Happy birthday, Steely Burk!

And the baby of the Burk family turns 15 today...

Don't let the sweet little girl look fool you. She grew up with three older brothers. Let's just say she can hold her own.

Happy birthday, Steely girl!

Crazy daisies

Brandon brought home this bunch of "crazy daisies" Sunday night when we were celebrating our first full year of marriage.

A couple nights later as we were eating dinner, Brandon made a remark about this flower:

"Man, that one can't decide what color it wants to be. That's kinda cool."

"Brandon, that's because it's dyed."

To which he was quite taken aback. "No! Really? What?!"

"Um, yeah, you didn't know that? Look at the water they're sitting in. Did you think the flowers magically made it turn pink? And the stems and leaves are purple and blue on half of them."

Brandon, apparently noticing these things for the first time, "Oh. I guess so, huh? So you mean they're fake?"

"No, not fake. They're still real flowers, just dyed to make the super bright 'crazy daisy' colors. And the tie-dyed petals."

"So the color is fake?"

"Well, not on the yellow ones with normal green stems and leaves."

I want to take them back. I feel cheated."

The toothpaste wars have ended

Earlier this year, I talked about how Brandon and I were having to share a tube of toothpaste. And how it wasn't working out that well.

Luckily for our marriage, Brandon's tube of peppermint-oil infused Crest (yes, it belonged to Brandon) finally had it's last squeeze. Right before that happened, I found a good deal on a twin pack of my kind of toothpaste - Colgate Total.

I decided it was time we gave up on sharing toothpaste in attempt to reduce the number of items floating around our bathroom. So just this past week, I opened my very own tube of toothpaste.

No more peppermint oil.

No more digging in Brandon's drawer to find it.

No more squeezing from the middle.

Now this will be a long, happy marriage.

Happy birthday, Stetson Burk!

Wow, 16 years old...

Talk about a kid who can light up your day. Amazingly enough,

he's the only person I know who has never called me by my

sister's name.

And that bouttonniere he's wearing? He skipped out on his own

8th grade graduation party to help my mom order them. In fact,

if it weren't for him, no one in the wedding would have worn

them that day. The girls and I left them in the fridge 20 miles

from the church. When I realized this, I said Oh well, looks like

the boys won't be wearing them.

But then we decided we had to get them for Stetson - he'd been

waiting two months to wear his tux and his flower, so we

certainly didn't want to disappoint him.

Happy, happy birthday, Stetson. And thanks for all the smiles,

Buddy.

Alaska, in pictures

Enjoy the show, or view pictures here.

I told you so

Right before our Alaska vacation, we flood irrigated our yard for the first time since last fall. The whole day while Brandon was watching the water, he kept saying, "We'll have to watch for scorpions tonight. They're going to be out looking for dry places after we wash them out of the yard today."

And, "Be sure you watch for scorpions. I'm telling you, we're going to find some tonight."

And, "We really need to go scorpion hunting the next few days. We'll kill 'em. They're goint to be out after this."

After four hours of repeating statements like this, I clearly understood he knew we would be finding scorpions that night. 

Sure enough, we went out with our blacklight that night and killed three of them around the house. 

So for the rest of the night? 

"I told you. I knew we would find them tonight."

"What did I tell you? I knew there would be scorpions out tonight."

"Oh, I told you there would be scorpions. I just knew we would find them. Remember? Remember me telling you?" 

After a couple hours of this, combined with the constant predictions all day long, I was becoming mildly annoyed. 

I finally replied, "Brandon, really. I get it. We found scorpions and you knew they were coming. You told me all day long they were coming. What do I need to do? Tell you you're the Master Scorpion Hunter who knows their every move?"

He said, "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Human garbage disposal

Last night, there was just a tiny bit of the spilled milk left in a pitcher in the fridge, and I had bought a fresh jug, so I threw in a little chocolate milk mix (the milk by itself was a little exposed to other fridge odors and didn't taste so great anymore) and planned to finish it. 

After I drank half the glass, I got busy cutting up some elk meat into fajita strips for the dinner we're serving to friends tonight. 

When Brandon came by to help (after his evening roam through Craigslist), he asked what was in the glass. 

I said, "Chocolate milk. Finish it off."

He asked if it were warm. 

"Warm? No, I wouldn't say warm..." (with my fingers crossed) "Just not out-of-the-fridge cold anymore."

So he downed the glass.

As he set it in the sink, he said "I'm just your human garbage disposal."

Well, if the shoe fits...