October Edition: Living in the Moment

October seems like it was characterized by a plethora of varmints.  The end-of-season praying mantises revisited our back yard (those pics died on my sd card. boohiss).  Littlest Dude’s class ducklings hatched and came home with us for an overnighter.    

Duckies are unbelievably adorable.  They’re also unbelievably messy.  And poopy.  But their little cheeping noises are completely heart-meltingly sweet.
Enough of all that duckie cuteness.  Enter Mr. Toad.  Who, by the way, also has a pretty cute chirping noise that he makes!  We found Mr. Toad in the driveway late at night. We were going to let him loose the next morning, but the dudes all found Mr. Toad eminently amusing. So he’s part of the menagerie awhile longer.

We usually buy crickets food at the local pet store. But this month we happened upon a consistently stocked, local, free source of crickets food.  Just call us the Cricket Hunters …



And that pretty much sums up our experience with varmints in the month of Oct.  For more Living in the Moment posts, click on through our blog circle. Anika's beautiful blog is next …
 

A Powerful Dose of Excellence.

Ok. Putting aside all political discussion of guns versus bread (as if those are our only two opposing options), the Miramar Air Show was a spectacular, over-the-top, adrenaline-boosting, testosterone-filled display of sheer power, speed, engineering ingenuity, brilliance, and all-around excellence. We were - ALL of us - in awe.
Oh, btw, that’s the Teen pretend remote-controlling the drone … This giant beast below (a Harrier, I think) is demonstrating its hovering and vertical takeoff ability.  Amazing.I stopped breathing every single time they did this.The Blue Angels really truly seriously took my breath away.  I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating, too.  So the Blue Angels have this stealth trick they do that they call the “sneak attack”.  Big Dude was on high alert the whole time – he didn’t want to miss the sneak attack.  In fact, he was bound and determined to film it.  What they do is “distract” you with some awesome show of flight amazingness right in front of you – and, of course, you’re completely spell-bound.  And then, bam!  In the midst of your “distraction”, from behind you two of the jets fly right over your head.  It’s incredibly LOUD.  Super fast.  Totally unexpectedly surprising.  Guess what?  Even watching for it, we missed the sneak approach.  Behold …See?  Awesomeness happening in front of us …BAM!