Wrapping Up NC Trip

I got a little off-track between telling you about our NC trip because I had to tell you about such important things as new pets and a coloring contest. But, now, we're back on track here with the final day of the NC trip. Troubletron and I started off the day by grabbing breakfast at the Bojangles.

Bojangles doesn't just provide breakfast, it provides delicious ecstacy.
Troubletron had never had Bojangles, but he became a fan of the sausage biscuits and country ham biscuits immediately.
After breakfast, we helped Papatron with some tasks around the house.
Troubletron is VERY handy with the power tools (as long as he has some instructions).
Troubletron did an excellent job hanging Papatron's new curtains.
Papatron rewarded our hard work by taking us to a southern lunch at the K&W cafeteria where Troubletron ingested his first bite of turnip greens.
He asked me to take that picture for proof so he'd never have to taste them again.

After lunch, we stopped off to stand in the shadows of the statute of Kannapolis's most famous former resident.
Yep. We stopped at the Dale Earnhart shrine.
I LOVE this picture of the three of us reflected in this memorial. It's like we can see ourselves in Dale.
It was my first time at the shrine to celebrate this great Kannapolis citizen.
And, that was the end of our trip. And now you know all about it.

Baby Pictures

Marzipan is getting cuter, stronger, and more talented everyday.





We are so excited to have her in the family!

(yeah, I posted pictures of my bird on my blog. Yeah, I am calling her my baby. It's better than being a cat lady)

Poll Updates

Just two weeks ago, on this blog, we posted a poll about whether it is child abuse to hold down a tender, young, teddy-bear-loving boy and cut off his ridiculously overgrown side burns. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of cutting!

Thanks for your input. You will be happy to know that we took your advice.
Littletron's near-ear hair is now a respectable length. Note Teenbot's ridiculous face. Is it me, or does she look like she's snorting cocaine?

As for our current poll, regarding which of our family-colored pictures is the BEST, this is how Troubletron feels about the current results:
That's right. He's disgusted. Keep voting!

Mourning

Today is a HORRIBLE day. And, I'll give you a clue why. What does THIS tell you:
(Besides that I didn't make my own birthday cake)

That's right. I've reached that horrible age milestone that every 15 year old thinks means death. At least it came with some lovely gifts:

(Target-bag wrapping brought to you by Troubletron)

What am I doing to celebrate this major milestone in my life? Well, last weekend, when the kids were here, we celebrated by going to the grocery store in a major thunderstorm.

And, then by sitting around on the couch.

We "celebrated" with just the family, and Apology Panda (Note, I know this is Apology Panda's debut on the blog. He basically is kept around to use during apologies so that the perpetrator of the bad act doesn't have to take personal responsibility for his or her, but mostly his, wrongdoing).

I think I'm going back to bed now.

Yoga.......and a near death experience in the bath!!

Last night Sparklebot and I decided that instead of going to the smelly, disease-infested gym, we would work out at home. We decided to try our hand at yoga......POWER YOGA to be exact. Let's just say we were both a little out of our league. Luckily there were no pictures taken of this event (though Sparklebot tried to snap a pic of me in my full-body spandex). However it went kind of like this..........

That's me (or a pretty fair representation of me).....okay moving on. As you can tell from the picture this was HARD work. After 32 minutes of bending and twisting our bodies in completely unnatural and almost impossible positions (again see picture) we were exhausted. Sparklebot was "glowing;" I on the other hand was a sweaty, smelly, "gwoss" mess!!! Something had to be done. That thing was........................

BUBBLE BATH TIME!!!!!!


(It was WAY more manly than this illustration demonstrates)

There I was, sitting in the tub, relaxing, doing a little washing up. I was applying some lavender scented body wash on my little scrubby, puffy, washy thing when I felt something touch my hand! Now, I was pretty sure that I got in the tub alone so I tried to dismiss it. I proceeded with the bath time ritual of cleaning myself and put the slight scare out of my mind. Until.....I was rinsing the bubbles off my arm and it grabbed me again!! This time I got a glimpse of it from under the foamy white water, it look a lot like this.......


Okay....now I was freaking out! I splashed my hand around trying to get the monster to release me. I may have let out a little "eek!!" but just as I was about to start weeping I looked again at the beast. This time it looked more like this:
Still a little scary, but seriously.......what is my issue. I must be working too much!!!

(Sparklebot requires me to clarify that that is NOT an actual picture of her hairball)

New Addition to the BotTron Family

Troubletron and I, Sparklebot, have a very exciting announcement!

You see, Troubletron and I aren't getting any younger. In just a few days, I face the inevitable fact of my 30th birthday (I know, I know, I don't look a day over 29 and a half). Troubletron is already 31. And, while we both still largely act like children, we have been doing a lot of talking the last few months about how it might be time to go ahead and take that next big step in our lives.

I know what you're thinking--"but, Sparklebot, you and Troubletron have only been married for five and a half months. The honeymoon isn't even over yet! Are you sure you are ready to take on even more responsibilty and change the nature of your lives before you are even really used to being around each other?" This is a valid concern, and I appreciate your thoughts, but as you may know about Troubletron and me, we are rather impulsive (e.g. engagement after only a few months of dating, elopement after only a few weeks of being engaged, etc.).

So, we made this decision the same way we have made all our other important joint life decisions: quickly and impulsively!

Now, of course, we already have two beautiful children, Teenbot and Littletron. But, we only get to see those two little balls of kid-joy every other weekend. When they are away, we miss them!

We have taken the, ahem, "necessary steps" and are now proud to announce to the world (or our 4 blog readers) that we are adding TWO new members to our family!

The first: our new parakeet Marzipan

And the second (who I couldn't get a legit picture of since he spends all day hiding in his neon rock inside of R2D2's body), is a Beta Fish who is either named Homestar or Bill Winters (Littletron has not yet decided).
We hope you can share in our joy as we embark on our new pet parenthood!

Family Contest . . . Help Us Pick a Winner!

Hey everyone! This weekend, our family engaged in some serious bonding time by entering into a VERY serious Star Wars picture coloring contest. The only problem is, we couldn't decide on a winner. So, we all four agreed that our blog readers could select the winner.

So, here's what I need you to do: Look at the following four Star Wars images, each colored by either Littletron, Teenbot, Troubletron, or Sparklebot. Vote for your favorite in the poll on the right side of the screen. Use whatever criteria you think most appropriate when selecting which image you think is the best. For example, you may use best technical coloring skill, most creative, best character(s) colored, most colorful, best shading, etc. It's up to you!

Here are the images:

Picture 1: Darth Vader
Picture 2: Darth Maul
Picture 3: Han and Chewbacca
Picture 4: Qui-Gon Jinn
You may click on each image to enlarge if you want to see technique.

Whichever picture receives the most votes will win our family competition. Besides straight votes, we want to hear some commentary on your criteria, so leave us comments about your favorite and why you picked it!

Project Runway Comments

Last night's LONG LONG LONG-awaited Project Runway season premiere left me with several comments.

All-Star Challenge:

Santino is still a jackass. Korto is still a whiner. Uli got pwned.

Episode one:

If Arie (or whatever that lunatic's name was) had not been eliminated, I probably would have stopped watching the show because I would have been 100% certain that it was completely fixed. The second she said she likes to feel out the fabric and make it into whatever it wants to be, I knew she had to GO.

Model show:

Whose idea was it to show us how the models on PR are DUMB AS ROCKS? Those girls should be mortified.

General thoughts:

How many weeks are we going to have to see fake celebrities (aka actresses in Lifetime series shows) doing bad Tim Gunn impressions? I mean, I know PR is bigger than anything Lifetime has ever had, so they'd be dumb to NOT try to promote their other shows while it's on, but I wish they had chosen a less obnoxious way to do it.

The Reason Most of the Pictures are by Sparklebot

If this blog were told from Troubletron's perspective:

Here is Sparklebot welcoming the family for Littletron's birthday:
And, here she is cutting the birthday cake:
Check out Sparklebot's footlong hot dog:
Here is Sparklebot heading out of the What-A-Burger:
His focus is . . . different . . . than mine.

Troubletron's First What-A-Burger

Troubletron and I went to Kannapolis, NC last weekend to visit my grandfather, Papatron. It was Troubletron's first visit to my homeland, so it was, of course, essential that I introduce him to the What-A-Burger.
Unfortunately, our favorite What-A-Burger was closed (since we were there on Sunday), so we had to settle for What-A-Burger store #1.

Troubletron checked out the situation.
I convinced him that we should go inside.
Troubletron was skeptical, to say the least. He didn't really even know what to expect.
And, apparently, he didn't expect this.
MMmmm. Chili cheese fries! Delish.
I had no reservations. It's been years since my last footlong hotdog.
And, of course we got the obligatory Cherry-Lemon-Sundrop.
What did we talk about over lunch?
Mostly we talked about the correct pronunciation of the third town listed on the What-A-Burger Burger-wrapper. "Mooresville"
Mooresville is pronounced "Mores-vul," not "Mores-vill" like Yankees would say. Troubletron disagreed, but he doesn't know.

I finished my dog.
And we bounced.
Troubletron has now been initiated, and is officially a fan.

Guess Where We Went

The homeland.