Last week Sara and the kids tooled around Michigan while I stayed home for work. Normally when we go to Michigan, we mostly just visit with people. This time they kept pretty busy with all sorts of things going on. So here’s a sampling of some of the stuff they did:
Went to see the West Michigan Whitecaps play baseball. Well, that’s what they tried to do at least, but mostly it just rained. Attending the game was Super Why, a character from one of Evie’s favorite shows.
Unfortunately, Super Why apparently doesn’t come out in the rain. When they finally did see him, Evie was a little frightened. He doesn’t look seven feet tall on tv.
Celebrating Grandpa’s birthday and Kurt’s birthday
Going on a train ride (a real train, not like the ones in Chicago!)
Getting a hair cut
Riding the tractor at Linda and Juniors
Eating pancakes 3 times! (Evie said this was her favorite part of the week)
That was a lot packed into a week! Plus there were other things that I didn’t even mention. Evie also managed to fall out of bed two different nights, so I guess the bed rail on her bed at home is doing its job!
As for Oliver, this was the first big trip away from the house for any length of time, and the first trip to Michigan. I don’t think he really cares much one way or the other. I’d say the biggest thing for him was just spending so much time outside, which he really likes.
There are some titles that you just can’t say no to. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane. The fact that it was written by the author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies doesn’t hurt either.
The thing with a title like that, the title really tells you everything you need to know about the book. The gimmick works pretty well at first, when Abe was a boy, but by the time it got towards the end of his life and the Civil War, I got a little tired of it. Basically, I liked the part where I could envision Abraham Lincoln chopping off vampire heads with axes, but I didn’t like the part where Abraham Lincoln decided to abolish slavery, not because he was such an amazing man, but because he wanted to eradicate southern vampires. I also didn’t like the implication that Lincoln couldn’t have done everything he did without vampire allies. I liked the biography style with footnotes and references to historical accounts, etc.
Anyway, it was an amusing read, but not something that I would demand everybody rush out and buy.
What I’m Listening to:
I don’t know if people (in the U.S.) commonly know about Lily Allen or not. I mentioned previously how I became obsessed with Satellite by Lena. Well, in her original post on the subject, Meg happened to mention that Lena had a passing similarity to British singer Lily Allen. “Fair enough”, I thought, “if I like this Lena song so much, and if this song reminds someone of Lily Allen, it stands to reason that I would like Lily Allen.”
I LOVE Lily Allen! Such a good tip. The songs are catchy, the lyrics are interesting, and the accent is entrancing. Here is a sampling of her work:
LDN (that’s text-speak for London):
(I have already caught Evie singing, “The sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else?” which means I must have been singing it a lot.)
Her songs are amazing even when she is being vulgar or profane (such language young lady!)
What I’m Watching:
I have to say, Shutter Island was extremely disappointing. The previews were super, super creepy. When you throw in the fact that it is staring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese, it seemed like it was can’t miss. I put it in the Netflix queue pretty much as soon as I saw the first preview.
Distinctly underwhelming. Despite the creepy preview, this is not a creepy movie. The preview already has all the creepiest parts, by far. Nothing much really going on here. Predictable ending. It’s not so much that it was a bad movie, and it was pretty well done, but there was just nothing at all to catch my interest.
Look, I’m big on not letting your expectations ruin a movie. Often, people will have such high expectations for a movie that a movie can never live up to the hype. So they end up hating the movie, even though it’s their own fault. They set it up to fail. I don’t feel like this was the case here. I wasn’t *so* excited to see the movie, I just thought the preview looked pretty good. I was excited to see it, but I didn’t camp outside for tickets or anything (demonstrated by the fact that I didn’t see it until it had been out for a while).
Not recommended, but I wouldn’t say to avoid it. Meh. I’m totally neutral on this one.
According to the article, it’s really not that uncommon of a fight. I repeat, there are places on this earth where a giant crocodile fighting a shark is not that uncommon. There is even a video there of a fisherman pulling a shark up on shore, followed by a crocodile coming out of the water to get said shark. So I guess it’s true.
I smell a sequel to Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus! Personally, I think Mega Shark vs. Giant Crocodile is a much better fight. Leave the Giant Octopuses to Mega Sperm Whales, thank you very much.
Link via Sara (who demands I give her credit for every single link she sends me, although if she loves the attention so much why doesn’t she start her own dang blog)
Now that the new garden is really getting into the swing of things, I have to say, I’m liking it a lot better than the old garden. Note that this is very specific to me, because my reasons are rather selfish ones. I believe I have put them here before, but I’ll reiterate:
It is SO NICE having the garden across the street from our house. You’d be amazed at how much easier it is to keep up on it, even though it was only a few blocks away before.
A garden is much nicer than an abandoned lot.
We have met nice, friendly people. There were nice, friendly people at the old garden (some of the same nice, friendly people I might add), but for whatever reason, we never met them there. This is probably due to #1.
We only gardened at the old place for a couple of years, so we weren’t unduly attached to it, the way we might have been if we were there longer.
Certainly, the new garden is looking a lot better than the old garden site is looking right now:
What's left of our old garden (the red arrow is where our garden used to be)
I should mention that it is actually a lot worse than that; I took this picture some time ago, before all of the construction equipment and temporary construction trailers moved in.
The new garden, meanwhile, is looking pretty stellar. Our gnome, Lloyd, finally has a garden to keep watch over.
Lloyd keeps a look out
People always have all kinds of things in the garden, so we felt a little left out. I wanted to gnome to face inward, but Evie insisted that he face directly toward the plot that has a plastic shark, to keep an eye on it. A laser wouldn’t have made a straighter line from Lloyd’s eyes to that shark than Evie did when she positioned him.
We got our first strawberries of the year! Three strawberries were ripe all at the same time, so Sara, Evie and I all got to try them simultaneously. We’ve gotten a few strawberries since then, but not more than a handful. The strawberries are sending out runners like crazy though, and it’s clear we’ll have 5 times as many strawberry plants next year. It’s very clear that the strawberry box was necessary, as the plants have already made several attempts to escape its confinement.
I don’t know if we have green thumbs or what, but at first our tomatoes always seems like they are a little smaller than everyone else’s. Walking around I’m always like, “Whoah, look at this guy’s tomatoes!” But then at some point I take another look and realize that ours are now as big or bigger than everyone else in the garden. I don’t know if there’s something we do particularly right, the variety of tomatoes we have, or what, but they look extremely large.
We didn’t plant quite as much this year, so there’s nothing that we’ve really been able to harvest yet, but I am already looking forward to some delicious veggies!
Shane Halbach 