The Artist Currently Known as Bennet

We are sending original "bennets" out to a select few and keeping photographic evidence of his entire collection for posterity. For your viewing pleasure:


"Turtle Power"


"Rain on Mars"


"Self Portrait of the Artist"


"Art Transcending the Medium"


"Green Thumb"


And now, a peek at the artist at work!


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books\

As the smell of bread fills our home...

Ahhh....I've just pulled two loaves of farmhouse white bread and one cinnamon raisin swirl loaf from my oven. I started the bread 4 1/2 hours ago, and it was sooo worth it! I think I may serve sandwiches for dinner!

Teaser:






And our sick little boy, lounging on the couch watching Pooh. (Note the crusty face!)

And now for something competely unrelated...

My good friend and neighbor had a baby boy yesterday in the wee hours of the morn. A few months previous to her delivery, she had asked me to be her backup labor coach. You see, in the military, even if your service member is NOT deployed, you really never know where they will be at any given moment or if they will be reachable. I was, of course, completely honored by her request and set about to learn all there is about birthin' a baby. I learned a lot of great tools and techniques, none of which I actually used when push came to shove. But I learned nonetheless.

Anyways, the reason I am telling you all this, is because it was the single most amazing event I have ever witnessed! Before yesterday, I would have told you that my friend is a very strong woman but now, I feel that is a complete understatement. Even through the contractions, she was as polite and poised (although she did correct my grammar at one point -- I had it coming though) as always. I was absolutely amazed at the whole process and in awe of the human body's ability to bring forth life (cliche I know -- but you weren't there! You don't know!). My prior birthing experiences had been limited to The Baby Story on TLC. So you can imagine how very different it was to have front row seats!

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I adore children, and especially babies. There is something about their honesty and innocence that is so beautiful. And this baby is no different. Holding his tiny little body and looking at his little fingers, it's hard to imagine anything more awe inspiring. I think that being there for the beginning of this child's life has created a special bond though. I see a lot of spoiling in the future for this little one!

I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to be there with my friend during such an important event in her, and her family's, lives. I hope that I was able to provide a level of calm and comfort for them through the rough spots.

And now, for the star of the show:

Stone Soup

So, to get Bennet prepared for the move, we have bought a number of books about Japan as well as kid stories that take place in Asia. We got one called Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth. As you can probably guess, it is an adaptation of the classic folk tale set in Southeast Asia. We all really enjoyed it and decided that we would make our own stone soup today.

Thanks to my lovely mother in law, we are having some Tastefully Simple beer bread with our stone soup tonight which I jazzed up with some garlic, salt, and parmesano reggiano cheese. After I had that in the oven, we chopped up some onion, celery, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage. Bennet helped us to heat some EVOO in a stockpot. Then we dumped in our veggies, some diced tomatoes, LOTS of vegetable stock, and even a can of bamboo shoots to make it Asian stone soup! We finished it all off with some pepper, kosher salt, and seasonings.

In short, our house smells phenomenal, we had a fun afternoon in the kitchen together, and we've got a lot of soup for the week! YUM!

Liar Liar!!

So the car is not meant to be! Luckily we thought to check carfax before signing the paperwork and found out that the seller had lied about the mileage -- by 100,000 miles!!! And it was a salvage title that had been laundered! Pretty shady huh? So Buffy Wellington is not ours. And Tim will be flying out to L.A. for training in a few weeks.

Not much else going on. Today is my Dad's birthday so I'll send a little shout-out to him! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEEKO!!

Getting stuff done!

So things are starting to move finally! We are getting our medical clearances done and should be finished with them by next week. So cross your fingers for us that we all pass! We've also been working on getting the cats ready for the move. luckily for them, they've had most of the shots that they need. So they'll only have to get a rabies booster and some bloodwork.

We found out yesterday that base housing doesn't allow yard sales! I thought they were joking! It's a military community! People are always moving in and out. Apparently they only allow community wide sales. They held one March 15th, but we didn't get orders until March 21st so we didn't know we'd need to do a moving sale at that time! UGH! So now I'm trying to figure out what to do with all this extra stuff!!

Bennet and I got our first JEV shots yesterday (Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine). I made the mistake of looking up the vaccine before we got it. Apparently it's made by infecting mice with the disease, then extracting and liquefying their brains! Sick, huh? So we got our mouse brain shots yesterday and we go back agian next monday and then one more time at the end of April.

We also bought a car last night. Tim needs a car to get to Los Angeles and the right one came along finally. It's a 1992 Mercedes Benz 300E-class (I think). It's in good condition on the outside and decent condition on the inside. Tim is pretty excited about it, and I can rest easy knowing that it won't break down on his way cross country! We've decided to name her Mrs. Buffy Wellington. Here she is: