Who's idea was this, anyway?

We bought Daniel's current car seat about 4 years ago. I have a confession: I’ve only washed the seat cover twice. Once between kids and again a couple days ago, after Daniel vomited on it 5 times during our road trip. Yesterday evening I tried to reassemble the car seat, and the experience reminded me why I’ve only washed it twice. That thing is so daggum hard to get on and off! While spending an hour trying to rethread the straps and elastics into a very hard-to-reach crevice with a flashlight, wire hanger and tweezers, I drew several conclusions about the brilliant designer of said seat:

1. This designer did not personally assemble the prototype to know how hard it is to get the cover on and off.
2. This designer was a man, who never considered washing the cover.
3. This man has no children.
4. If this man had children, they never vomited, had blowouts, or spilled milkshakes on the car seat.
5. If this man’s kids ever did the above mentioned things in the carseat—or anything similarly wet, foul, and/or sticky—he never bothered to take it off and wash it.
6. If he did bother to take it off and wash it, he ignored the washing directions and threw it in the dryer instead of letting it line dry—which, by the way, takes a good 36 hours.

At the conclusion of my think session, I had just one more question:

Where's his wife in all this?!

Daniel at the Zoo

We went to the zoo on July 2. We got lucky and hit feeding time for the sea lions, seals, giraffes, and gorillas. We were so busy enjoying our outing that the camera pretty much stayed in the bag, but we did get one video of Daniel reacting to the Sea Lion as he swam by. Look for it at the 15 second mark...

Ere you judge...

...he's enjoying an IBC Rootbeer. But the picture was too perfect not to take!

What might have been...

This Spring we planted a garden. We chose a spot in our back yard, cleared it, added garden soil, planted seeds and starters, and got really excited as things started to grow. Then the trees got leaves. And our garden got nil sun. Nope. None. Pretty shady back there! Some plants grew, some didn't. Some flowered, some didn't even get that far. Our tomato plant probably would have grown six feet tall if we hadn't topped it to encourage the one flower to come to fruition. So while my friends roll up their sleeves for canning and post pictures of the fantastic fruits of their labors, I'm going to post pictures of what might have been...

And now some close-ups of the particularly pathetic:

Romaine Lettuce

Watermelon

Cantaloupe Supreme (the weed is bigger than the vine)

Not quite what I pictured with Petite Corn

And the winner...our one and only, $60 tomato. Now that's value!