Tarheel Pie, Apostolic/Messianic Hair, Fat Tony, Jimmy the Weasel, Henry, just Henry, and Lola the Flying Lobster - Project 365: Day 13 (Sunday, Sept. 27th)

Sunday was a big day! Hence the: Tarheel Pie, Jesus Hair, Fat Tony, Jimmy the Weasel, Henry, just Henry, and Lola the Flying Lobster. ;)

DJ's godmother (and my sistah-from-anutha-mutha), Aunt Brielle, began a baking blog a few weeks ago. I never knew she was such an incredible baker! She's a vegetarian and eats some things that jiggle in a way that makes me not want to eat them ;), so I was admittedly a bit leery when she began inviting us over to try some of her recent kitchen experiements. Aunt Brielle also happens to have a friend - the lovely and patient Miss Diana - who had agreed to cut the hair of a very reluctant Cyber School Dad at Aunt Brielle's house since we were going to come down and have some cookies, pie, and vegetarian pot pie on Sunday afternoon.

Aunt Brielle has been working her way through a very difficult time with her mother's recent devastating double-cancer diagnosis. Her mother is like another mother to me, so I can understand how cathartic it must be to have an outlet like baking that keeps your mind and heart busy when your thoughts race and sleep eludes you and your baking just gives so much joy to other people. Could I ask you all to keep Aunt Brielle and her mom in your prayers? The next year is going to be a struggle for them and I think prayers and positive thoughts are every bit as necessary as medical intervention for a good outcome. Many thanks in advance for lifting them up!

So Sunday it was gloomy and either drizzling, pouring down rain, or threatening rain all day! I knew a long walk with our dog, Lola, and Aunt Brielle's dog Hank wasn't in the cards to burn off some of CS Spawn's excess rainy day energy during our visit, so I threw together a travel craft kit with some scissors, colored pencils, crayons, and some fun print-outs from The Toymaker's brilliant line-up of printable, paper toys. I was prepared with dodechahedrons and polyhedrons to decorate and color for Yule Tree Ornaments, little paper elvin houses, a book-o-meter, a faerie stage, and a tooth fairy gazebo and sign just in case of an I'm-bored-emergency. ;) Spawn also brought his Leapster and head phones for the car ride.

CS Dad had th camera while I drove, so he happily snapped away -ingoring the fact that I was trying to drive while he poked the camera in my face and generally made a nuisance of himself. :p

This is the view as you drive down our 'street'. It looks a lot more rural than it is. We're literally 5 - 10 minutes from anything and everything our hearts could possibly desire. Just out of frame on the left side is the township municipal center (across the street from our house): township offices/police station/ball park/soccer fields/playground. It's also where we go to vote. =D Pretty sweet location, right? The fire station is just maybe 500 yards down the road. Which is why our house didn't go up in flames during the infamous Dryer Fire of 2007. ;)

This is the view coming down the far side of the hill we live on. If you were at the top of the hill, you could see over those trees on the left side of the road - all the way to the vineyard across the fields. We can see some of the vines from our house. Makes me appreciate every day that none of the fields around our home has passed a perc test recently so no one can build on them. Woot!

No self-respecting Eastonian could make a drive through Easton's suburbs without paying homage to the Dixie cup - a giant water tower shaped like a Dixie Cup that stands over a factory where they may or may not still make any actual Dixie Cups. Aunt Brielle lives in the adorable little neighborhood behind the Dixie Cup - one of my favorite neighborhoods in all of Easton. It's picturesque and city-suburby without being cookie-cutter. I love it! I admit it - I have neighborhood envy. ;)

Just look at it!

Aunt Brielle didn't waste any time, she had a pie in the oven when we arrived that she had decided to send home with us...Tarheel Pie that I had been begging her to make for weeks.

Then, while the pie was baking, she wanted us to test some cookies she baked over the weekend - Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies. I swear, I think there must be something as addictive as crack in them. Good stuff. =D I had been petting the dog and wanted to wash my hands first before I went rooting around in her cookie jar, so she just shoved one in my pie-hole. =D Awesome, but sugary! Spawn was bouncing off the walls all night!

We all noshed on the cookies, tasted some Vegetarian Pot Pie, and milled around while Miss Diana set CS Dad up for his first haircut in about 3 or 4 years. :p

Miss Diana dug right in, made two pony tails (so CS Dad could donate to Pantene who provides wigs for those in need for FREE - not low-cost like Locks of Love), and cut the first one off! :o

Then the second one. Yipes!

Then, gone! ::poof!::

14 inches or so - GONE! I still haven't recovered. I think this may be the shortest I've ever seen his hair!

Spawn loves going to Aunt Brielle's house and was, in this moment, wheedling a weekend overnighter with a visit to a wrestling show at the community center from her. ;) We <3 ULTRA MANTIS!!!

We had a great time at Aunt Brielle's, sampling her baked creations and playing with Hank and Lane (her dog and cat, respectively), but she and Miss Diana had plans to run to Target (in Phillipsburg), and we had to pick up some dinner and feed our poor, starving dog who had missed her dinner by all of 30 minutes at this point, so we headed out to Wegman's for some hoagies, but as we got closer, I realized there WAS a new Target right next door and we'd only been there once before on opening day...Maybe it was time to do some shopping for the starter bits for Spawn's Halloween costume. While the boys meandered around in electronics, I headed over to check out the costumes. I saw this ridiculous thing and just had to take a picture of it. It's a thin, brown, velvet, hoodie, mini-dress named Eskimo Girl. Nothing beats Whore-lloween!

I ultimately chose 4 costumes that are CS Mom-approved and that I thought Spawn would be interested in. He ignored them at first in favor of a Darth Vader costume, but we have strict rules about not letting a young child dress as a villain, rapist, murderer, or otherwise dastardly scoundrel. Spawn came reluctantly back to the CS Mom-approved choices. I showed them to him in order of which ones I thought he'd like least to most. I started with a muscle-bound Iron Man costume. Spawn: "Boring!" Then a muscle-bound Spiderman costume. Spawn: "Boring!" Then a cool cowboy costume with a long, leather-like, brown duster, sheriff's badge, bandana, and a cowboy hat that could do double-duty as an Indiana Jones hat for dress-up play. Spawn: "That doesn't look like an Indiana Jones hat. No. I don't want it. It's not cool." Then...I showed him the one I KNEW he would go nuts over - a magician costume with black slacks, a red, silk-like vest, and a real top hat with magic tricks and a bunny in it. :o Spawn: "WOW. I want to be that!!! And do magic tricks! Can we learn magic tricks for math class or something, Mommy?!" =D

Which mama knows her boy best? ;) My dinner need was becoming urgent and I knew Lola would eat one of our cats if we pushed her too long to wait for her dinner, so we bugged out of Target to head over to Wegman's. On our way, I noticed something odd about the pavers at Target. They looked like the infamous Tiananmen Square pavers that were supposedly chosen because two men could stand comfortably on each one when citizens were expected to line up in the square and that's how they know the square will hold a million people because there are 500,000 pavers.

Look, Spawn at Target on their dictatorial row of pavers:

The actual Tiananmen Square pavers:

I knew I wasn't imagining it. There are fascists at Target! >:(

And it has nothing to do with me being chastised by a Target employee for telling my son to hop on the front of the cart where I could keep track of him as his meds wore off. I did send Target Corporate a nasty-gram about their employees minding their own business unless they want to lose every disgruntled mother who turns around and her kid is gone because their carts are too small for kids who are still too young to wander freely about the store. I will NOT be going back to that Target before speaking to a manager about the employee who undermined my maternal authority and took it upon herself to chastise me in front of my son for doing something we have done for years - since he grew out of sitting in the seat of the carts!!! >:(

Anyway, after Target, we made a quick stop at Wegman's for some hoagies. CS Dad and I took turns ordering our hoagies so neither of us would have to stand in line with Spawn for any length of time (he was still scaling the walls thanks to all that sugar in the cookies at Aunt Brielle's house ;) ANd his ADHD meds were wearing off to boot). When it was my turn to keep him occupied, we went to visit the lobster tank. First, we flexed our math muscles and counted the lobsters by twos, then by threes, then by fours, then by fives. Then, we noticed there were only 2 lb. lobsters left in the tank, so we counted off the pounds by twos. Then, still bouncing off the walls, Spawn utters words I will never forget: "We-should-get-some-lobsters-as-pets.-That-one-tried-to-hug-me.-Ha,-ha.-It-can't-hug-me-because-there's-glass-there-and-his-claws-have-rubberbands-on-them.-I-like-to-name-the-lobsters.-This-one's-Fat-Tony-and-that's-his-friend,-Jimmy-the-Weasel,-and-that's-Henry,-just-Henry,-and-that's-Lola-the-Flying-Lobster.-She-has-angry-eyes." Oh. My. Jebus. :o I about died laughing. Sugar is a rare thing for Spawn to have any day and he had obviously had way more that day than his poor little body could handle...

I think these pictures say it all:

Chrissi, Cyber School Mom