class.

We ran to Target just a little while ago and she successfully sat in the basket. I don’t have a shopping cart cover just yet. I actually went there to get one, but I’m not sure if it’s truely needed. I understand it’s supposed to help keep germs at bay, but kid are going to get germs and get sick. I don’t know if the hassle of having a cart cover is worth it. I think it would be easier for me to carry wipes and just disinfect.

For Grandpa

She hasn’t mastered making the Longhorns sign yet.

Anyone that travels these days knows the TSA is a huge joke. The rules constantly change, even from screener to screener. Sometimes I take my DVD player out, other times I dont. Sometimes my cane gets passed through several times, other times it is ok to go with me through the metal detector. The sooner we replace the TSA with either trained chimps or Skynet , the better. To illustrate my point, here is a thread from FlyerTalk :

So it just took me 35 minutes ‘to case clear security to get to my vegas flight. And I was the only one in line!

DFW A terminal

Tsa: id please
Me: that is my id ‘pointing to my PASSPORT
Tsa: sir where are going?
Me: las vegas
Tsa: last time I checked a map, las vegas is in the US!
Me: and?
Tsa: well then you don’t need a passport to go there
Me: and?
Tsa: so your passport is not valid id for this trip
Me: excuse me?
Tsa: yes I need a government issued id
Me: my passport is government issued, its issued by the government of the netherlands, would you like me to show you where that is on a map?
Tsa: that government is not recognized by the tsa. And I know that the netherlands is in norway. So I need to see a drivers license.
Me: the government of the netherlands is not recognized by the tsa? That’s dissappointing, im sure my queen will be absolutely distraught to hear that an id checker at the dfw airport is not recognizing her as a legitimate government. Its a good thing though that the tsa doesn’t set foreign policy, and that that’s left to the state department. Have you informed condileeza rice that the tsa is now deciding what governments will be recognized by the us government? Are you guys the jokers that decided to regonize kosovo as an independent state?
Tsa: condeleeza who?
Me: So my passport really isn’t going to work? And you need to see a drivers license?
Tsa: yes
Me: well here’s the problem ‘ I hand him my dutch drivers license ‘ see this is also issued by that government that you don’t recognize.
Tsa: hmmm…. Don’t you have anything that’s issued by the government in the us?
Me: I have my greencard but the problem is, like you said las vegas is in the us, according to the map you just checked, the same one that told you the netherlands is in norway. So since I don’t need a greencard to travel to las vegas, my greencard won’t work either even though it was issued by the dept of homeland security, the same part of the us government that the tsa is a part of.
Tsa: yes that’s true. Ok so you don’t have any valid id for travel in the US?
Me: apparently not, since my passport and drivers license is not recognized by the tsa and my greencard is not valid for travel within ths us.
Tsa: ok well you can travel without id, you’ll just need to go through additional screening.
Me: great
Tsa: I need a male assist.

Ten minutes later

tsa2: hi sir
Me: hi
tsa2: im going to go through your bags and then wand you, is that ok?
Me: sure
tsa2: sir what’s this? ‘pointing to my passport’
Me: that’s my passport
tsa2: but you told the id screener that you don’t have id
Me: that’s right
tsa2: so you lied to him
Me: no
tsa2: no?
Me: according to his requirements I did not have id that met his requirements for travel.
tsa2: huh?
Me: since im going to vegas, apparently my passport is not valid for traveling there, because accoridng to his map las vegas is in the us and since its in the us and I don’t need a passport to travel there, my passport is not valid for travel.
tsa2: huh?
Me: exactly
tsa2: ok?

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…… Toto I don’t think we’re in Holland anymore.

One less moron on our countdown to everyone in the US…..

[Original Thread]