Day 2.070: In Valatie 'n' airy

At lunchtime today I took Exile #3 to a birthday party in the wonderfully named Valatie, NY. It's pronounced Val-ay-sha. Meanwhile Exile #4 had a friend over for a play-date. When we got home both Exile #3 and Exile #4 dashed off to play at our next-to-next-door neighbors' house. When they got back we blew bubbles (including some large ones with a fairly successful home-made wand). It's been quite a busy day.

Here is a moving moment from the birthday party.

Day 1.160: What's so funny?

I came home from work in time for all seven of us to sit down for a meal together this evening. E5N1 was in mixed form - extremely cheerful when happy and then suddenly beating on the tray of his high-chair in frustration and shouting about it at the top of his voice.

Eventually Exile #2 exclaimed, "What are we going to do with you?"

"Send him to bed," sighed Exile #4. Then, "Why is everybody laughing?"

We never did find out what was going on with him - just impatient for everything I think - and a little tired. We put him to bed.

The rest of the evening was punctuated by Exile #3 uttering variations on "Yippee the day is over!" Not that she's had a bad day, but tomorrow is her birthday and unlike Exile #4 a week and a bit ago, she is unlikely to find each birthday related event a joyful surprise - not that I expect that to spoil it for her one bit.

Talking of joyful surprises, Exile #4 loved these rainbow-coloured bubbles. The girls made up an elaborate story around them that I never got my head around. Last bubble picture (for now) I promise.

Day 1.158: Mission Impossible

This picture is my homage to The Prisoner, the title to both the 1960s/1970s TV show and to my day.

My mission (yes, I chose to accept it) was to help our friends make it to the UK. Despite getting them to the airport on time and subsequently taking them to another airport (rather further away), the mission turned out to be impossible. All else being well, they will still arrive in the UK tomorrow, albeit 10 hours or so later than they had hoped.

This post will not self destruct, but I may if I do not get to bed in five seconds... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... who is Number One? You are Number Six.

I am not a number...I am a free man!

Day 1.157: The days of lazers

They're not in the jungle - and they may be sick rather than lazy - it's a hospital scene apparently. I found it on Exile #3's bedroom floor as I was taking her to bed the other night and thought it looked so cool - so much going on - from the unicorn threatening the bunny to the nurse asking the bio-hazard guy to take his gas mask off. The world of a nearly-six-year-old is strange indeed.

I was back at work today. Some time after we finished our lunch - eaten sitting outside in the sun (it wasn't too hot or humid today) - we were disturbed by the gathering clouds outside. Soon a huge storm rolled in with green clouds (a sign of hail - and tornado risk). Sure enough we were soon watching marble-sized hail gathering in piles outside the windows while the roads flooded up to the depth of the curb (kerb). A while later the sun was out and the ground was almost dry again.

Congratulations for Albaniana for her cryptic song-lyric based answer and to A for a more prosaic one, you're both quite right as you can see in the zoomed-out version below. Honourable mention to Dave for doing a lot of the hard work and eliciting a clue.

So, all that remains is to point out pop pun 58 for title watchers (that will be me then - the girl is Exile #3) and the baby with the baboon heart.

Day 1.074: The answer my friend...

This morning we found that E5N1 had turned escapologist - he had pulled his arms out of his pyjamas and his grobag and then had turned around and put his arms back out so that he was half-naked and back-to-front but still wearing his bag. Later in the day he twice crawled right out of his trousers much to everyone else's amusement.

Exile #4 also caused her mother some merriment today by saying in the course of travelling home from school, "You don't want that - no sirree!"

This morning the girls decided to blow bubbles while we waited for Exile #3's bus pick-up. While I tried to get a good picture (this isn't exactly what I was going for - where did that breeze come from?)
They noticed that although most behaved normally - flying around and popping - some bubbles were sticking to the dry bushes and grass.


Furthermore, when they popped, the left 'shards' of themselves behind. I can only imagine that they were freezing - partially at least. I know I was.