Friday, October 30, 2009

And now to meet the quota...

If you are an extremely observant blog reader
(you know who you are, Andy)
you may have noticed that at the end of the month,
I always post more than at any other time.
This is because I am trying to reach a personal quota:
10 posts a month.
Why ten? you ask... because it is the number I decided on.
Anyway, I am at 9 and I don't have much else to say,
but I do have a series of cute pictures of Orin on his slide that didn't
manage to find their way into any other post.
If you are sick of pictures of Orin on the slide,
feel free to check back in November,
otherwise, here you go.
I think this is one of my favorite pictures of all time:
And now for the slow motion crash:
And finally this one, another crash...
a voluntary one,
because we all get tired sometimes:
Goodnight.

Pumpkin Mush

So carving the pumpkins 2 weeks early turned out
not to be such a great idea.
What follows are the before and after pictures
of our carefully carved masterpieces:
Mine fared the best.

Casey's first pumpkin looks like it got a black eye.

His second pumpkin collapsed in on itself
after a heavy mold infestation.

And Steven's took the worst blow; we think it got kicked in by
a neighborhood troublemaker (more likely)
or half eaten by a raccoon (less likely),
but either way, it definitely has seen better days.
And now, with Halloween right around the corner,
we have had to move all of our pumpkins to the compost pile.
Next year, we will have to remember to curb our carving enthusiasm
until some day closer to Halloween.

And now for two photos that should have gone with the last post:
Purple, continuing to be tortured... you poor, poor dog.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Puppy Updates

The older Orin gets, the better he becomes at finding
new ways to torture his puppies.
Even his old trick "ride the tired dog," has become more creative
as of late, due to the addition of a backscratcher whip.
He focuses most of his attention on Purple
because, while she is not the oldest dog, she acts like it,
spending most of her day laying around listless and apathetic
rarely bothering to even lift her head in protest
when she gets pounced on mid-nap.
Orin has never hesitated to take full advantage.
This is one of my favorite pictures, notice how Orin
is using Purple as a stepping stool
while preparing to throw the ball to Atlas.
While Purple and Egg are subjected to nothing but
constant harassment,
things are a little better for Atlas
who has learned that Orin is the only person in the house
not opposed to playing fetch or tug-of-war all day.
So, unlike the other animals, he is in heaven.
The cats have fared similarly to Egg and Purple,
or shall I say "cat," for really I am only talking about Trouble;
Callie has completely abandoned us for the comfort and safety
of Steven's half of the house, I refer to her now only as "the traitor."
But Trouble is hanging in there, staying strong,
and running fast.
I fear the situation with the animals will continue
to get worse
as time goes on.
Can you think about how bad it will be
when Orin can actually reach the pedals on the bike he is riding?

Friday, October 23, 2009

Table Dancing Baby

The dancing baby video, as promised.

I do have to apologize, though; for some reason this uploaded
with the worst resolution of any video I have ever seen.
I think that Blogger has set a new limit on the file size for videos.
They are apparently not allowed to contain more than 3 pixels.
At least you can tell he is smiling.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Carving

Last Sunday, despite the fact that it was still two weeks
until Halloween, we decided that it was as good a day as any
to break out the knives and disembowel some pumpkins.
Casey gave Orin a quick demo of the carving step, but because his
knife-wielding skills have yet to be perfected, we assigned Orin
the task of scooping pumpkin guts.
He was offended by being placed on an "easier" job
and only scooped one batch of seeds
before knocking the pumpkin on its side
and pushing it forcibly into the road.
To finalize the display of his disapproval,
he ran away.
It took us some time to convince him to join us again in the yard,
luring him back only by setting up the slide.
Orin loves to slide
and quickly fell into his routine of climbing up,
stomping his feet triumphantly at the top,
carefully positioning himself, sliding down screaming with delight,
and running to the stairs for another go.
But although he was clearly happy,
it still felt wrong to be carving pumpkins
while Orin participated in an activity that had nothing
to do with the Halloween theme.
So we gave him his pumpkin to slide with.
He graciously accepted the pumpkin,
carried it to the top of the slide
threw it down in front of him
and then followed suit.
He then repeated this several dozen times with increasing enthusiasm
while we each carved our pumpkins:
I was disappointed by a lack of toothpicks, which would have allowed
me to carve another Boston Red Sox pumpkin,
and instead produced this lackluster face.
Casey, needing no toothpicks to make a great pumpkin, carved this one
which for some reason reminds me of Super Mario Brothers
and Steven finished up last with this masterpiece.
As for Orin, he slid the afternoon away with his pumpkin,
which, it appears, will remain uncarved.
I am guessing this will be the only year that a pumpkin will be spared.

Stay tuned for baby break-dancing,
coming up as soon as I get motivated to upload the video.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Tightrope Goats

Cold weather has moved into Oregon
and the leaves on a few of the trees have started to turn color.
Accepting that fall is now officially upon us,
we made the trek out to the Canby Pumpkin Patch
to properly prepare for the upcoming holiday.
Last time Orin went to a pumpkin patch, he was too young to choose
his own pumpkin, so this year marked his Selection Debut.
On the car ride over we tried to prepare him by offering pointers
on what to look for in a pumpkin:
size, texture, a flat face, a strong stem...
His mind practically bursting with helpful tidbits,
Orin strode confidently up to the pumpkins
and chose the first pumpkin he ran into.
He then proceeded to roll it towards the car.
"But Orin, that is the first pumpkin you looked at, how can you
be so sure that it is the perfect one?" we asked with concern.
"Maybe we should go for a quick stroll, just to check out a few more."
Orin reluctantly obliged.
At first, he was unsure about the sea of pumpkins.
There were too many to choose from:
he needed a better vantage point.
This haystack worked nicely.
In the end though, it turns out that he was right.
The first one was the best one.
Maybe he just has an eye for it.
Like father, like son.
Casey is a professional picker.
After choosing our pumpkins,
we wandered around the rest of the farm.
There were plenty of the usual farm animals including
cows, chickens, and rabbits.
But when we got to the goats, it seemed that there was something
fishy in the air. Orin spotted it first.
These we not normal goats.
They were Tightrope Walking Goats.
Very fishy indeed.
After we left to goats we forced the boys to
take some of those dorky cardboard-cutout face shots.
They tolerated it pretty well for a minute or two...

but then lost interest.
After the forced photo-op, we toured Noah's Arc,
which, you might not be aware of,
came equipped with a slide.
.


After the Arc, Cole and Dakota got to go in
the Bouncy Castle and the Nuthouse.

To finish off the day, Cole took a turn using the
pressurized Corn Shooting Gun.
Orin was denied his chance to hit the ghost targets
because he is currently going through a stage
where he derives pleasure from throwing things at people
and I figured that putting him in command of a
high pressure corn gun was just asking for a lawsuit.
And now, just in case you don't think you have gotten
enough pictures in this post
I will, without comment, post a series of pictures
of Orin looking intensely contemplative.
Just because.



Stay tuned for pictures of Orin's first pumpkin carving.
I have a feeling it could get interesting.