July 2009 Mosaic

Click to biggify. Created using Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker.


How could I resist this one? These are the first cupcakes he has ever eaten that I made. He only ate one, but I was still surprised. I think he liked the "sparkly sticks" more than anything.


Aren't they pretty? These are my new beaded bracelets being worn by their maker, my mother.


Mr. Goofy in the back seat. He thought this was so funny!


My backyard has been full of blue jays lately. There were actually two in my yard this day, but I could only get one in the photo at a time.

2009-07-31

We went to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island today. Luke was being rather uncooperative about the camera, for some reason, but he was absolutely fascinated by the crab in this tank. It was very active and kept walking the perimeter very quickly right next to the glass.

2009-07-30

Overall, today's beach trip was a total bust. It was low tide or lay tide, there were no waves at all (I don't remember the last time I saw the ocean so flat), there was no breeze, and it was blue-blazin' hot! There were also these little tiny shells everywhere, maybe 5-6 mm wide, and they hurt to walk on. Here, you can clearly see the line where the tide came in and left them behind. There were 3 different "rows" of these on the way down to the water's edge. I don't remember seeing anything like that before.

2009-07-29

I was trying to give a sense of how tiny these flowers were, especially the "buds" that look like four-pointed stars. They almost seemed to glow in the late evening sun.

2009-07-28

I was supposed to pack for our trip sometime today. As of 11 PM, this is how much I had done.

2009-07-27

I found these small sculptures a few years ago at Christmas and bought one for everyone in our family. It's small, only about 3 inches (8 cm) from thumb tip to pinky tip. Long before Chipper Jones, long before the deaf Miss America, this was the symbol of our family. It means "I love you" in sign language. Mom taught us to finger spell with ASL very early, including this sign. Later, she took formal classes. At the time, she drove nearly an hour from where we lived to the college offering the course. In an ultimate twist of fate, my current house is only a mile from that very same college, though we didn't know that when we bought it.

2009-07-26

They were so funny today, staring so intently at MarioKart as they played this afternoon.

2009-07-25

Lovely cloud and sun play on the way home today.

2009-07-24

I had been trying all day to figure out a fun way to demonstrate that today is my birthday, since I didn't have cake or balloons or anything. As we left Artuzzi's to go grocery shopping, I noticed how clear our shadows were, so I got Luke to help me show my new age: 33.

2009-07-23

Tigger gave me my birthday present early. See this bowl? It was at least 2-3 pellets deep and the bottom was covered last night when we went to bed. She spends most of the day in our bedroom, so only she has access to this food. Tonight as we prepared for bed, we checked her food bowl again. I can't believe how much she has eaten! It's still not as much as the vet says she should have, but it is such a dramatic improvement from not eating at all. Go Tigger!!

2009-07-22

Tigger's poor front legs. She looks like she's been attacked by a razor. They could use a very small IV when they were just giving her fluids (small shaved patch on the left), but for her surgery they had to shave a larger portion of her other leg (right side of photo) for both the IV and the vital stats monitoring devices, which require skin contact to work properly. She also has a shaved patch on her belly from the ultrasound, and I'm sure a good portion of her neck is shaved, though it is covered by the red neck bandage at the moment. Anyone know how long it takes for cat fur to grow back?

2009-07-21

I feel like we've spent the better part of the last two weeks here. To an extent, we have. Since we first took Tigger in 13 days ago, she's spent at least part of 8 days there, and we've been there 8 times ourselves either to drop her off, pick her up, visit her, or have her checked. I have spoken with someone from the office (usually a doctor, but occasionally a tech) nearly every day. We may single-handedly pay for their overhead this month. But we love our vet's office, and I would recommend them to anyone in the Atlanta area. All of the doctors and techs there genuinely care about both the animals and the owners. I would like to give a special thank you to Dr. Robin Hochel and Dr. George (whose last name is Parlavantzas, but everyone refers to him as Dr. George, including himself), who have both worked tirelessly for the past two weeks to try and help Tigger get better.

2009-07-20

This was so funny! Luke had a kid's meal from Wendy's for dinner tonight. While we were sitting at the table, he was checking out the bag, which featured several famous classical historical figures. Obviously, we the parents knew immediately that this was supposed to be William Shakespeare, but when Luke looked at this side, he started asking questions that made no sense to us. We didn't expect him to know Shakespeare, but we were quite perplexed about what he was really asking. And then it clicked with the last question. "Where is the sun? Why there no sun there? And the clouds? Why is that king saying the weather?" LOL!

2009-07-19

This is a pretty good encapsulation of my week. On Monday, this box was over half full. Today (Sunday), it is empty, and that doesn't include the 1/4-1/3 of a box that I used at night from upstairs. Between sniffles and tears, my nose is just worn out!

2009-07-18

Luke with Miss Sabrina at his last swimming lesson as a Starfish (the beginner class). He has done so amazingly well! I was hoping she would be teaching the next level class in the fall, but she's moving away in a few weeks. We'll miss her!

2009-07-17

Hard to beat for just $4! Healthy? No. Yummy? Oh yeah.

2009-07-16

The son of my oldest friend from high school and my own son. The Griffis family currently resides in California, so this was my first chance to meet Owen since he was born a little over a year ago. Such a cutie!

2009-07-15

I know it is a little hard to see. I was trying to capture Luke's "handiwork." For some reason that neither my husband nor I can fathom, he decided to take a pair of scissors out of the drawer and snip at the hem of this blouse (that I've worn only once!). You can actually see the cuts a little better in the shadow (see the light gaps?). There are about 8 of them across a 3-4 inch expanse of the hem. I was too confused to be angry for more than a moment. I could understand if it was some of my papers that were sitting near by, but my blouse? Why, why, why?!

2009-07-14

Define irony: the day that I updated my Project 365 blog (July 14) with nearly a week's worth of photos is the same day that I forget to take a photo! I couldn't believe it when I was trying to get stuff together for another update and I could not find a single photo from 7/14, not even on my phone. So you'll have to settle for this picture of Luke with Tigger from yesterday. I had no idea when I took this photo that she would be back at the vet within 2 days having a feeding tube put in.

2009-07-13

I had my parents pick up this 2009 photo album from Disney the last time they were in Orlando. I've been lamenting the fact that I hadn't gotten one when we were there earlier this year. I wanted Luke to have his very own photo album to remember the trip. Today, the 100 prints for the album arrived in the mail, so I spent most of the evening organizing the photos and getting them put in. Luke is going to love it!

2009-07-12

In order for her to get better, we are under orders to get Tigger to eat. "Anything she wants. Anything at all! As long as she eats" This is her private stash of various people foods in the refrigerator: chicken with dried beef, bacon, sliced turkey, and canned chicken.

2009-07-11

Tigger came home from the vet on Saturday, doing better, but not really well. She needs to continue to eat in order to really improve. Here she is sporting her bandage from the IV.

2009-07-10

Tigger was diagnosed with Hepatic Lipidosis, which caused her to go into liver failure. The cure was for her to eat, so I stayed up late Thursday night cooking her favorite meal: chicken with dried beef. Here she is, eating some at the vet's office on Friday. Yay for eating!

2009-07-09

I realized sometime Wednesday that Tigger was very sick. When I took these photos of her Thursday morning (while waiting for the vet's office to open), I honestly thought they would be the last photos of her I would ever have.

2009-07-08

I took a few pictures of Luke playing with his MegaBloks pirate ship that I thought would be today's POD, but when he gave me the mermaid and said, "here Mommy, this is you," I had to laugh. Is that because she is a girl? (Hey, MegaBloks, we need some girl pirates!) "No, she's you!" I guess with the reddish curly hair, she does look a little like me. What do you think?

2009-07-07

This ended up being the only photo I took today, though that obviously was not by design. Luke has a magnet board that we put his schedule on for the next day, so he knows what to expect. Some things have changed since I made the first set of magnets, so I recently made some new ones. I took this photo to represent "field trip day," which happens to be Tuesdays during the summer. Good thing, since I didn't take any others.

2009-07-06

These are my new shoes, compliments of my mom (thanks, Mom!). I had found these online, but they were sold out of my size and width, but the local shoe store that carries lots of widths actually had the size and width combo I needed. I couldn't believe it. Go me!

2009-07-05

Empty dirty clothes baskets, a sign of a successful Sunday wash fest.

2009-07-04

Happy 4th, everyone! (And happy 11th anniversary to DH and me.)

2009-07-03

I love this kind of totally spontaneous shot. Since Luke didn't have swim lessons on Saturday, we decided to take him to play in the pool on Friday, and we invited my parents to come along. Dad also went to Ga Tech, and he had not seen the new athletic center, so we showed them around after swimming. As we got back in the elevator to leave, Dad looked up and noticed the mirror-like surface of the ceiling. "Luke, look up!" He did, and he thought it was the funniest thing ever. I whipped out my camera and said "everyone look up!" and snapped this picture. (Sorry I wasn't looking up; I knew the camera would move and mess up the shot of I did.) Definitely the picture of the day!

2009-07-02

Cleo is attempting the first ever Feline-Cybertronian mind meld.

2009-07-01

The roses certainly were pretty at the grocery store tonight, but I found the truly unnatural colors a little unnerving. This picture just does not do justice to how *orange* the top center ones are, or how acid green the ones just to the left were. (They look pale yellow in the photo, but they were about the color of absinthe.) The lilac ones (bottom center) really looked fake. It was so weird.