Update!

Mel and I just got back from Austin where we celebrated Mel’s Grandpa’s 80th birthday. We woke up ridiculously early so Mel and Mo took a nap… Mo woke up first so I thought I’d take the chance to take some photos of my darling daughter.

Mo’s getting good at attacking me while taking pictures. Little does she know that Jesus was watching her the whole time.

… and here she is just playing with her favorite toys: socks.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with open-space pics for  a while and I took this opportunity to do so. Here are the few I think turned out pretty well.

Anywho, there’s semi-monthly photoblog update. I hope to do more soon. Summer’s coming up and I’m sure all sorts of big events will need to be photographed.

Much love.

Been a longer time…

As I sit here watching the ‘Spiderwick Chronicles,’ I thought I would update the blogosphere as to what transpired in the Behnke household over the past, oh, three months. 

(The movie’s pretty good, by the way… even though Freddie Highmore’s voice is a bit breathy)

In late July, my dear friend and Best-Man was driving from Florida to California to go to his new assignment in San Diego, and he was able to stop by and hang out for a night. MoRo was so excited to meet ‘Uncle Blake’ that she did a fist-pump and exclaimed ‘Yes!’ (pictured below)

Me and the fam also got to spend some quality time. Mo learned how to mimic faces…

… and also learned to read. (Pictured is us reading… um… The Brothers Karamazov… yeah… definitely not the first book in the Twilight series.)

And there was a hefty dosage of Mo just acting cute.

(She really loves her rocker chair… I think she was just mad at the mobile-puppy for turning his back on her.)

If you’re wondering why Mo is frowning in the last picture, it could be because she was just awakened… or it could be because of…

this:

Since we moved in to our apartment in January, we’ve had some unwelcome housemates. They look like brown pills with six legs and antennae. And it’s good that they look like pills because they also carry disease.

Anyway, we’ve been trying to rid ourselves of the roaches for 8 months (going on nine) and have gotten nowhere. We have food in big plastic tubs. We bait. We used boric acid. We used boric acid gel. Heck, we even used cat nip (‘natural remedy’ I found online… it doesn’t work).

We’ve had the apartment complex spray several times, but we found through a secret source that our neighbors aren’t the most cleanly people… So we’re not only fighting an uphill battle, we’re fighting an uphill battle against little organisms that could survive a nuclear holocaust and probably a direct smiting from God (with God only winning because He can handle the chitinous crunch sound and gooey ischarge roaches put forth when smited).

So having had enough (after our initial ‘having had enough’ three months ago) after the complex ‘offered’ to ‘let’ us move to a different apartment at an increased rent and with a renewed lease, we buckled down and spent the seven bucks to send a certified letter detailing our woes and asking to be let out of our lease.

As you can see by the authentic stamp on said letter, a healthy dose of citing the cities’ municipal code and state fair housing law allowed us to break our lease. We should have known something was wrong with this complex by this weird thing I noticed… when you read its name backwards, it spells ‘kraP kaO.’ Doesn’t that just scream ‘bovine made of pooh?’

So, we’re out by September 30. Not-multiple-family-housing, here we come! Yay for the USPS and their certified mail program! Yay for municipal codes! Yay for not having to share a dwelling with the Hanta virus!

Okay. Back to summer happenings.

I’m a big baseball fan (okay, I don’t watch games, but I follow box scores religiously) – I’m such a fan that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, sit up, sigh loudly, and when Mel asks me what’s wrong, I say, ‘The Yankees lost,’ with as much vitriol as I can muster (they didn’t even play that night… I’m weird in my sleep… I even spoke parsel tongue one night… don’t ask).

So’s since I’m a big baseball fan – the Yankees are my team of choice – we went to see the Rangers play the Yankees on Iván Rodriguez’ first game as a Yankee. They lost. But we still had fun with friends. Here’s proof:

Oh, and that cute little kid above, he’s cute. His parent’s blog has more pictures of him. I only have this one other… and it’s way cute. Because he’s a cute kid.

That was taken at Jared and Katie’s BYOM and Poker Night at their house in the town where the Frisco Kid lives (he was a friend of mine).

—

So, that’s a very brief, not in-depth overview of some of the stuff that happened this summer.

I will now include the following pictures to
   A) remind everyone how cute Mo is; and
   B) to show Mo’s sweet shades.

And that’s it. I hope everyone finds themselves well. I also hope that I won’t wait another 3 mos. to blog again.

Been a long time…

Okay… it’s been a while. Here’s a quick update, to get me current then I plan on another update soon.

Here are the pictures from the recent vacation that Mel, Molly, and I took at the end of June/beginning of July.

Before we left, we found out that Molly really likes her mobile. I’m just sad that her wipe-warmer had to be in the picture… 

And another one of the little one. Mel took this one.

This was a sight I saw on our second day in Lubbock. I woke up and saw my toothbrush (the blue one) and Mel’s (the pink one) cuddling up to each other in front of the heart on the toothbrush holder. I thought it was way cute…

Jeska (my sister) took this pic of my nieces. They’re such hams.

Aaaaand that was the sum total of pictures I took at my parent’s house (that turned out decently). I guess I was so wrapped up in catchin’ up (and going to a wedding) that I never thought to take pictures. My bad.

I hope Bonnie recovered from Molly’s expression of discomfort about being held at Katie’s (the bride in the aforementioned wedding) bachelorette party. Molly may wear cute bows in her hair, but don’t cross you or she’ll deck you with a nicely padded fist.

The wedding reception. Mel and I are pretty much professional wedding photographers now… Look out, Kristin! Unfortunately, as I was going through the photos from the wedding (and a lot from the reception), I found that on-camera flashes kinda stink and we didn’t get as many photos as we’d have liked to. (If you want us to have more photos in the future, you can donate this to our cause ;D )

Here’s Chris looking like Carlton from F.P.o.B-A. Except not black. Or as good of a dancer. Sorry CK, you got nothin’ on Alfonso Ribiero.

Joe had an inexplicable desire to ride this Clydesdale, and hey, the reception provided hats. We were afraid he was going to maim himself in a blaze of shattered Clydesdaleian glory. He was afraid the dust might get on him. Obviously cooler heads prevailed.

And Joe with the ‘Thriller’ bear.

So, apparently there’s a new ‘Electric Slide’ – Me and MoRo had a blast learning it. If any of you know what that song was, lemme know in the comments.

—– End Lubbock Vacation Segment—–

—– Begin Leander Vacation Segment —–

Here’s Banshee. Mel’s parent’s dog. Mel took this picture. Cute ‘lil dog.

Mel’s Aunt’s ‘n’ Uncle’s dog, Bits. The Carney-proper own a million animals.

The famous Nana’s first meeting with MoRo. We thought this picture was funny but it’s quite different from how MoRo really felt about Nana – she’d fall asleep the moment she met her great-grandma’s arms.

Here is MoRo with her great-grandpa.

And here is a picture of four generations of the Carney/Watts family.

And that’s it for now. I’ll post some more soon.

Memorial Day Weekend

This is a few minutes late – like 10,080 – but it’s here nonetheless.

Memorial Day weekend was a weekend to remember. Fun was had by all, I think, and we got to see Will G, my youngest nephew. Here are some photos from the weekend:

Here he is, in all his zebra-wielding glory. What a cute kid.

I didn’t realize until too late that my Jeffica’s fence is a really cool background. There is no digital manipulation of this photo at all… the fence turns everything black-and-white. I actually composed (read: ripped off) a poem regarding this fence:

The man sat in front of the fence.
Holding a beer. The day was green.

I said to him, ‘You have a grayscale fence,
These black and white hues, come from whence?’

The man replied, ‘The hues from whence,
Are changed upon the grayscale fence.’

Thank you, Wallace Stevens, for having such a neat poem to rewrite. The real poem is here. 

Seriously! I love their back yard! All the colors! It’s a veritable hue-topia. Badum-ching! Thank you, Sir Thomas More, for having a book title I could turn into a pun. The real book is here.

There is a story behind why I put this picture up. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. It’s a long story. Well, it’s not really that long, but it involves Kevin James and Jerry Stiller and a photo album. And a birthday. And Africa.

Like the quote says, ‘If life gives you markers, be sure not an area of your body goes untouched by its faux-felt tip.’

And mom’s reaction:

 

All of the previous photos were on Saturday. The following were from the B-B-Q on Sunday. I was busy eating and such, so not many pictures were taken. Here are a few, though:

 

They meet again…

On a scale of one to ten, I give the weekend a seven. Seven being the best.