Isaac's 11th birthday

Not just puppets...

Moonwalk

To Commemorate Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 16th)

tomatoes, puppets and fry-oh my!

We had pasta salad for lunch today, with basil, tomatoes, avocado and cucumber. Everything except the avocado came from our garden...I love that feeling.

This Friday Maxed Out Puppetry performed for the ninth year as the pre-show of Bedtime Stories at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. Rus and I were supposed to meet the rest of Max at 4:30 pm. We left Salt Lake at 3pm; usually it takes us about 45 minutes to get down to Orem. We got stuck on I-15 with a major traffic accident that involved a helicopter being on the freeway to lifeflight someone. We got off I-15 as soon as we could and intended on taking State St down. So we hit another major accident on State St. As soon as we got past that, there was a house fire and traffic was down to one lane. Add Labor Day weekend traffic to all of that. At this point we were asking ourselves if we would get there before the show started, let alone on time for practice, or if the universe was sending us a sign that we really shouldn't be going. We managed (after an hour and a half) to get there with about 15 minutes to spare before the show started, whew. The show itself seemed to go pretty well, there was even a fair sized chunk of the audience who were "repeat-Maxed-out-viewers" ha ha. We did a new skit based on the Brave Little Tailor, starring Ollie as the Brave Little Exterminator, Rustystilton, and the perennial crowd favorite, Yankee Doodle (in about 2 minutes, a new record).
Rus' Celestial Pearl Danios spawned this week, the fry count is up to five, woo hoo! Just in case you don't know, the Celestial Pearl Danio is a tiny, brightly colored fish from Myanmar, that was discovered in 2006.

like father like daughter

Rus' dad used to be amazed at the way that Rus (just a kid at the time) could go outside and hunt down worms to feed to his various critters. A few months ago Gwen found a tiny baby mantis. She wanted to keep it, so we put it in a critter keeper and she named it Dig. She's watched Rus catch flies and other bugs to feed to Dig all summer. The other day she yelled out triumphantly, "I caught a fly for Dig!" To my shame I have to admit I didn't quite believe her, I figured she was playing imagination. She wasn't. Four year old Gwen had single handedly caught a fly in her bug net, even squeezing the end of the net shut properly so the fly couldn't escape. In the pictures you see Gwen with the net and a close up of the fly in the net.
It constantly amazes me how much she is like Rus as far as critters are concerned. It shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Like the time she was three and informed me I was feeding the green beans to the fish incorrectly. (She told me I had to split them open first.) Or the time she caught the angel fish all by herself. Or every time she helps Rus change the fish water, or catch various critters. Like father like daughter hee hee.