Oh my goodness... does this suck?

So, I've learned that if you go to the upper bar on blogger it will take you to "Next Blog." Let me say that I am totally unimpressed with whatever people are writing in the "next blog." Are these my virtual neighbors?

If so - let me tell you a little about them:

(1) they are SUPER religious. I mean, spreading the gospel - tech style. A quick view through the next 10 blogs reveal that at least 7 of them are primarily about God. Who knew?

(2) if they aren't religious, they are likely people sharing their hobbies - like photography or cooking. Ok, well, I guess I can have some artsy - fartsy people around my blog; and that banana bread pudding does look pretty good. Although, for those good at both cooking and photography - please stay away lest my waistline expand enough to consume your whole blog.

(3) give kudos to the hobby-ists and Jesus-lovers because they do at least stick with it. A fair number of my virtual neighbors wrote two posts and said the heck with this. "Hey World, I'm blogging now!" April 16, 2008.

(4) and then there are the truly terrible blogs. The woman whose posts are all written as letters to her kids: "Dear Dominic, I love you so much and let me recount the details of the birth of your baby brother for you..... Love you always and forever - Mom"

My virtual neighbors do change each time, but I'm consistently disappointed with the results. I'm concerned that google has placed me in this neighborhood due to either my pissy blog traffic, sporadic posting, or that one post I made about Jesus. Perhaps I will have to reinvent myself.....

Fair thee well

We visited both the WI and IL state fair's this year. Cousin Michelle joined us at the WI state fair in Milwaukee. We did our favorites, the bunny/chicken barn; a few rides in the midway, the Wisconsin Products pavilion (yum!) and cream puffs (the puff is really secondary to the cream).





The following weekend we went to the IL state fair with cousins Kellen and Chloe. The Douglas "core" flocked to the pronto pups and lemon shake-ups. I think the IL State Fair food takes second place to WI's food - but the homemade ice cream was pretty good.

Jacob and Kellen chose the giant bungy bounce thing as their ride. It was $7, but with no line, I think they might have gotten to jump a little extra time. Allison and Chloe stuck to the old favorite - the merry-go-round.

Donate me not

I wanted to make a contribution to a campaign to give away school supplies to low income families sponsored by our local newspaper. They have been short on donations this year. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I:

1) went to the newspaper's website that had no link to the campaign from the front page.

2) used the search engine of the newspaper's website which linked me to the last twos year's campaigns as the top two most relevant links.

3) followed the link to this year's campaign, only to find that it was an archive of news stories about the campaign.

4) read the very, very fine print on the side of the archive which said if you want to donate, go to this website. There was no hyperlink, you had to type it in your browser.

5) I typed it in, only to be taken to a different fund raising campaign also sponsored by the local newspaper.

I have still not found the link to give to this year's school supply event.

A life of it's own

Last year we a built a compost bin. And throughout the year we filled it up. The soil wasn't quite garden ready this year so we let it sit. Apparently, it had it's own plans.



I don't remember putting watermelon in there, but apparently we did:

These moments

Take me out to the ballgame

The baseball season ended for Allison on Saturday. They had a one inning game and then got their trophies. I caught Allison on camera with her patented "Safe" call at home plate. Allison declared she was done with baseball on Saturday morning - but after she played and got the medal, she changed her mind and decided to play again next year.

A lazy afternoon

Nothing says summer like chillin' in the camp chair in my swimsuit.....

I believe this was right before he declared "I'm BORED." Definitely summer.

Where did this week go?

Time flies!

BTW - Jacob picked out "Boxer Briefs" at the store today as part of his back-to-school shopping. He was sooooo excited because apparently he wore some of Kellen's once???

But then he refused to put on pajamas over the boxer briefs so that he could sleep "just like Daddy does."

Sometimes I Zone Out

Jacob is talkative and observant and curious. This leads to constant chatter when we're in confined spaces - like the car. The chatter is somewhat more diffuse in the house due to all the other "things to do there." I think that most of the time I try to pay attention, but sadly I'm often thinking about where we're going, why we're going, or the long list of things we need to do later.

So, sometimes I tune out. I think as parents we all do it to a certain degree. You hear moms and dads all the time mutter something to the effect of "um" or "uh-huh" or "nice, sweetie" when a child comes up and asks a question or shares a new and profound insight into the world like "look, there's a bird! And there's another bird! And look mom, another bird!"

Sometimes, however, you accidentally agree to something or confirm something that you don't mean to. For example, we were driving to the baseball game yesterday and Jacob was commenting on the last baseball game we we're at and how we'd seen a truck crash (loudly) on the highway from the parking lot. Jacob said something like "wouldn't it be awesome to see another car crash?" and I was like "yeah, awesome" and Brian (who was apparently paying more attention than I was) chimed in with "NO, that wouldn't be awesome - someone could get hurt in a car crash."

Oh, well, yes, I suppose there's that.