Jerry Chicken

Look on Sammy's shoulder - it's Jerry Chicken, his birthday present and new pet. Jerry is a Leopard Gecko lizard. We don't actually know if Jerry is a boy or girl yet, but we figured that Jerry can go either way. Chicken is all Sammy - I think it's from some silly cartoon he watches, but I'm not really sure.

Celebrate Good Times

Ellie and Sam shared a party at Pump It Up this year for their birthday. I did a bang-up job decorating their cake. A friend had told me that Walmart will make a sheet cake decorated in two different themes - 1/2 each. I asked our local grocery store and the lady at the bakery told me she couldn't do it. She said she'd done it once and her manager got mad at her. Whatever - I decided I go to Walmart, except I never made it there and ended up buying a generic cake at 11:30 pm on Friday night. When I tried to decorate it myself, I discovered that all the little containers of decorative gel were pretty much empty. Oh well.

New Digs

These are some pictures of my new office. We finally moved into this space a few weeks ago. It's more modern than my taste, but it's a very nice place to spend each work day. Check out the pictures of the sink in the bathroom - it's a solid piece from New Zealand, and the water drains off the back. When Sammy came to work with me this week, he jumped back when I turned on the water to wash his hands.

Mm Mm Good

Every year our neighbor Jay takes our kids to Vacation Bible School. They have so much fun there, and we really appreciate him driving them, since I can't do it with my work schedule. To thank him this year, we made chocolate covered pretzels. They were really easy - we just melted semi-sweet chocolate, dipped the pretzeles and laid them out on foil to cool. For something special, we added sprinkles.