The Big Surprise

This is Mouse, a 6-month-old English Cocker Spaniel. She was born with a cleft palate and Amy helped hand-feed her til she was old enough for corrective surgery. Last night she came to live at my in-law's house. She will be visiting us occasionally on the weekends.

Mallory burst into tears when Amy came in with Mouse and said, "This is the big surprise!" We asked her why she was crying and she said, "I'm just so happy!"

Aw.

(But Aimee -- you were right too -- I think we are going to Disney World this summer, but Mallory already knew that so it wasn't The Big Surprise.)

(I kinda wish it was the chocolate pie.)

Eight!

Dear Mallory,

You and your sister have recently invented a new saying for when you're really impressed with something. For example:

"Mommy, you buy the best best best a million times so big a number I can't even say it ice cream in the whole wide world."

Which, really, doesn't make any sense at all.

But that's exactly how I feel about you, birthday girl.

Love,
Mommy

Guesses

My mother- and father-in-law and Amy have arranged a Big Surprise for the girls, and told them Saturday night that the Big Surprise will be revealed on Wednesday (which is also Mallory's birthday, but that's mostly incidental). So the girls, of course, have been begging us to tell them what the Big Surprise is. "Just a hint?" they say. "No," we say. "Mommy, can't we just play Hot and Cold about the Surprise?" Mallory said. "No," I said. "But it's just Hot and Cold! You don't have to really tell me," she said. "No," I said. "Well, I don't really understand how Hot and Cold works anyway," she said.

These are Mallory's guesses:

Going to Disney World
Going to an aquarium
Going to a hotel water park
A puppy
Meeting Hannah Montana
A chocolate pie as big as our house
A sleepover with her friends (not likely)

These are Phoebe's guesses:

The Beatles are coming to our house ("Phoebe, don't you know that two of the Beatles are dead?" Mallory asked. "What?" Phoebe said.)
Dora the Explorer is coming to our house
A giant apple will come and everyone will get a slice of the apple and it's really big and we'll eat it

SOME of these guesses are, in fact, going to come true, but they are not the Big Surprise. ONE guess is the correct one. If you would like to guess yourself, please do so. But you may have to wait until Thursday to find out what the Big Surprise is. Because today is the last day of November, and I am over and out.

Applicious

Best invention ever:





Look at those uniformly sliced apples (5 Cortland 2 Macintosh, 1 accidental Honeycrisp)



The slicing went so quickly that my crust didn't chill quite long enough. But, I had this pie-crust-rolling-out-thingy to help:



This for aesthetic purposes:



which came in handy; I used all the little apple cutouts to patch the cracks and bare spots. Somehow I didn't end up with quite enough crust:



Still, it turned out okay:



For maximum enjoyment, microwave each slice for exactly 32 seconds, then top with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

The Return of the Lithuanian Spy

When I was in high school, and when I received a phone call at home, I would drag the phone (cord and all) into my bedroom and close the door firmly and sit with my back against the door, to keep out all the people in my house who were dying to overhear my conversations. "Are you conducting secret business in there?" my father asked in reference to this behavior. "Are you a Lithuanian spy?" When the phone rang and it was for me, he would say: "Tell Krista the Lithuanian embassy is on the line!"

Now Mallory, whenever she receives or makes a phone call, immediately ducks into the bathroom with the phone and closes the door. Could it be that this characteristic is inherited? Did she receive it genetically along with my hazel eyes and Chris's long fingers?

She does have it easier; our phones are cordless, at least.

Flashback Friday: The Childhood Pets Edition

This is Spunky:



Spunky is a dog who showed up at our house (out in the country) one day and hung around with us intermittently. Sometimes he'd stay on our porch for weeks at a time, and sometimes he'd disappear for several days and then come back. Other times he'd come home with a little black dog, a female, whom we named Josie. (I suspect there were many Josie x Spunky puppies at one time as well.) One Christmas Day we came home from my grandma's house to find Spunky in our yard, all bloody and limping. He'd either gotten into a fight with another dog or kicked by a cow (did I mention we lived on a farm?). We brought him inside and cleaned him up and let him sleep by my sister's bed all night. I went to sleep crying, sure that he'd be dead in the morning, but no, he was perfectly fine when the sun came up. And then the day came when he disappeared and never came back. I like to think that he found another family to temporarily adopt. He was a good boy.

This is Rusty:



Rusty was the only dog we ever had who got to stay in the house, because we got him as a puppy in the wintertime. I was the one who talked Mom into getting him, so he was mostly my dog. Every night I had to lay newspapers all over the floor of our utility room, and then rig up a gate so he would stay there til morning. This was kind of a pain. But, on weekend mornings I'd wake up early and bring him to my bedroom and we'd have all sorts of fun. Rusty was hit by a car and killed when he was still very young. It was the first time I had to deal with the death of a pet. Rusty was a very good boy.

This is Noodle:



I wish I had a better picture of Noodle. He was a half-brother of Rusty, and we actually brought him home with one of his littermates, a black dog named, originally enough, Blackie. Blackie was also hit by a car when he was two or three years old; Noodle was the only dog we ever had with the sense not to chase cars. He was a happy dog. He loved to go on walks with my mom; he could be off doing who knows what, no where in sight when she started out, but somehow he could sense when she was walking and he'd always zoom along and catch up with her. He had a very long life for a farm dog; he died just a few weeks after Aimee and Casey left for college. It was as though he knew his job -- watching over his kids -- was done. He was a very very good boy.

These are two calves we had to feed:





The thing on my brother's head was not a pet (ha!):



And this is especially for Aimee:



Evil bunny! Run!

Thanksgiving disaster, narrowly averted

It is perhaps not such a good idea to store your vanilla extract right next to your soy sauce.

I caught myself just in time.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.