Stella Is Growing Up

Stella is such a character. She is one high energy, mischievous, loving, smart and silly dog. She is growing like a weed. She is over 55 lbs now and only 9 months old. I need to get her a new bed as she no longer fits on hers.

She gets so much love from the kids. She is pretty patient with all their "over loving".

She and Paige are special buddies since they are home with each other all day. All the treats Paige sneaks her might have something to do with it too.

Thirteen Years

Today was our thirteenth wedding anniversary. It doesn't seem like thirteen years. It seems like I have known and loved him so much longer.

My wonderful husband brought these home for me at lunchtime.

I even shared my chocolates with him. We exchanged cards and gifts then too. It was a silly gift year. He is actually hard to buy for because he just buys whatever he really wants. So I bought him some kissing otters (their faces magnetize together and they make a smooching sound). He loves otters. He bought me a HUGE  80's music collection (over 70 songs). We've even gotten the kids hooked on some 80's tunes now.

Since our anniversary was on a Tuesday we only got to spend the evening together. Fate smiled on us, however, and a friend from Fort Bragg was in town for training. He didn't have any Valentines Day plans since his wife is in NC so he offered to watch the kids. We ate out at a well rated Greek restaurant. When will we learn? Whenever we try to go fancy we never like it as much as if we are casual. Maybe I just don't know what to order at a fancy place. I wasn't very impressed with my lamb dish. The dessert of baklava was great though. It's always nice to have a date night. I am a blessed woman.

Bedtime stories

Jason here. 

My job is to put the kids down to bed at night. This almost always involves some degree of stalling on their part and vast expansion of pre-bedtime ritual. One ritual is the bedtime story. I do this every other night because after a few years the well has begun to run dry and they have heard the same stories many, many times.

Its funny but many of my best stories come from our Phoenix, Arizona days. There was the crazy black duck at the Maricopa Park who chased us around and strong-armed us for bread named "Duck Norris" (the kids LOVE the Duck Norris story). There is the story about the huge roach bugs in our first apartment at the student housing and how Christine made an interesting discovery after she put on a bathrobe. Did you know that roaches can fly? They can, and when you have a vaulted ceiling there is plenty of airspace for them to showcase their impressive aerobatic skills. I swear we still have PTSD from those roaches. It took years to get over the spine tingling dread of seeing scurrying black things whenever we turned on a light.

Anyways, I recently remembered the numerous legends of Camelback Road. Christine and I would joke about all the crazy stuff we saw on that particular road. The other night I told the kids one of the stories, and I guess I will tell it you all as well.

One day I went to my barber, who remains the most awesome barber I have ever had, only to find that he and everyone else were standing outside observing the following scene (on Camelback of course). A bus was stopped and standing on the bike rack on the front of the bus was a crazy dude with a bat taking his frustration out on the windshield. Wham! Wham! Wham! Cuss words, cuss words, cuss words. This scene went on for a bit when out of nowhere some dude came flying around the side of the bus and tackled Mr. Anger and held him down while the police arrested him. The barber and I are sitting there taking this all in when the barber turns to me with satisfaction and says, in reference to the hero who tackled the bus abuser, "I just cut his hair." Must have been the haircut. In all seriousness though, the barber was amazing. Straight razor, hot towel, cleaned up all the cut hair... really good. Central Barber in Phoenix.

I told the girls that story last night. They loved it and asked for another. So I gave them the best example of Camelback crazy that I could think of. In 2004, a city planner in Scottsdale had a brain parasite that drove him crazy. While driving down Camelback, he figured it was time to car surf, so he set cruise control, climbed out the sun roof, and then fell off. He met his tragic end on that road unfortunately, but his car kept going for a mile or so where it crashed into another car.

I kind of spice things up a bit for the kiddos. I like telling them Aesop's fables as well since there are so many, but dang! Aesop's fables are not for the faint hearted! They are pretty grisly sometimes, but always interesting.

The kiddos love them and I love them and they are lots of fun. Do I embellish things a bit? Maybe. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure that the tall tales of the Paul Bunyan variety all started as bedtime stories to little kids.

A Sweet Experiment- Part Two

 

Brendan here. This is Part Two of  "A Sweet Experiment"! Sorry for the wait. I was distracted with other things.
 Here is the report: (Blogger version)
    
                         Cookie Preferences in the McDaniel Family                                         

    Which cookie baking technique works best? Mom baked 3 batches of cookies differently, so I decided to make a science experiment out of it.

                                                                  Procedure:

    We put 3 different cookies on 3 different plates and cut them into 6 different pieces. Then we had everyone go in, one at a time, taste them, and rate them 1-3. The rating system was: 1 - didn’t really like it, 2 - just liked it, and 3 - loved it.

                                                              Hypothesis:

 I think that Batch B will do the best because they looked the best.

                                                                  Data:   

                                        Survey taken by Jason McDaniel.
             

	Cookie batch baked on Airbake pan with silicon mat (Batch A)	Cookie batch baked on steel pan with silicon mat. (Baked for 3 extra minutes.)(Batch B)	Cookie batch baked on Airbake pan with no mat (Batch C)
Jason	2	2	3
Christine	3	1	2
Brendan	2	2	3
Eva	2	2	2
Darby	2	1	2
Paige	3	3	3
Total:	14	11	15

     
                                                              Conclusion:

    Batch C did the best, Batch B did the worst.

                                                            Discussion:

I think Batch B did the worst because it was baked longer than the others, making it crunchier. Maybe next time it should be baked for ten minutes.

Girlday at the Zoo

The girls chose to have Girlday to the National Zoo this year. I think Darby wanted to visit her friend the sea lion again. You can see that she is wearing her Daddy Daughter Ball tiara. :)

It was quite cold but that just meant it was less busy. Perfect!!

We saw monkeys, lemurs and orangutans.We spent quite a bit of time watching the rint-tailed lemurs play. They have amazing jumping abilities!

I always enjoy seeing the big cats. Here Darby is checking her hand against a tiger's paw.

We got to talk to the keeper of the beaver habitat. I've never seen beavers up so close. They are kind of cute.

My monkeys playing with monkeys.

We found out the name of the sea lion that played with Darby last time. Sydney played with her again today! We talked a bit to the sea lion handlers during a training session. They were working with one of the younger sea lion pups. We found out what it takes to train them and how one becomes a zookeeper. 

I was oddly fascinated by the naked mole rats. Did you know they can live up to 30 years? 

And the pandas! Oh my goodness, the pandas were adorable. They wrestled and cuddled and ate so much.

 Recently, the zoo had new baby pandas. They were part of a breeding program with China. BaoBao, one of the new ones, will be returning to a Chinese zoo soon.

We ate our dinner at Dickey's, a local BBQ place. So good!

At home, each birthday girl got on her "grandma jamas" for bedtime.  All in all, a pretty fun day!

More Snow

Though not as much as last year, we have been getting a fair bit of snow. The kids love having snow days. They play out in the D with the neighborhood kids making snow men and throwing snowballs. Then they get too cold and wet and come in for hot chocolate.

Stella likes the snow. Must be the husky in her. I bet if we lived in a place with more than the usual inch or so we get here, she would love it even more. However, she is not super crazy about the wind accompanying this storm and came inside.

Father Daughter Ball

Look at these beautiful girls! They loved getting dressed up to dance with their dad. At the ball, each of them got a rose and a tiara. So fancy!! There was dinner and then dancing the night away. Jason loves this event too. I am so glad that the girls love their daddy!

Eva is Nine!

Nine years ago this beauty came into the world. My first daughter. Named after her father's only sister who passed away and myself. She had been long awaited. Today is her birthday!



She didn't want to wait to open presents (note the pajamas she's wearing). She got pajamas from Grandma Caren, a gift card from Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Jerry and a spirograph from us. All sorts of art are going to be taking place soon at our house. :)









We did not eat out for her birthday dinner because it was the Father Daughter Dance that night. Oh how she loved it that that special event was on her birthday! There is a sperate post about that later.

Happy Birthday my sweet Eva! You are the most thoughtful child I know. You are smart, kind, creative and a wee bit stubborn. I love you to pieces!

Paige is Five!

My baby is five today. It seems like the blink of an eye. She crawled into bed with us last night and I woke up to this cuteness. It was fun to wake her up with a "Happy Birthday".



When she opened her presents she found that she had received pajamas for her and her doll from Grandma Caren, new Equestria Girl dolls from us and a sweet handmade card from her sisters.







She wanted to eat her birthday dinner out at Burger King (I could not persuade her to go with something more new/fancy/delicious). The Thompsons came for a little bit before piano lessons. Sohvi and her mom made cookies for Paige and they enjoyed eating these purple hearts. These two make my heart happy.

Afterwards, we went to the PX (a favorite place for Paigey). Somehow we always end up in the electronic section.

We lost sight of Paige for a while only to find her jumping on the mattresses with her Burger King crown on. That is SO typically Paige.



I love this girl. She drives me bonkers sometimes but gosh, I love her. She adds spice to our family. Happy Birthday!!