For a while we were posting a few items every Wednesday, but that has fallen woefully by the wayside.  Seriously, woefully.  I literally feel woe over this.

This week we are going on a vacation to visit our friends the Wards in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I’d really like to come home to a nice, tidy blog that merely awaits pictures and tales of our vacationary adventures.  (Note: I briefly got excited that the Wordpress spellchecker didn’t balk at the word “vacationary,” but then I remembered that I don’t have a spellchecker turned on.)

Wow, this is a long intro.  The point is, um, here’s some stuff:

1. Going to the Circus with Grandmother and Grandad!

Grandmother and Grandad took us to the circus back on August 21.  It was REALLY fun, especially exposing Kaeta to cotton candy (the addiction was instantaneous). There are photos in a new gallery here.

2. Kaeta is silly.

Not that that’s news. Here she is contemplating a career as a contortionist:

Showing off her hat:

Making coffee:

3. Our kids are cute.

Jonah loves this play table:

And Kaeta loves to play in this dollhouse, which Karianne’s dad made for Karianne when she was little:

4. The Bishops Came to Visit.

Here are some pics from when the Bishops stayed with us a few weekends ago:

Our families are getting big!

5. Marty is still around here somewhere:

6. I have nothing to add to this.

7. And finally, here’s a glimpse into how Kaeta sleeps at night

Lately, Kaeta has really enjoyed playing with her “art box,” a big box of crayons, colored pencils, and markers that we got for her.  She likes to draw and color, but she also just likes organizing things.  The other day (9/13) she was playing with it in the kitchen while I read in the living room, and then she started calling out, “Daddy!  I made a cross!  I made a cross!”

I came over to see.  I think “cross” was just the closest word she had for what she had made.  She had laid out some pencils in this pattern:

I was really intrigued — she came up with that all on her own, and she seemed fairly intent when working on it.  Later I watched her make some additions:

How creative!  I’m really proud of her!

Jonah turned 10 months about two weeks ago.  I took these pictures then but we’re only just now getting to post them (the reason is very complicated and high-tech and I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you.  Ask Derek if you really want to know).  Jonah wouldn’t even sit still for this photo shoot.  He was too interested in the camera.  He is still getting into everything and he’s only getting faster.  He is crawling on his hands and knees more but he still does the army-man crawl for long distances because it gets him there faster.  He’s very efficient.

Jonah loves to play games.  He loves giving high-fives, clapping his hands, doing “So Big!”, blowing in your face, and playing his beloved blinking game.  He’s already getting good at rolling and throwing balls.  He can even catch a ball that is rolled to him.  He pulls up on anything he can.  He loves to stand up.  He really likes the learning table toy for that reason.

And I know you’re all dying to hear the football update…. Well, Jonah was pretty bummed out that he did not make varsity this year.  Coach says that he really needs to at least be able to walk to be on varsity.  He says maybe next year.  In the meantime, he offered him a spot on JV, but Jonah turned it down.  He’s going to take this year off and work on walking and running and studying the playbook.  We assured him that we are still proud of him, and we took him out for ice cream.  He says he is also taking this time to focus on his music career, which so far involves “dancing” (sitting on his knees and bopping), playing the morraccas (ie, egg shakers), and the occaisional shriek as Kaeta runs around naked singing VeggieTales songs at the top of her lungs.

“The Moth” is a storytelling organization in New York.  Regular people (and occasional semi-celebrities) go onstage and tell stories live without notes.  They have a free podcast, which is worth checking out (see their website).  

Anyway, a recent story from the podcast was about a 16 year old who, through sheer persistance, got a job as a bat boy for the Yankees — click here to listen to it (it’s about 14 minutes long).  It’s just a fun story, so I thought I’d share it as a way to let you know about The Moth.

Mom and Dad went back to Angleton yesterday, and their power came back on in the evening.  There was no real damage to the house, just a lot of tree limbs down, so we’re all very thankful for that.  Laurie (in Houston) and Sue (in Angleton) are still without power right now as far as I know.

My parents evacuated from Angleton to my Aunt Laurie’s house in Houston, and they are fine.  The street is flooded, a tree and part of the fence blew over at Laurie’s house, and they have no power right now, but everyone is okay.

One thing I discovered yesterday is that you can watch Twitter posts from people from a particular area as they are posted in real time.  To see posts from Galveston right now, for example, you can go here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+near:galveston+within:15mi

I was also watching Houston: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+near:houston+within:15mi

and Angleton: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+near:angleton+within:15mi

Keata loves a good PBJ — she calls them “Peanut Buddy Sandwiches.” When she was a little younger, she called it a “Peanut Buddy See-otch,” which is still what we call them. So, as her pronunciation improves, ours gets worse…

Yesterday around dinner time, she wanted to listen to her Veggie Tales CD (which we have listened to, conservatively, a cajillion times in the past 2 weeks). “Want to listen to VEGgie Tales?” she asked. Karianne told her, “You can listen to Veggie Tales after dinner, if you finish eating your food.”

She thought about this for a second, then said, “I want a peanut buddy sandwich!” I guess she reasoned that in order to get Veggie Tales, she had to eat something, and she wasn’t too excited about the steak I was cooking. Nice try, kid!

Lifehacker.com linked to our frappuccino recipe again this week. Our number of visitors shot up from around 2-3000/day to 99,297 on Sunday, 91,325 on Monday, 24,865 on Tuesday… Welcome, frap-lovers!

Here’s a graph of website traffic from August:

Tonight, Kaeta asked me what my computer’s background image was. “That’s a sea anemone,” I told her. “Want to see an-nuh-wa one?” (that’s how she says “another”)

So I did something I’ve gotten in the habit of doing with her — I got on Google image search and searched for “sea anemone” so I could show her some different anemones. I have used this to show her all kinds of random things she’s wanted to see. One time I showed her a picture of a horse, and immediately she said, “Want to see a blue one?” Well, you can google for “blue horse” and click “Images,” and suddenly you’re a 2-year-old’s hero.

She was fascinated and entertained by these for several minutes:

In the midst of looking at those, I decided to teach Kaeta how to use the touchpad on the laptop to move the mouse pointer. She caught on to the concept pretty easily, although she kept forgetting that you can’t click on something by touching the screen. Maybe by the time she’s in junior high touchscreens will be standard. Anyway, it was a good father/daughter nerd moment teaching her some basic computer skills.

Then, to practice her skills, I opened up MS Paint and let her draw. She wasn’t good enough to really do much yet (although she mostly made that E shape on the left herself, with a little help). But she told me what to draw and I did it for her — the bottom right is supposed to be Nathan coming out of a box (Nathan is her cousin; she talks about him all the time).

Before:

After: