A Rainy Day

So, I decided to upload a bunch of random pictures of Hazel Porkpie. Not much going on today with the horrible downpours and tornado warnings. We are pretty much stuck inside, and Jamie is working from home today which means he has a big DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging off of him. A couple ladies from the momtourage are coming up for a beer and birthday cupcake visit later on. The Thursday night concert at Castle Hill is cancelled because of the weather, and we just don't have a back up plan tonight. This weekend should prove to be fun and interesting, but I'll write about that later. I'll be taking a little blogging break until mid-week. Anyhoo, here's the good stuff:

This is the first year we have had any hydrangeas, and they look so beautiful! Hector is trying like hell to kill the plant in the back of the house by rushing out to pee on it every chance he gets, but the plant so far has stood up to that sort of treatment quite well.

Hazel, watching CNN.

So we took Hazel to the zoo for the first time last weekend and it was sort of a disaster, but you wouldn't know it from these cool pictures. It was about as hot as the surface of the sun, and the Stone Zoo is a dump. It was so depressing and smelled terribly. The animals were pacing with anxiety and it was filthy. I do not recommend going. All three of us were in tears when we left. We did get a cool picture with Hazel noticing the new black bears in what is a fairly nice new habitat. The rest of the zoo has not had any work done in forty years or so and all the other habitats are behind rusty chain-link fencing with concrete floors or drowning in weeds.

For those that don't know, we are getting our house painted this summer. We have never liked the color (non-historical neon yellow) and when the paint in the back started to peel off in sheets, we knew it was a good time. So, this is the "before" picture. This is the front of my house (which sits sideways) as taken from my driveway. The street is to the left, perpendicular to the front of the house. Yes, I am aware that we need to prune. You can barely see the stone path to the front door. This winter was just a little crazy for us.

This is now what our house looks like. I woke up on Tuesday to a ladder being thunked against my bedroom window at 8am. Within 15 minutes, the whole house was crawling with about twenty guys sanding, scraping, and power washing. They left as quickly as they came, and I think they are going to be back to paint next week. I'll let the color I picked be a surprise.

This is the side of the barn that faces the house. It's a mess.

This is Hazel playing with her friend Anson! We went to Crunchy Granola Baby to chill last week with some of the momtourage. Anson is Emily's son. She emailed this picture to me and it was called "Jailbait and Cougar". Guess who the cougar is? That's right.

She will sleep anywhere.

More eating pictures. So far Hazel is not interested in banana or sweet potato. All she wants is avocado. She can't get in in her fast enough. She tries to scoot herself across the floor to get to me if I'm holding a dish of avo. I could hide flaming razor blades in her avo and she would gobble it down and lick her fingers. She cracks me up leaning in to get to the spoon faster and grabbing my hand to pull it closer.