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Finally had some time to find all the missing files to make our search feature works again.

Happy searching!

Here are some pictures from our big day out - what a blast! Hope your Halloween is just as joyful as ours was.

We've been sick and stuck inside these school holidays so among other things, we've been crafting. Here's some of our handy work.


This owl was from Kids Craft Weekly. Sophie had a great time putting him all together.

  The bags for our owls were a little too long so we hacked it off and decided to make a crown.  Josie enjoyed gluing the jewels on.


I tried to tie a little letter lesson in to our crafts. I asked Sophie if she knew any other words that started with O. I love the two she came up with. One is our dear friend, the other a veggie she's never tasted. 

And, um, that's my handwriting and art skills.


Here's the crown being modeled. PS. I got this smile by telling her NOT to smile.

  We repeated the system again the next day with stellar results.


A little princess.

Again, my favorite part are the words Sophie came up with. Sadly, I had to coax her into the last "M" word.

The Avatar trailer hits the web in few hours, and tomorrow certain theaters around the world will be showing 15 minutes of the film in IMAX 3D. It probably goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that a lot of work from many, many talented folks went into this and I am surpassingly proud to have been a part of it. A big grateful shout out to my wife and girls for putting up with all the long hours and the distance from home, and for helping me get here!

Apple Trailers

Official Avatar Site

   

I found some time to download, process and upload the last month or so's worth of images from our camera, but ran out of organizational steam at the end so they're all in one directory for your viewing enjoyment. We'll be doing some future posts to provide more backstory soon, but the big ticket items this month (pictured here) have been Josie's continued freedom from seizures, the loss of our repatriated friends back to California and Brandie's Round the Bays walk. There are also some great photos from our friend Cari's birthday party - enjoy!

We're having a fairly quiet Sunday here, with gorgeous blue skies and a nice breeze that occasionally gusts enough to remind us we're in Wellington. Sophie & I went out early to cook bacon on the grill, and it was a great morning to be outside (someday soon we're going to sleep out in the little house in the backyard or maybe on the trampoline.) While we were busy making the bacon Josie & Brandie made french toast inside, so we had a nice Sunday breakfast at home.

Afterwards we had a Skype chat with Grandma & Grandpa, then Brandie went to hear our friend Nadine speak at church while I got to spend some quality time with the girls. We jumped on the trampoline, blew bubbles and played on the grass, then spread out a blanket and had our snack on the lawn. The girls kept playing together while I cleaned up, then came inside to watch a show while I made lunch. The girls are napping now while Brandie & I finish up some chores, then one of us (I've been nominated) is going to run out and get stuff for a bbq tonight.

Sorry it's not a terribly exciting post, but we've had all the excitement we can stand for a little while! We're trying to strike a balance between not boring Sophie to death and keeping things low-key for Josie. We've lost a little momentum with our hopes that things were returning to a normal state after learning it may take several months of trial-and-error with the various anticonvulsant drugs to get Josie's seizures under control (and depending on which kind of epilepsy it is, it may not be controllable by drugs.) We're not really looking forward to going back to the hospital tomorrow, but are hoping it's a relatively brief and painless visit that helps move things forward.

Happy Sunday everyone, I'm off to the store!

This is coming in a bit late but I wanted to write something about how excited I was to be a part of this election. So much discussion has gone on since but what really amazes me are the reactions I've shared with other people, mainly my family, much to my surprise. I thought I would share with you an email I received from my step-dad who lives in rural southeastern Idaho. His feelings come from his heart and I am so happy he shared them with me.  How wonderful it felt to feel so connected to my family on such a deep level even though I am thousands of miles away.

I'm still having a bit of trouble controlling my emotions. Last night, was like a dream. Our world has changed. There is renewed hope. I talked with Dad last night at length and he was very lucid. We laughed and he didn't know but I cried. I kept it together until I talked to Connie before Dad. Hearing her joy and sharing her tears is something that I wish everyone of us could have shared at that moment. We were on the phone when the first predictions hit the tube. I was stoked when Clinton won but last night was beyond comparison. I haven't felt that much hope and inspiration in our process my entire adult life. I asked Dad if he ever thought a black man would be president in his life time. He told me he didn't have that much faith in our people before last night. Sharing that moment with him was so special. I haven't experienced that kind emotion since Bobby was assassinated. How wonderful it was to feel jubilation of such magnitude instead of sadness and despair.

Let the naysayers, conspiracy theorists, and paranoid war mongers continue to have their say. I have every confidence that we can and will be a positive force in the world without resorting to the gun. Dialog, alliances and appeasement will be our weapons of choice. I know I'm considered an altruistic fool but we surely are headed down a better road. I'm sure it will be rocky and they will try to break our will, they thought they already had.

A local rancher who considers himself pretty damn important around these parts drove past me at the grocery this morning. The look of shock and hate in his eyes was very apparent. Amazingly I have known this man for thirty years and thought there was some level of neighborly connection between us. I smiled, waved and mouthed "how are ya Keith". He drove off shaking his head. I think my Obama sticker might stay on the old truck for a while. Oh man am I gloating.

Peace,love, fish

This morning we got dressed in the nicest clothes we brought with us (thanks Aunt Sarah for the girls' dresses!) and with some help from my step-brother Daniel were able to "virtually attend" Lauren & Drew's wedding in upstate NY.  We had a great view from the back next to the string quartet and could hear the entire ceremony (and the quartet, which sounded great!) We chatted with our family and raised a glass to toast their happiness - all from the comforts of our home here in New Zealand.

It was the next best thing to being there, thanks Daniel and congratulations to the bride and groom - we love you guys and wish you all the best!

It seems (when reviewing our archives) that whenever the weather turns nice, we spend our time doing fun things and not blogging about them. It makes for some dreary reading in the winter and sparse entries in the summer. So here I am, just wanting to throw some items that we've been talking about/laughing about here at the TinyeRanch.

Josie loves bananas and always eats them sideways like a piece of corn on the cob.

 

Sophie likes to go swimming and has been doing great at putting her face under water to look for mermaids as well as blowing bubbles out of her nose. She likes to walk around the house humming and singing in the highest pitch possible.

Our house has a very fruitful lemon tree in the backyard and literally hundreds of lemons are currently ripe. We've been making loads of lemon recipes. Our most frequent lemon indulgence is lemonade. We've been making a bottle almost every other day.

We've also been able to enjoy our great deck and backyard much more with the sun and lack of wind. This Sunday we hosted an impromptu brunch with our friends and neighbors. It was glorious being able to sit in the sun and watch the children while actually enjoying the company of adults. My husband was in full form being the host with the most. He spent most of the time bustling around getting snacks, drinks, entertaining as well as inviting neighbors and friends over. The kids kept themselves busy playing with the trampoline, playhouse digger and bubble gun. The day was over too soon but we enjoyed the constant stream of visitors.

The weather has turned back to rain for the next couple of days so we are happy we got a sunny weekend to enjoy. 

A few weeks before we bought our first house in Petaluma, we came home late on a Friday night (ah, those carefree weekends without kids!) to find our website's namesake, Tiny E, listless and glassy-eyed on the couch. He was unresponsive and not his usual sassy self.

After some deliberation (could it wait until morning? what vet is open at midnight on a Friday?) we decided to call our vet and were referred by their answering machine to the emergency veterinary clinic, only a short drive from our apartment. Based on our description of his symptoms they advised us to bring him in. My memory is hazy now but I believe they kept him overnight, ran some blood tests and determined he had Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease (FLUTD), something akin to kidney stones but potentially life-threatening. We picked him up the next morning with orders to change his diet, paid the extravagant bill and went home.

Eliot was fine until the following Friday or Saturday night, when we came home to find him in the same condition. Rinse and repeat, cha-ching. Little by little over the course of several weeks, thanks to Eliot's impeccable timing (he couldn't get sick during regular business hours?) we wound up spending an enormous amount of money on emergency vet visits and eventual surgery to correct his condition - just as we were eating ramen and scrimping every penny to make the down-payment on our first house.

Everything worked out in the end of course (Eliot is still alive and well, and thanks to the efforts of Kevin, Kim, Piper & Presley enjoying our time overseas in the lovely environs of Ithaca, NY), but it sure made for some sleepless nights back then. We both consider ourselves animal lovers, but also practical blue-collar folks who don't spend that kind of money on our pets. In the end it wasn't much of a debate - we found a way to make it work, sucked it up and went on.

Eula must have been paying attention those ten or twenty times she's heard us tell this story, and decided she'd have to outdo the little gray b*stard once and for all. Shortly before we left for New Zealand she developed an occasional limp in one of her hind legs: it was minor enough at first for me to think her leg had just fallen asleep from the awkward position she was sleeping in (expert in veterinary science that I am). Of course I was wrong, and it got worse after we left: a few vet visits and a trip to the specialist later we found out she had a torn ligament in her leg, possibly due to a fracture when she was a puppy. There's a good chance it can be corrected, but it ain't cheap - ironically, just about the same amount of money we spent on Eliot all those years ago.

Thankfully she is in good hands, and the staff at Camp Nagapapa know how to spoil a dog. With any luck she'll be "golfing" (the specialist's analogy, comparing her to an injured NFL player who may never play football again but should be able to tee off) soon and her care-free self again. Eula will have her revenge and prove that she is just as important as Eliot, and I'm sure will someday smile in her sleep to hear us tell this story about her.