“There’s a secret door in my room. I use it for getting away from the bad guys, and from ninjas.”
Jun 28 00:58:00 2010

“The good news about having a baby brother or sister is that I will get to give it hugs and kisses!”
Jun 24 18:27:23 2010

“Peace out, yo!…What does that even MEAN, anyway?”
Jun 23 15:31:07 2010

“Dog paw? Fascinating!”
Jun 22 09:22:44 2010

“Oh, today is Father’s Day? Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!”
Jun 20 18:20:08 2010

“I want a Scooby-Doo party on my next birthday. Then I can give out little dolls of monsters, zombies, ghosts, and aliens as party prizes!”
Jun 18 15:13:23 2010

“Miss Brenda’s stir-fry pork, I LOVE YOU!!!”
Jun 15 19:37:36 2010

“Men, I’m Annalie of the USS Gourmet. I’m here to tell you, this whole ship is one big security camera!”
Jun 14 14:56:53 2010

“I’m pretending to be an Earthbender!”
Jun 13 12:57:05 2010

“I stand corrected. I’d better stick to martial arts.”
Jun 9 16:41:05 2010

“Mom, tell Miss Brenda and all your friends that have kids that it’s kinda easy to suck yogurt through a straw. They need to know that.”
Jun 7 03:45:58 2010

@OutofmyMind It is! Did you know you can also eat applesauce with a straw? It’s true, I do it all the time.
Jun 9 16:40:27 2010 in reply to OutofmyMind

“You’re my darrrrrlin’, you’re my darrrrlin’, you’re my DARRRR-ling Clementine…”
Jun 5 14:52:16 2010

“I’m going to put this picture from @babybug in the place of honor…right next to the best picture I drew.”
6:27 PM Jun 4th

“Yeah, yeah. I’m SIX now, you know.”
9:46 AM May 10th

“It’s lunchtime already? Huh, the day goes by.”
1:24 PM May 30th

“Wow, it looks SO three-dimensional!”
2:30 PM May 26th

“This is so sweet and sour, I can’t get enough of it!”
4:50 PM May 24th

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t sing that song for you again. It’s a one-hit wonder.”
12:20 AM May 22nd

“Kiki’s Delivery Service is a little movie pronounced by the same company that made Totoro.”
11:13 PM May 7th

(talking on her cousin’s phone rattle) “Hello? Talk to me. Oh, BILLY! How are ya? I haven’t talked to you since kindergarten. SO crazy…”
8:04 PM Apr 28th

“Can I have some more cram bangoons?”
4:21 PM Apr 21st

“I’ll do it, but first you have to threaten me with candy.”
12:53 PM Apr 21st

“Aliens never surprise me, because you can ALWAYS expect aliens on Doctor Who.”
1:46 PM Apr 18th

“I think I have allergicness to pussy willow pollen.”
5:22 PM Apr 15th

“This is @babybug. I drew her mouth open because you know how she just talks, talks, talks all the time.”
2:03 AM Apr 11th

“You know how people just LOVE apples, and I’m one of them.”
3:07 PM Apr 8th

(trying on Easter dresses) “This one passes the jump test, and it’s SO zero minutes ago!”
4:48 PM Apr 1st

This is the look Troy usually gives me when I tell him how late I stayed up the night before, crocheting and watching movies or TV. I’ve been doing that a lot recently. I can’t give you details or show you pictures of the finished projects because they are gifts for people who might be reading this. Right now I’m working my way through Bones from the beginning (the first four seasons are conveniently available on Netflix Instant) and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed it. Also, I’ve decided once and for all that the best way to watch a TV series is in large chunks—say, one whole season in a week. Since I have a show to watch, I’ve been crocheting more than usual.

All this crocheting and TV-watching has been happening at the expense of the time I might normally spend editing photos and writing blog posts. But there hasn’t been much to write about lately anyway.

What exactly have we been up to? Well, I think I mentioned that I’ve been crocheting a lot. I’ve also been working on our container garden, and three months after moving I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of cooking most meals at home instead of eating out every other night. Troy’s been working hard; it’s a busy time of year for his job, and when he’s at home he’s been catching up on yard work and projects around the house. Annalie has been getting a huge kick out of observing the recently-emerged-from-their-chrysalides butterflies in the butterfly garden that Unky Ben and Angie got her for her birthday. And almost every day this week there has been an restaurant set up in the living room including a little table & chairs, dishes, silverware, and “walls” built from footstools and pillows, where Annalie grandly serves us apples and water and goldfish crackers.

Okay, I guess I could have been writing about all those things I mentioned. But I haven’t been. I’ve just been living them. I go through stages sometimes where I get annoyed at how I always have a camera in front of my face, attempting to capture all the moments instead of just enjoying the moments. I suppose I’ve been in one of those stages lately. It’ll pass eventually and I’ll be back to capturing every little thing for posterity.

Meanwhile, life’s just chugging along. Summer is coming. We’re all good.

I’ve been home for two days and have not taken a single photo since we got home.

Our flight from Omaha to DC on Saturday was at 6am. When I woke Annalie up at 4:15 Saturday morning, she sat up and immediately started crying and saying it was too early. My mom and I knew exactly how she felt. We’re both night-before-travel insomniacs, and we had to wake up at 3:30am to leave for the airport by 4:30. My mom and I were pretty much zombies all day Saturday, and Annalie was ten times crazier than usual, which is how she gets when she’s really tired. We all went to bed by 8pm Saturday and slept peacefully for 12 lovely hours.

Except that meant I went to bed at 11pm tonight and couldn’t get to sleep. After a while I got tired of tossing and turning so I got up and watched bits of the last six or seven episodes of Chuck on iTunes.

I’ll be honest; it’s been hard to love Chuck this season. The characters have to change for the show to not be completely boring, conflict is necessary for good story-telling, darkest before the dawn, blah blah blah. Even knowing those things, though, I still just didn’t feel as interested in it. I’ve decided there were three main reasons:

1. I’ve been keeping up on the Chuck news and reading the episode reviews. I think it’s been a bit of overkill for me.
2. Because of the addition of a new character (Daniel Shaw) to Team Bartowski, the team was often split up or working at cross-purposes. One of the things I love best about Chuck is the chemistry between the three leads. Take that away and the show just isn’t as much fun to watch.
3. I managed to watch the first two seasons of Chuck, all 35 episodes, in the span of one week. Maybe if I’d had to watch them one episode at a time, waiting a week or more between times, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much.

I’ve been theorizing for a while that once Season 3 is over, if I were to have a marathon and watch the whole season in a day, I’d probably enjoy it much more. And after fast-forwarding through the last half of the season, I was happy and relieved that I was right, and I enjoyed the bits I watched much more than I expected to, both because I knew what was going to happen (I hate suspense, remember?) and because it was like watching a long movie instead of a serialized TV show. Also, I had forgotten how many great moments this season has had…

*SPOILER ALERT*

Morgan’s stunned and joyful reaction to finding out Chuck is a spy…Morgan and Awesome learning that they both know Chuck’s secret…Casey realizing he has a daughter, and later telling Chuck he has to decide between love and love of country, and that Walker is a good woman—who’d have ever thought in Season 1 we would get Casey encouraging Chuck to go after the woman he loves, in Casey’s own inimitable style!?…Chuck’s straightforward declaration of his love for Sarah…Chuck at a low point, drunk in his boxers and holding a plastic guitar, while Sarah sweetly admitted she fell for him before he even defused that bomb with a computer virus…Sarah and Chuck, in handcuffs, kung-fu-ing the bad guys in the bakery together so awesomely that it was like dancing (and Casey and Morgan pitching in with a re-enactment of a previous fight scene with Casey & Chuck).

*End spoilers*

Yeah, I find that I’m still liking Chuck quite a bit, rough patches and all. I will say, I loved episode 3.14 and have high hopes for the remaining five episodes. Now let’s hope they get renewed for Season 4 so we can have a whole season of Morgan annoying Casey and Chuck and Sarah fighting awesomely. And maybe a few more performances from JEFFSTER!

(All that said, Castle is still my new favorite show. And it already got renewed for next season, so I can watch its last few episodes without worrying about its chances for renewal!)

Okay, now that I’ve let my geek flag fly again (all over my blog, at 3am), I think I can go to sleep now and dream about the list of things I need to get done week before Annalie’s birthday party this weekend.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, B.