some of you ladies out there may have seen the "porn for women" calendars that you can buy at places such as barnes and noble. here is an example of what is in this:

basically it comes down to men doing things such as putting the toilet seat down, bringing flowers home, asking for directions.... etc. yesterday, out of the middle of nowhere, dallas volunteered and self initiated sweeping AND murphy cleaning our wood floors. i think i can possibly submit this picture for next year's calendar.

and yes, dallas, you did earn a couple brownie points!

while i'm in the process of showing my awful childhood pictures this week, i thought i'd share another one that my mom just sent to me yesterday. this is when i was in 3rd grade (hence the glasses) and we did this thing called Odessy of the Mind, which is a program intended to make you more creative and think. obviously it didn't work very well but i tried!

home ownership seemed like a really great idea until now, when, we have just evaluated that great shade trees have more leaves than we really care to rake up

top half of linden
bottom half of linden
good thing we have plenty of wine and that i insisted that we buy 2 rakes!

for the record, almost every person that has came to our house is amazed by william and his huge whiskers. for an educational blog (for once), cats have whiskers for 3 reasons:

• navigation
• mood indication
• measuring an opening

for tonight, we'll focus on the third reason, measuring an opening. according to howstuffworks.com, a cat's whiskers are roughly as wide as their body. if they can't fit their whiskers thru an opening it's probably a good indication that their body won't fit either. this most likely explains why william has such long whiskers.... he has a huge body.

how huge? his whiskers are about 5" long, or roughly the length of my faithful eversharp that i stole from dallas
this means that william has 5" on each side of his face + distance of his head (approx 1.5 in), thus if there is anything less than 11.5" wide he probably can't get thru it

pathetic

a what?

once upon a time when i was a young tike i was in 4-H. i really liked being outside and doing non-girl things, such a show cows (pictured below). thus my mom could never get me to sit down long enough to do any girly things and thankfully i was only forced to enter sewing craftsmanship one year. (yes, very girly hair in the picture. this was only to wow the judges and it didn't work)

so when lisa decided to pull out the old sewing machine today to work on some canvases i was extremely grateful that jen had an emphasis in fibers in college. even after she was done i was still asking myself, "so what is that thing? and exactly what does it do?"

new home

no, we don't have a new home, but, william does. he has decided that the box we use(d) to store our wedding album in is the perfect size for his body.

it started off being cute

and now has gone to ridiculous as he tries to play the "i'm pathetic and need attention" card

cross

today was weekend 2 of getting killed by the big girls. after an exhausting week of life racing went awful. not only did i race, but stitches decided to race too! he did pretty good considering this was his first cross race in 3 years and he had a bunch of mechanicals. while warming up on barriers he managed to kill his legs again.
pictured: old wrecks in red, new war wounds in blue
we are wrapping him in bubble wrap for next week's race

happy birthday dallas!

today dallas hit the big 2-9

i think he had a pretty good day. 2 bike rides, a couple presents from me, and one from william. i even tried to make him his usual german chocolate cake from scratch, might i add, which i am USUALLY extremely successful at. since i am loaning out my silicone pans (btw they are wonderful and every person that ever makes food should own some) i made do with what i had.

the outcome: the saddest looking cake i have made, EVER

poor dallas. here he is with his pathetic cake

here is a closer look in case you are trying to get a better look. yes, there are 2 "pieces" missing, if they even count as pieces. maybe next time will be better

we've been working on the same house, same color all week and it's getting faux monotonous. fortunately for a change of pace we were assigned to paint the powder bath. although this is a horrible picture, i find it absolutely hilarious that even though brett and i are working on the same bathroom ceiling i only need to stand on a gallon bucket and he needs a 5 gal

all work......

and no play makes andi very grumpy and hard to live with

we've been busy at work so there isn't anything too egg-citing to blog about except that tony and rosanne have decided to share the concrete chickens that we shared with them. harvey and bev are watching them this week but i think that they actually like them
also, i still have artwork for sale. today's item, another mosaic
now don't you all go bidding on this one at once (lilies 30x40")

if you are the kind of person who unfortunately has too much stuff to carry in their car so you get a rocket box to put on top that's great. you reduce your mileage by 2-3 mpg but you're happy because you don't have to get the inside of your car cluttered. i don't really understand why this dude needs a rocketbox the size of a small typewriter on the top of his. does anyone else think it's a bit ridiculous?

i forgot...

how hard cross races were. whewww weee! today we were up in breck. i didn't do too bad considering yesterday i spent part of the morning in the chiropractor's office getting a couple ribs popped back into place along with other various adjustments that left me sore and grumpy.

since we have no photo footage of today here's a cross picture from last year

tonight lucy came over to hang out while derek and lisa escaped for sushi. it was a pretty good time right up until the bloody murder screaming.dallas and lucy had a pretty lengthy conversation.

and since we really have no idea what kids really are, or what they do, or what they are interested in, or what books they are into, or what they are learning, we took an educated guess and winged it the rest of the night

1 down....

about 10 million to go.

since national cross is in KC again this year, my wonderful friends are again having an "eat delicious soups and drink wine and andi art show." this event is fabulous for everyone except me in the months leading up to it. i kind of uhm, well, didn't realize september was half over and have a lot more work to do!

yesterday on my fabulous day off i got a mosaic done. for those of you who don't know this pic is made up of tiny fragments of magazines all glued together. since this picture is a little smaller than i normally do most of it was done with tweezers. (yes, very ridiculous i agree)

if you like this picture and want to buy it, it will be for sale in december in KC this year. and if no one wants to buy it there then you can purchase it afterwards.

while enjoying a day off of work after 3 extremely physical days, i decided to prohibit any further ruthless destruction and gutting of our poor pumpkin. for the small price of 5-6 whisker lickins i have a guard on duty for the entire dayin this picture, william, door, pumpkin, and squirrel (circled in blue in the back)

today is our 2 year anniversary!

here are some great pics of our wedding for those of you who missed it!

riding to the reception

cake cutting

cutting the cheese

and he's a dork like me!

it's all fun and games.....

until someone decides to get hurt. i love cross racing. it's a sport that i feel relatively safe in, even when crashing. last year we raced thru all weather and crashed on everything and still came out looking new.

somehow stitches has done it again.......
while practicing on our made up cross course in the park yesterday, dallas manages to pull this wound on his leg in 3" long grass. he is a special kind of person.

when we were in boulder this morning bobbi and i realized that tris really were over the top. although you can hardly tell from this picture, this crazy girl is setting her trainer up to ride IN THE PARKING LOT!
really now, who does that?

before bobbi and i had an awesome day hanging out william decided to help me with my latest art picture. i think his attention span is about 3 minutes

new play toy

some extremely generous people (thank you!) gave us a projector for our downstairs media room.... my question is, how many guys does it take to turn this thing on?

talk about tough girl

it's a good thing that while dallas is gone i have the guns
(ha ha....not) to defend myself if necessary. i have nothing compared to our client's magnet in the garage!

the other day when my parents came out for tea time my mom made a jokingly subtle statement in our front yard and put a couple cement chickens by our mailbox. they were, uh, very nice mom, thank you so much for thinking of us! in fact, they were so nice that we decided to share with our neighbors.
tony and rosanne....
you've been chickened!!!

they havn't said anything yet. i wonder if they even notice?

dear mr. squirrel,

please wait to celebrate thanksgiving with us, thank you.

love,
william