Merry Christmas

Jonas was a little cautious of the big man.

From this distance he told Santa that he

wants Woody and Eyeball (bullseye) for Christmas.

Noah was just a little shy and told Santa that

he wants Henry and Toby (from Thomas and Friends)

Santa obviously traveled by using reindeer.

I do not know why this posted vertical

This was our peace tomato that we grew this

year. So Merry Christmas to all and to all some

tomato peace.

Happy Halloween

Roasted pumpkin guts yummm! All of the recipes say

to wash the seeds. I don't understand why. The inside of

the pumpkin is pretty clean and pumpkins are edible. So

I just let them dry out over night and then sprinkle them

with garlic salt and roasted for 15 minuets at 350 degrees.

Noah wanted to draw Thomas the train.

Dad carved Jonas' into a skull.

His fastest Halloween carving to date.

Noah in the glow of Jonas' skull.

My wife with sunflower eyes

(on our tenth anniversary)

I remember,

your sunflower eyes,

reminding me

to be the way I want to be.

I remember,

North Shore, the Poconos,

keeping our toes from dangling in Seneca Lake,

airing out a room in Escalante,

oh, do you remember what we did in Arizona?

I remember,

Ten years now

it has been you and I

thinking about what makes us.

Memories,

good more than bad.

I remember,

you and I became we

and we became the four of us.

So many similarities and so many differences,

like our numbers in bed.

So grateful for ten.

How to cook a catfish

Pa told me once the best way to cook a catfish.

First start with a big blue cat,

like the one in your bucket.

Take time to clean it well.

Now leave the eyes in, that be the best part.

After you cut it from tail to lips

Rip those guts out real damn quick.

Find a few steaming horse apples and stick’em inside.

Wrap it with thistle and a little rosemary.

Bury it at the bottom of a small fire pit,

get it lit,

after about three hours put the fire out.

Dig it up,

unwrap it,

put what’s inside on a plate,

and throw the cat away.

Snails in the kitchen

When I brought in some swiss chard from the garden I had a few

new helpers in the kitchen. I put them to work on the really tough

pots and pans.

This is our green house. We have been working on it all summer long.

With it we are looking forward towards some baby lettuce, spinach, carrots,

leaks and hopefully some garlic.

Yes we still have tomatoes ripening. Even the zucchini is still

fine even though the temperature was below freezing last night,

but no frost on the plants in the cold frame.

The aroma of the brain is something I do not mind

While wisdom escapes from Rohgaar’s lips

imagine what lies beneath his neurotic apron

a mass of cells all teaming with organelles

come traverse through the sub arachnoid space

across soft gyri and linger in shallow sulci

visit such places as occipital, parietal, and temporal

have a seat in the stella tursica and observe

the ballet between the hypothalamus and pituitary

meander through and spend some time with suprachiasmatic nuclei

then get to know the putamen and caudate of the basal ganglia

slide along the corpus collosum and meet the fornix

on your way out don’t forget the four colliculi

and the lonesome pineal gland.

Don’t worry about me, I am going to stay a while.

For the aroma of the brain is something I do not mind.

As time passes

These are just a few photos of what we have been up to. Our insatiable appetite for knowledge involving dinosaurs and trains means we spend and enormous time playing and learning about both.

Well well you look tasty, I promise I will only take a small bite!

Watching a beautiful scene of pterosaur soaring across the sky.
Evidence that some dinosaurs did have feathers.

The budding Paleontologists analyse a mysterious new species.

Neigh neigh pooh.

The ferocious and incredibly stubborn Jonasaurus.

Jen and the boys on the Dinosaur train at the Dinosaur Park.

Well once again I have put off posting. We have been preoccupied with life. Jen has been working diligently on her master's project and should be finished soon. Noah is now 5 and excited to begin school in the fall. Jonas will be turning 2 in one week and I think that we should have given him the middle name of contrary. Even at two he is the most defiant kid. I am not looking forward to his teenage years. More to come soon with pictures.