And now, a birthday post...

A belated but very happy birthday wish goes out to my nephew Big D, even though he's too cool to read my blog. I would have written it on his birthday (June 10th) but I was to busy trying to figure out how this guy:


Became this guy:

A Weekend with the Family

La Sirena, Meander, Mr. Meander and Big D all joined us at the farm this weekend. On Saturday I made Spinach Manicotti which my family really liked. Here's the recipe. I've discovered that cutting the wine in the sauce makes it better. Meander says it had a zing that she didn't expect. I tripled the batch although I couldn't make all of it because my mom didn't have enough baking dishes to cook them in. But it was a lot of food and it was gone by lunch on Sunday. The thing I hate most is all the chopping involved. I don't like how the food processor cuts things and always do it by hand and it takes awhile.

We watched Pride and Predjudice with Kira Knightly, which I liked. I also watched Brokeback Mountian by myself because Meander had it and I wanted to see it. I didn't really feel much one way or another about it. Now keep in mind that it was late and I was sleepy, so I could have missed something, but I didn't feel like it conveyed their love at all. It was all pretty shots and missing the point as far as I could tell. But then again, I hated American Beauty and everyone loved that movie so maybe I'm just weird. We also played games. Overall, it was a fun weekend. I even took a couple pictures.

The Next Partridge Family

Once again my family sunk to new lows of geekdom by having another family karaoke night. This time we were at my mom’s farm and my mother, sisters, and nephew all participated in addition to Mr. Hobbitfeet, the kids and me. I think that the "Overall Entertainer of the Night" award goes to my nephew, Big D, in his 13-year-old boy rendition of Pieces of Me by Ashley Simpson. So far, Boy’s Christmas present has been a huge hit, well almost. My almost-stepfather hated the whole thing and hid in the garage until the karaoke machine was stashed away. I guess he just doesn’t appreciate a good song.

In other news, my family and I are going back and forth on whether or not we should get a dog. Both Mr. Hobbitfeet and I prefer cats, but thanks to his biological father, Boy is highly allergic to them. So we wanted a smallish dog. The nearby shelter had lab/beagle puppies but all of them are potentially adopted. The other dog we picked out, though one of the smaller ones there, is still a little large for the kids, and so they were pretty scared of her. For the moment, I think we’re passing on the dog, but who know what we’ll do in the future.