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!