Freak Accidents Do Happen... and other ramblings

Some time last month, Enid was cleaning up the living room. No sooner than we had finished telling her not to run, she tripped holding a bin of toys and fell into the sliding door. She says she hit the glass, but I think she must have caught the frame of the screen. It was such an odd occurrence that I laugh now thinking about it, but it didn't look pretty after it happened.



Our Walk America total is now $720! UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Well, we noticed at the end of last week that our pumpkin vines were dying. We've been watering them from time to time and they were looking awesome. We even had several tiny pumpkins growing. Now, they look like junk. At least we got a good photo before they went downhill.



The flowers in the front yard aren't as pretty as the were back in the spring and early summer, but the Morning Glories are doing just fine.



Several weeks ago, Gerald tilled the front yard and spiffied it up to grow grass. We were shocked when it grew so easily. Good-bye mulchy mess!



We recently had a visitor on our back porch for a few days. Since then, he's been seen sitting under our tomato plants, jumping down out of the trees, and chasing squirrels. I don't know where he came from, but he sure is cute.





We often have visitors on the pergola above the back porch as well. Here's one that posed for me.



This little fella was trying to crawl into our garage Friday morning when we went out for a walk... kinda icky but neat at the same time.



My "catch the cats" campaign has not ended. Here are a few shots I took recently.



Yes, that's Inari sleeping with her legs IN Enid's play sink.



One afternoon, I went in to check on Enid after nap, and she had turned into a cat!



Of course the new sink had to be christened.



The Dustbin Dingo ate your baby.



After several attempts, I finally caught Wasabi jumping up against the wall. He tries to "catch" a tiny spot where paint chipped off.





Sometimes, there are artsy messes that Enid doesn't cause. For example:



By the way, all of that went straight into the trash. I wasn't even going to try to salvage any of that chalk.

I've been spending way more of my time in the kitchen these days. Although I've had a disaster or two, some really good things have come from it. Today, I made Cheese Biscuits from scratch to go with Tomato Soup!! They sure were good, but next time, I'll have to tweak the directions so they are softer. I can say this... There's no way I could be a biscuit maker at Hardee's. HAHAHA!

Here's what happens when you get distracted with Enid and don't hear the oven timer.



AND Here's what blueberry muffins should look like.



One of my favorites to make and eat is Mock Chicken Salad. It's delicious in pita bread with Hand-Cut Sweet Potato Fries on the side. Here's the tofu before it was salad-ed. Lum! Lum! (That's "Yum! Yum! in Engrish.)



In my yearnings for fall, I decided to make a snack mix. I used Tamari Pumpkin Seeds, Reese's Pieces, a mixture of Planter's peanuts, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans, and hazelnuts, and Sunsweet Cape Cod Cranberries. I also bought some plastic spider rings for trick-or-treaters. It's never to early to prepare for Halloween.



A peek into the mind of a child... Enid helped me clear some board books from her shelves, and I found it interesting what she chose to keep out. She lined them all up to count them. (Barbie Fairytopia, Personal Penguin, My Many Colored Days, One was Johnny, The Monster at the End of this Book, Tale of Peter Rabbit, A Swim Through the Sea, Whoo's There?, Spooky Riddles)



I snapped some more pictures of Enid at preschool when we dropped her off Thursday. She ALWAYS goes straight to whatever art is out. Ms Jamee says she uses her words extremely well at school. It sounds like speaking to her like a person and not a pet her whole life has worked. I wonder if that will backfire on us when she's older?



A local scrapbook store is having a "yard sale" where you can sell stuff you don't want any more and get store credit for the amount you make. While I was bagging and labeling the items I am going to sell, Enid got into some adhesive buttons I had set aside. I'm glad they weren't important, and I think she understood that I wasn't keeping them. My "good" art stuff is off limits. ANYWAY, here's what I turned around to see. The design skills of this child... Isn't it amazing?!?



She loves games. She can play games on the computer with almost no help, and she enjoys Little Einsteins and the 12 Dancing Princesses on Daddy's Nintendo DS. We have to set the timer, or she'd be playing them ALL the time.



When we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house, she played with some little plastic boats in the tub. So, we headed out to the Dollar Tree and got her some. That day when she discovered them sitting in the bathroom, Gerald discovered her doing this.



The Lake of the Woods Lions Club has a BIG yard/bake/book sale at the community college every year. We went again this past Saturday, and it was so busy that we briefly had to wait in line for a parking spot! I'm a firm believer that if I was meant to find something, it would be sitting there waiting for me no matter what time I arrived. We bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies, orange scones, a "Littles" book for Enid, and I picked out these two items for 5 cents each. I think they help fuel my desires for fall.



AND FOR THE FINALE!!! The bathroom is usable again. The only things we're missing are some new towels and rugs, but I'm in no hurry to purchase them. You know, I enjoy picking out interior design stuff, but putting it all together is a pain. You can see the paint colors better in the first photo.