Oops!

In case you think my adventures lie solely with my children.....

Of course I laughed at him and took a picture before helping our poor dog get his head out of the tissue box.  It wasn't a simple pull-off either - I had to cut it off of him!  

Pumpkin Monkey Bread

Photo by Tracy at Sugar Crafter

Doesn't this just scream "IT'S FALL!"?  This is getting made today and I am sooooo excited to eat it, it's ridiculous (I have a bit of a pumpkin obsession when it comes to baking).  You can get the recipe here from Sugar Crafter: Pumpkin Monkey Bread.  Now that I've discovered this recipe of hers, I'm looking forward to trying many, many more!

Professor Aiden

Aiden knows a lot about space, past space programs, and the manned and unmanned vehicles that have been sent into space.  In fact, he could really just be making stuff up and I wouldn't know it, but John assures me that (most of) what Aiden says is correct.  We had a very educational after dinner conversation this evening.

Aiden had gathered his clay model fridge magnets of the Space Shuttle, Saturn V, and Mercury Capsule to demonstrate for us how they worked.  He told us all about the different ignition and booster stages, when the booster rockets disconnect after all the fuel is used up, what the different vehicles did, what happened to them when they re-entered the earth's atmosphere, how heat shield tiles are used to protect the vehicle, and how the shuttle could be landed like a plane, but other vehicles had to land safely in the ocean by deploying a parachute.

Afterwards he gave Nathan a quiz:

Aiden: "Nathan, how many inches long is the Saturn V?"
Nathan: "The Saturn V is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 pounds."
Aiden: "And how many inches long is the Space Shuttle?"
Nathan: "It was 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 pounds."

It was so cute!  Nathan obviously is a little confused about length and weight, but at least Aiden was being nice by not pointing out Nathan's mistakes (he struggles with that sometimes).

Aiden has really found something that he's passionate about.  We've taken the opportunity on clear nights (when we don't have to be up early the next morning) to get out the telescope and let Aiden be a little astronomer.  He's been thoroughly enjoying any Discovery/Science Channel programs about space that we can find and we probably have 30+ books on space from the library at any given time.  He will tell anyone who will listen that he's going to be a scientist when he grows up.  I really want this passion to continue.  Obviously he could grow out of this interest at any time, but by encouraging him to learn everything he can about this subject I hope we can show him that when he finds something he's interested in, he should go for it. That there's nothing to lose by educating yourself.  I'll never put undue pressure on him by telling him that I expect great things from him - just that I know he's fully capable of doing great things.

Tree!

After three straight days of being stuck on the couch with a horrid flu bug, I had to get back to life today.  I had just about enough energy to put something other than pajamas on and drive Aiden to school (I couldn't even walk him, although it was raining so I didn't really want to walk anyway).  I was pretty much pooped after that, so had been taking it easy.  Around 1:30pm, the dog started barking at the front door.  I didn't think much of it but decided to see if someone was here.  When I opened the door, I did not expect to see a good portion of the tree from our front yard laying all the way across the road in front of our house.  But there it was.

Now, it doesn't look THAT big and I walked over to it thinking that I could just move it out of the way.  That sucker was HEAVY. (the end of the trunk portion that's being blocked by bushes in the picture was surprisingly big - once I saw that, I figured there was no way I could move it)  Since there was no way I was moving it on my own, I called John and he couldn't come home, so I called the city since it was blocking the road.  I was told that because it was a tree from our property, it wasn't their problem......BUT since it was blocking the road, they might be able to send someone out to just move it out of the road and back onto our property.  I didn't want risk getting a bill from the city for that, so I told them I'd call them back if I needed that to happen.  Then I called our HOA.  They sent out a big burly guy and even he struggled to drag the thing out of the street.

After looking at the rest of the tree, he thinks they may have to remove the entire thing.  If they don't remove it immediately, they at least have to take off 2-3 of the larger portions that he's afraid are going to break off at any time due to the stress that's being put on them.  One of those portions could land on our neighbor's car (if it were in their driveway at the time), another portion could land on my car.  If they decide to just take the large portions off for now, they'll still remove the whole tree within the next year.  He said we obviously have a very happy tree, but it's not really meant to get as big as it has and the whole tree is under a lot of extra stress from the additional weight.

An interesting afternoon for sure.  Our front yard is going to look a little different once things are taken care of!  This wasn't something I wanted to deal with while still sick, but I appreciated the prompt response from the HOA.  They sent a guy out within 30 minutes and he had a team out here with a big truck and wood chipper within two hours.  I guess on the bright side of all of this, I got to meet a few more neighbors that I hadn't spoken to yet!  And as one of them pointed out, we'll get to show off the front of our house a lot more with the tree cut down!  What a day.