this is a test post

1 score ago when i was a wee lad of 6, i found an alternate path that led around the outside of my parents back porch. this path had excellent elevation changes, and led me to hold various climbing expeditions. my troops:

these men were true to my cause, which was to explore the back porch to its uttermost boundaries and rid it of dead rats. this is not a picture of dead rats:

after our adventures each day we would reconvene at my parents’ house for hot chocolate (on cold days) or blue kool-aid (on hot days) or milk (on every other type of day). us drinking drinks:

we were a ragtag crew mostly receiving our funding from illegitimate sources whose names will not be disclosed here, but they wore sunglasses all the time. needless to say they were not the type we’d like to tie our names to, but we needed so desperately to further our purposes for the backyard would have fallen into ruin otherwise. an undercover picture of our ruffian funders:

i hope that i’ve been able to convey the gravity of our stewardship to you in some degree and that it will motivate you to pledge your allegiance—and when i say allegiance i mean your monetary support in the sum of nothing less than 5,000—to our noble cause. us carefully handling your funds:

act now!

this was supposed to be a test post from windows live writer, but this turned out to be sufficiently random for a nick post, so i’ll just go ahead and leave it. don’t forget to peek at the previous post of all the boys’ cuteness!

a nice pile of leaves and boys

We stopped during our morning walk for some Halloween pictures under
my favorite tree on campus.

brookston

everett

At this point brookston decided it was too cold and everett readily agreed. Both politely asked to be returned to their red Cadillac stroller and be on their way home.

it's so cold, mom. can we stop now?

dude

Check this out. I found the reason that you sometimes get those less-than-frosted mini wheats that make you shake your head in disappointment.


Honestly, Kellog's, as much as I appreciate your kindness in this regard toward my family, maybe you should spread the love. On second thought, maybe this is just part of the deal they have with Sam's Club. Oh well, it's the wheat part we all like the most of this frosted and wheaty combo anyway. Pfft--haha!! Ok. Here's what we do if we encounter an extraterrestrially-sized frosting chunk in our cereal bag:

Again, thank you, Kellogg's.

Sincerely,
Nick Empey

pumpakins and apples

Autumn is great for many reasons. These reasons include pumpakins and apples covered in caramel. Well, only the apples are covered in caramel, I guess. The pumpakins are carved out and lit from the inside. You could probably cover pumpkins in caramel and carve out an apple and light it too (...hmmm...maybe next year I'll try it) but that's not the standard.

Here are some people we know and like with their pumpakins.
(I should say we like them regardless of whether or not they have their pumpkins.)

Notice the concentration involved in the preliminary process. Good pumpkins result when these steps are carefully taken.

An excellent sketch (she's an artist). Will it translate well onto the pumpkin?
Stay tuned to find out.

Here's Nick working hard on our pumpakin. He did the whole thing by himself this year. Feel free to let him know what a nice job he did.

Some pumpkins come in a more different shape. Here are the boys with a sweet little ladies' night pumpkin. Her footies were even labeled "little pumpkin." Brookston was trying to make his way over to put on the moves. You can see him swinging his arm about wildly to get her attention. It didn't work.

Caramel has to be melted to stick to the apple of course and we made sure ours was nice and stirrable. Here's one of our stirrers extraordinaire.

And here are the wonderful apples themselves. I decided to dip mine pre-sliced and was extremely happy with the results. I'll dip my apples like this for years to come. I had a big apple to start with anyway, and I'm not talking about New York. I have a nice friend in New York though, he's very fashionable.

We party hard here with our pumpakins and apples and our little tykes just can't keep up, bless them. Here they are taking a little nipper napper in the next room.

Meanwhile, here I am enjoying my delicious apple:



And here's the pumpakin line-up. Does the pumpkin on the far left look familiar? Yeah, that's because they did pre-lims. And all that concentration paid off on that butterfly. Our pumpakin is the twinners smiling and the excellently topped pumpakin is just excellently topped, I must say. It gets a gold star.


Nick addition: I added 2 new songs to the bottom of our playlist. I find the Japanese and Swedish voices interesting.

Nick and I went to the new IKEA in Charlotte for the third time since it opened in February a weekend or two ago. We went to get a little wood activity gym for the boys since i have a fancy for wood toys. That, and we'll take any excuse to go to IKEA.


We arrived and loaded up the boys bjorn style. You could tell they were excited. They had been here in the womb and were dying to see what the place actually looked like on the outside.

I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but Everett is drooling in anticipation. Oh, and does the shirt look familiar? Mr. Atomic anyone? Will the streak continue? Stay tuned...

Like all good tourists we asked someone to take our picture, so here we are on our way in:

She was a nice lady. I'm sure her name was Nancy or Harriet or something nice like that.

It was lunch time so we headed straight for the cafeteria. To our delight, surprise and wonderment we had chosen a day when meatballs were 99¢.

We ate meatballs.

After lunch we headed to the floor. You can tell how much the boys were enjoying themselves in these pictures taken in the toy department. I mean, look at the sheer thrill on their faces.

Nick is blowing out the candles on the birthday hat.

Then we wandered around the show rooms.

Everett especially liked this library.

And Brookston liked these green chairs.

The boys decided they'd rather eat the usual than have meatballs, so they had their meal in the car. That was an adventure.

Brookston patiently waiting his turn:

Before we left we decided to eat meatballs again.
They were 99¢.

Since we saved so much money on the meatballs we decided it was financially sound to buy some chocolate cake. You can see Everett eyeing it. Don't worry, we kept an eye on him.

This time we ate I got gravy on Everett's head.

Brookston thought this was an excellent joke. Notice how Dad was prepared and had a napkin over B's head. If only I had taken such precautions...

And, you guessed it:

Mr. Atomic strikes again!
Just as we were about to head home, Everett fell victim.

Everett gets his clean up amidst all his IKEA booty.

Finally we were headed home. Everett and Brookston made a couple of friends @ IKEA so we brought them home with us.



And here we are at home enjoying the new play gym:

Yes, it was so exciting that Everett fell asleep. =)