Dead Batteries & Minecraft

Jonny and Megan's family have been in town for a few weeks now, and we have stolen them away from Megan's parents a few times.

We planned it so that they could borrow our second car while they were in town. Unfortunately, when they got all the kids loaded up and ready to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's, our car wouldn't start. Luckily our friend/neighbor Doug came over to save us with his diagnostic skills and ratchet set. We ended up having to completely replace the battery, which meant that we had Seth and Catherine captive for 5 hours longer than anticipated (Megan and Aaron 2.0 escaped in the other car). Catherine wanted to feel included with all the tool people, so she grabbed a tape measurer and informed us that our car was 2 miles long and 5 dollars wide.

Despite the late bedtime that we inflicted upon them, they agreed to come back and spend the night this past weekend. Aaron spent the weekend fulfilling Catherine's every whim, most of which involved throwing her in the air. He was sad when she had to go to sleep. I got the Seth Blood Minecraft Crash Course, which was a true delight.

Turns out that Carcassonne is like real world Minecraft. Who knew that there was a war mode to this typically mild-mannered board game? I love how creative this kid is.

I'm glad that we had the kids as an excuse to check out the kids corner at the clubhouse. We rode the little train thing around and went putt putt golfing. Well, Jonny and Aaron duked it out on the putt putt course while Catherine played in the sandpit, Seth pretended to be a minecraft miner, and I sat on a bench. Erry'body had a great time.

Catherine cheesing for Uncle Aaron on the clubhouse train. We failed to get a picture where you could actually see the train.

Blood Brothers- kings of the playground

They have this cool digger contraption that Seth was quite enthusiastic about.

Not sure how functional or ergonomic it was, but that's ok.

TMNT Halloween

Last year, Aaron and I had lame last-minute Halloween costumes. We wanted to be more ambitious this year and do something clever with the whole pregnant thing. Aaron came up with the genius idea of Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Krang is this evil alien dude that looks like a brain with a face and arms. He built a robot suit and hangs out in the cockpit in the stomach. He works with Shredder to take over the world and defeat those pesky Turtles.

Many cardboard boxes and a roll of metallic duct tape later, we had costumes!

Photo Cred to Melony Hall

Had to include this picture because Aaron forgot the hand spikes at home

These pictures are kind of funny... you can't tell that my belly is pushing the Krang out several inches.

The response at the church trunk-or-treat party: A three-year-old girl that usually loves me ran away with a disgusted look on her face. A couple guys in their late 20's/early 30's recognized us and gave us props. Everyone else was impressed that we had obviously put forth substantial effort even though they had no clue what we were. All in all I would call it a success. It was more fun than I thought it would be to put the costumes together- I'm normally not crafty.

Halloween itself was fun. We didn't get as many trick-or-treaters as we thought we would, probably because the houses at the beginning of the block aren't finished yet so our street isn't as promising from a candy per distance walked standpoint. We went over to the House of Hays to get rid of the rest of our candy and watch Ghostbusters.

SNAKE! IN THE GARDEN! Thought you ought to know...

10 points if you know that reference! Here's a hint: replace "snake" with "troll" and "garden" with "dungeon." Answer: Harry Potter book one. Quirrel says it. At this point I'm ashamed if you didn't get it. Go read all 7 books. Start right now.

Back to the point of this post. WE FOUND A SNAKE IN OUR GARDEN! Like I mentioned in a previous post, we ended up with quite the tomato plant jungle because our coat hanger cages weren't actually strong enough to hold up the plants and we didn't do any sort of pruning. It got to the point where they were flopping over and smushing our other plants, so we decided to intervene.

We gathered up some sticks. This is substantially more difficult here than it is back East. We had to walk along the nearby wilderness trail for a while to find sticks that were the size we wanted that weren't infested with termites. We got to work using the sticks to prop up the plants.

BUT THEN!

Aaron pulled aside a bunch of tomato branches, and from where I was standing, I could see a snake! So I did a little yelp and yanked Aaron back. The snake was curled up and apparently asleep- he wasn't flicking his tongue out or anything. It wasn't a huge snake, but it was hard to tell with him all curled up. I wish we had thought to take a picture, but we were filled with battle rage. Aaron grabbed some gloves and our big shovel and I held the branches out of the way. Aaron had a pretty clear shot and the snake was kinda cornered. And asleep. So we felt pretty good about our chances of not being bitten. If it had been awake, we probably would have called the fire department to come get him.

I'll spare you the details of the battle. It was rather one-sided and ended with the snake half buried. It did hiss at us a little after we thought it was already dead, but a few more whacks put an end to that. Aaron moved the dirt around to bury him the rest of the way.

We never got a good look at it's tail- it was covered while he was asleep, and we didn't feel the need to dig him up enough to look at it after the fact. Going off of the coloring, it could have been a rattle snake, but we can't say for sure. There are some other non-venomous snakes with similar patterning. Aaron prefers to think that it was a non-venomous one so that he can tell himself that we don't have to worry about the snakes' brothers and sisters lurking nearby. I get a kick out of thinking that we fought off one of these guys:

Lesson learned- don't stick your hands into places that you can't see!

Garden: Year 1

One of the aspects of home ownership that we were most excited about was that we could start a garden. We made an attempt at container gardening in our apartment, but everything died because 

A) we ignored the fact that we were starting in the heat of summer  

B) we used the cheapest soil that Walmart sold, and 

C) the neighbor's cat might have been peeing on the plants. 

Ok, that last theory is completely unsupported. The neighbor had a very nice one-eyed cat that probably never peed on our plants.

ANYWAYS, we did some research about planting times when we moved into the house and started seeds for tomato, bell pepper, lettuce, and basil in January. We had some of the cheapo potting soil leftover from our previous gardening attempt, so we put that in egg cartons and planted some seeds. 

We also got some green onion from the grocery store and stuck it in a cup of water in the window. Anyone who isn't doing this already should do it- you cut back the green leaves and they just grow back over and over. No dirt required- just a cup of water and light.

We quickly lost faith in the egg cartons. You could tell by looking at the soil that it was no bueno- it was super coarse, almost mulch-like. So we shelled out a whopping $7 for a seed starter kit. It came with a tray and bunch of these poker chip looking disks that expand when you soak them in water. They are on the left in the picture below. We moved the operation to the study, where we set up the "Germination Station." We eventually moved the lamp to clip onto the window blinds and used fishing line to tie it up to a good angle for more consistent lighting. Yes, we are huge nerds. Germination station was Aaron's favorite place in the house while it was there- he checked up on our little plantskees multiple times a day. 

We got a few sprouts out of the egg cartons, but none of them grew more than a centimeter or so. Also Aaron dropped one of them on the floor. It's a good thing we got the soil pellet things going when we did. They were super convenient and almost all of them sprouted and grew to a pretty good size. 

We failed at pictures for the next few months... this next one is from early August. The vines sprawling out of the bed are cantaloupe. We planted them from seed straight in the ground in May and they did GREAT with the Arizona heat. Unfortunately we lost half of the melons because they all ripened super fast while we were on vacation and were rotten when we got back. The ones that we did get to eat were super sweet and delicious. They had a much thinner rind than the ones you buy in the store. 

The vines crawling up the wall are grapes. We got a cutting from someone at church and felt pretty silly planting it because it looked like just a stick. No roots or anything. 

And that brings us today! We are getting our second wave of tomatoes. We made some tomato cages out of coat hangers, but they weren't strong enough and we now have a super dense tomato jungle. We didn't ever prune them back and planted them fairly close together. We'll get actual cages next year. 

The bell peppers didn't do nearly as well as the tomatoes- the heat was harder on them. But we have gotten a few small peppers, many many tomatoes, and unlimited green onion. We had some lower quality spinach and lettuce earlier in the summer. It didn't do all that great. We also have 3 oranges growing on our dwarf navel orange tree. What a cutie. 

The grape vines are doing pretty well, even though we didn't get any grapes this year. We survived an onslaught of Grape Leaf Skeletonizers. It's an apt name for these cute little caterpillars. They REALLY like grape leaves, but didn't touch any of our other plants. We would go out there and kill 50-100 of them per day for a good week. They would have completely annihilated the whole vine if we hadn't fought them off. They disappeared a few weeks ago and the vine has made a comeback. 

RUTHLESS MONSTERS. We really would find that many under a single leaf.  

We planted our winter seeds at the beginning of October. We have beets, carrots, and swiss chard sprouts. SeedsNow.com sent us a free sample of Kale seeds so we put those in too, but the jury is still out on whether or not any of them will make it. We didn't bother with the Germination Station this time because the weather is nice. We'll see how it goes!