D’oh!

God bless The Simpsons. The show has been on the air for 20 years now and it’s still able to make me laugh. Sure. Some folks think that The Simpsons “jumped the shark” sometime around season 8 (I think that’s when Conan O’Brian left the writing staff), and I somewhat agree. If I had to list my top 10 favorite episodes, most would be from earlier in the series.

But as I flipped on the TV last night to watch the season premiere episode, one line of dialogue from Homer had me rolling. After finding out that Marge was secretly working for an erotic bakery, this is what Homer had to say:

Homer: “Marge. You can deny me sex. You can deny me cake. But to deny me sexy cake. That is unforgivable.”

Hilarious!

Rock on Homer J. Simpson. You will always have a fan in me.

Farewell Orange Star

Well…It happened a bit sooner than I expected. On Friday, we lost one of our beloved hermit crabs. Patty’s crab, Orange Star, is now in crabby heaven, crawling among its distant (and not so distant) relatives, and looking down on us from above. Or, in this case, looking up at us from the bottom of the trash can.

Yup. No real funeral services for Orange Star. No burial. No Viking funeral as sea. Nada. When we found her (or him) dead on Friday, it was just a plop in the trash and we were done with it. We did not tell Patty about it. We wanted to see how long it took her to realize her crab was not in its shell. She discovered it this morning (Sunday). She was upset at first, but I explained to her that hermit crabs do not live very long (I later found out they actually can live more than 40 years!) and get sick easily. It also helped that Amanda said she would share her crab with her. Yeah. Amanda's crab is still among the land of the living...for now, at least. Guess I'd better start reading up on caring for these things. Apparently eating and drinking are pretty important for their survival...

Emergency Rooms are Fun

We had a bit of a scare on Saturday night - which resulted in an unexpected trip to the Emergency Room.

Amanda was running around our basement, getting some energy out, when she tripped and fell head first into a rocking chair. She smacked her head HARD. I mean, you could hear sound of the impact from across the room she hit her head so hard. She went one way. Her glasses flew another. Kristin took one look at her and knew instantly that we needed to get her to a doctor - quick. From first glance it looked like her eyeball was cut. It looked like she was bleeding in her eye. It was BAD. She was screaming, Kristin was crying, Patty was searching for her blue blankie for comfort (and picking up the pieces and trying to fix Amanda's glasses - she's such a good big sis!).

After getting some ice on the wound and calling g-ma and g-dad to come over and watch Patty, Kristin and I headed to the ER with Amanda. Since Kristin works at the hospital and has a bunch of connections, she was able to call ahead to let them know we were coming. Once we got there, we had no wait and got a room right away. Great, I thought. The doctor will see us, tell us everything was OK and we'd be on our merry way...NOT.

The doc said she'd probably need stitches. Oh, and a CT scan (they were worried that she might have been bleeding internally), and lets bring in a few docs from Ophthalmology to check her eyes as well. And someone from plastic surgery to look at the cut. And here's the kicker - she's going to have to be put under general anesthesia for the procedure, since the cut was so close to her eye the doctor wanted her to be asleep so she wouldn't move while they were stitching her up.




In the end - and about 4 hours after we arrived in the ER - everything turned out well. Her eye was fine and she only needed three stitches. Now she looks a bit like Rocky in Rocky IV (the one where he goes to Russia to fight). She's got a nice big shiner on her eye...and a permanent scar reminding her of the accident for the rest of her life.

It's never a dull moment at our house!

Soccer Mom

It's official. Kristin is a soccer mom.

Patty started her soccer career today. Look out Pelé. Here she comes! Doesn't she looks so cute in her new outfit (thanks to Aunt Linda), cleats, shin guards and soccer ball.

She did pretty well considering it was her first practice - which consisted of playing a game of red light, green light, dribbling the ball through a few cones and tossing the ball around with her teammates. Her first game is this Saturday, which will probably be rained out due to the fact there are numerous tropical storms/hurricanes headed in our direction this weekend! Yikes!!

Kindergarten!

Patty started kindergarten today. And she had a great day! We are so proud of her. She has grown up so much this past summer. I can't believe she's starting school.

Here she is all decked out in her new outfit, new book bag, new Jonas Brothers lunch box (don't get me started) and a handful of flowers for her teacher.


There were many fears on her first day. The biggest being that she would have to leave her beloved blue blankie behind (it's hanging off her backpack in the picture). it's been her security blanket for more than three years. She's taken it to daycare every day. She sleeps with it at nap times and at night. When she is upset, it calms her down.

Once at school, however, she found out she really didn't need it. She was kept busy all day long. Meeting new friends, and playing with new toys. She was most excited about the play doh. "It's only one color - yellow," she said. "But it's so big that it takes up a whole drawer!"

Yeah. She's played with play doh for years. But I guess there is something about school play doh that makes it more fun...

Other than the pay doh, she didn't have too much to say about her first day. It's probably a bit overwhelming for her. When asked about the other things she did today she just sighed and said "daaaad...I just don't remember, ok. Maybe tomorrow my teachers will teach me how to remember better."

Lets hope so :-)