Friday, October 31, 2008

Claire's New Trick

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Funny Molly Day

Yesterday Molly and I had a couple of funny conversations. First, she was about 45 minutes into her nap when she woke up crying. I went in there and spent quite a bit of time calming her down before I could understand what the problem was. When she was able to talk she said "The alligator! He was trying to chomp me!" The poor thing! I don't think she even knows what a real alligator looks like, in fact I think the only thing she knows about an alligator is that he says chomp and we clap our outstretched hands together to make him say chomp. Who knew I'd be creating an image bad enough to give her nightmares?

The second funny thing happened while we were walking through Target, looking through the "Halloweens" as she calls them. We have to walk down each aisle and press every possible button to make the ghouls scream, shake, or whatever else they do. When we were walking away from the Halloweens she sighed and said "I wish I was a pumpkin." I asked her to repeat herself to make sure I heard correctly, and affirmative, she definitely wishes she could be a pumpkin. I'm pretty sure she didn't mean "dress up" like a pumpkin either, she wants to actually be a pumpkin. I think the Halloween obsession has just reached new heights, though I can't blame the girl, I think Halloween is the most fun holiday too. As a side note, we carved our pumpkin the other night and Molly cleverly named him "Jack O' Name."

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Funny Pictures of Molly & Max


Chinese Cultural Center

Molly is dressing up as Mulan for Halloween this year so we went to the Chinese Cultural Center today to get some accessories for her costume. As long as she doesn't throw a last-minute fit about wearing the hat (which is very likely) she's going to look so awesome! They have a really pretty garden and coi pond there too, so the kids played there for a few minutes before we got down to serious Oriental shopping.

New Ball Pit

Amazon.com was having a huge clearance on there bounce houses so we got one for the girls for their Christmas present. We got this ball pit at the same time because it was on sale for only $10 and I couldn't resist. The kids love it!


Monday, October 13, 2008

First Grocery Cart Ride

Claire had her first ride sitting up in a grocery cart today. She loved it! It's so much more exciting than being strapped into a car seat having nothing but me to stare at (poor thing). Molly was an excellent companion for the first ride, so hopefully she'll keep it up. It was so nice to be able to have a whole basket to fill up at Costco instead of a tiny corner that wasn't already occupied with a car seat.







Now they can both enjoy the singing Christmas tree display at Costco. We could sit there for 10 minutes and they'd be happy.


This is Molly in her first grocery cart ride. I was feeling nostalgic (and pretty nerdy) so I dressed Claire in the same outfit for her first ride as Molly wore for hers.

The Horrors of the Triathlon

My Dad, Chris, and I finished the triathlon this weekend. And unfortunately it was not the fulfilling, triumphant event I hoped it would be. I'll try to condense the horrible mess into as short a story possible. The swim was first, and I wasn't too worried about it because I could swim a half mile in the pool no problem. My dad and I even went to Saguaro to swim in open water and it was still fine. When I started swimming at Tempe Town Lake it was no longer fine. There were about 75 women starting in my heat, and I felt like I was being kicked, pushed, and swam over by every one of them. A little bit of panic set in, I had a hard time swimming, and I kept gulping mouthfuls of water. I did the back stroke for a while to try to calm down, and when I finally thought I had collected myself, I looked around and realized I was the very last swimmer with no one around me, only the rescue canoes. I started to panic again, and this time I started to get really dizzy. I back-stroked through most of the half-mile because I couldn't really breathe, then nearer to the end I regained some control and started swimming. That was until the announcer started shouting through the loudspeaker "Here comes our last swimmer out of the water! Everybody! Cheer her on! You can do it! Just a little farther!" Once again, panic ensued because of all the horrid attention I was receiving out of the loudspeaker. Does this sound like something out of a worst nightmare or what?! As I was getting out of the water the whole crowd was cheering for me and slapping high-fives. Horrible. By the time I transitioned on to the bike I was shaking so hard from embarrassment that I couldn't keep control of the bike and I had to keep stopping. Then I realized my bike wouldn't shift. But it was stuck in the middle ring, so I thought I could at least keep going. The I heard a pop, and the bike got stuck on the smallest ring, which meant I was pedaling 100 miles an hour and going nowhere fast. The bike track was 3 3.65-mile loops, so after the first loop I was done because the bike was completely unrideable. It was very sad, but at the same time part of me was grateful because the bike track was so far out of my league it wasn't even funny. We used to go mountain biking with my dad all the time so I thought I'd be able to handle it. Not so. The hills (up and down) were incredibly steep and the single-track was awful, just to name a few reasons it was out of my league. I was disqualified when I came back in with my bike, so I sat in the transition area to wait for my dad and Chris so I could finish the run with them. My dad came in first, looking very spry and feeling great, and about 30 minutes later Chris came in, completely white-faced and looking furious. His chain had fallen off, which took him about 15 minutes to fix, plus the track was way out of his league too. I told him what happened to me and that I was waiting to finish the run with him and he said "I'm done. I am DONE!" I finally coerced him into at least walking the 3-mile running trail with me, which was a feat itself in the hills of Papago Park. Near the end of the run course we had to go through the parking lot, and some of the triathletes were already driving away in their cars. One particular car yelled out the window "You guys are doing great! You're almost there! Sprint it out!" It took all my self-control not to flip them off. We finally got to the finish line, and luckily the announcer was too busy handing out awards to embarrass us over the loudspeaker, again. But the up-shot is that my dad did great! He finished sixth in his age group. He is a pretty serious mountain biker so he wasted a lot of the competition there. This was definitely not the way I wanted my triathlon blog post to go, but unfortunately that's how our day went. I guess an off-road triathlon was not the best place for beginners. I'm going to have to do another one to redeem myself, but this time I want to do the swim in a lap pool and the bike on the road.


The triathletes, scantily clad and ready to swim.


The two that actually finished the bike course.


Chris and me, looking surprisingly happy after what we had just endured.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fabulous Fall

Apples are such a fall staple, so Sarah and I decided to capitalize and make applesauce. We had one long night and another long morning, but the finished product is totally worth it. We made plain applesauce, plus made other batches with Red Hots, raspberries, Dulce de Leche, cinnamon and cloves, and cranberries. This is my share of the spoils; I'd have to say the Red Hots (the bright-red jar) are my favorite!

Mother Nature's Farm

It's officially the one-year anniversary of the Black Family Blog! Last year's trip to Mother Nature's Farm was one of my first blog posts. Anyway, we made our annual trip to the farm on Saturday and a great time was had by all, as usual.



Molly and Max loved the maze.


Max was a little faster than Molly.


Mom had to come intervene to find the maze exit.


Grandma and Papa with the grandkids, those still in AZ that is :(







Shortly after this picture was taken a little cow, about the size of this goat, got too close to Molly's face and mooed at her. She was incredible upset, and most likely scarred for life. She's still talking about it.



Picking a pumpkin is always the best part!




We went to Some Burros for lunch afterward and Claire sat in a highchair for the first time.

Molly's First Fish



A couple of weeks ago we went with Chris's mom and sisters and kids to Bass Pro Shop for their safety expo day. They had a big tank outside full of little tiny fish to do some catch-and-release fishing, and Molly actually caught one (with Chris's help of course). They were pretty tricky to catch because most had caught on that the bait meant trouble, but we managed to find one that was still ignorant enough.