Bird Watching!!!!

Soup! Who's Sick?

Daddy says that when he was growing up they only had soup when somebody was sick. Grandmommy didn't make it any other time, I reckon.

Well, it has taken some time, but Mommy has finally gotten him to change his mind, and soup is a good meal for a cold night.

So, since it was so cold Saturday, he made us soup for supper!

This one is souper easy....

First, cook up about two pounds of chicken, and cut in to cubes...



Make sure you season the water, because you're going to use the resulting stock later.

Then you dice up about this much carrots....



Then you dice up about this much celery...



Now, dice up some onion...



Now, strain the stock that you got from cooking the chicken into the pot with the mirepoix or trinity, if you will, and simmer until the vegetables are almost done.

Now add a bag of these curly noodles...



When the noodles get done, add the chicken, and you're ready to serve!

When it's all done you should have this succulent almost clear chickeny broth with sweet bits of carrot, and savoury celery and onion mingling around with juicy bits of chicken and delicious and colourful noodles! Doesn't that sound delicious?

Well, when we ran this one by our panel of tasters, we didn't get any stars. As a matter of fact, we got the opposite...

Daddy said he gave it a black hole!
Mommy gave it no stars.
Andy gave it a, 'not that bad', but he's sick and cant really taste anything, besides, 'not that bad' still means 'bad'.
Amanda ate all she had, but DID NOT request a second helping.

Overall, it was a dismal failure and a phenomenal waste of time and ingredients! I think the major disappointment was the noodles that disintegrated into the clear broth, resulting in a milky and grainy sludge that masked the flavour of anything else in the mix! Perhaps, if you leave these out, you might be able to redeem this recipe. If you want my advice, then rip this whole page out of the book and burn it!!! I may even go as far as to burn the whole book based on this one sorry excuse for a meal. A hot steaming bowl of chatang would be a welcome alternative to this imitation gruel!

Daddy suggested that Mommy should call and offer it to Maw Maw. So she did, and we took her some, to which Daddy exclaimed, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TAKE HER ALL OF IT??????" I'm going to test a little bit of it with Heather and see if she will eat it! I bet if we gave it to Wonkie, it would send her into labour!!!



It may be useful to spread around your flowers as a deterrent for cats and rodents. Put a pot of this in your attic, and you will never have a bat problem. It would probably work as a paint remover. I think it might even work on soap scum. Speaking of scum, it does remind me of that green slimy stuff that floats on the backwaters of the lake in the middle of August.

Okay, so there you have it. I do not recommend this soup for man nor beast. If you have these ingredients on hand, find another use for them, as this will simply be a waste! I suppose if I were starving, and on the verge of death, I would eat it, however, I doubt it would do anything more than hasten the inevitable. Even the cafeteria lady would think it's bad! Your children may threaten to call DSS if you serve it.

In other news, we spotted these two cows in Aunt Mandy's front yard the other day.



They looked at us when we blew the horn, then went back to eating the grass that is greener over the septic tank. It probably tasted better than the soup!

The City of Brotherly Love

Mommy and Amanda went to the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, on Thursday, and came home on Saturday night. It was snowing when we took them, and snowing when we picked them up! Amanda documented the whole trip, so today I want to post her trip.

1-17-2008

We are at the airport...waiting. Our plane got delayed. Dont worry. I'll write about everything. We are waiting at gate A7. It is 10:55 am O'clock. I just ate crackers. I bought with my money, bubble gum.

It's 12:45 pm O'clock. The second plane has been delayed! I just got done eating. It was good.

The time is 3:00 pm O'clock.

The time is 5:50 pm O'clock. Daddy, a lady asked for Mommy's bubble gum! Mommy gave her some, but she did not say "Thank you"! Our flight will last 1 hour and 20 minutes.

1-18-2008

Today I will have my surgery. Our Ronald McDonald room had Princess Jasmine, Belle, Cinderella, Mulan, and Tinker Bell. It was very awesome. I am very hungry.

The time is 6:25 am O'clock. I am at Shriner's Hospital for Children. I just got a pillow case that is pink and purple. It was made for me by some ladies who make things for children in the hospital. I also got a tote bag, and a new afghan.







The time is 7:05 am O'clock. I am the first to have surgery today.

1-19-2008

We are at the airport. yesterday, my surgery went well. Today, I got sick and threw-up in the taxi cab. It was bad. I still have my bubble gum. Only two got eaten. One for me, and one for Mommy.

The time is 10:45 am O'clock. We are on the plane. My seat is in front of Mommy's seat. We asked everybody if someone would trade seats with me or Mommy, but they all said no. I was crying because I was afraid to sit by myself. The airplane man asked all the people to do something, and a lady finally said she would move. Mommy said that if nobody had volunteered to move, she was going to hand them the barf bag and a Kleenex and tell them that I had just had surgery, and had already been sick in the cab, and if I got sick again, would they please clean it up! They would have volunteered then! Mommy says you dont get a Mommy fired up! A lady gave me a pink rose on the plane, because she said I was so brave.

Daddy, and Hon, and Jaden picked us up at the airport, and we went to Wendy's and ate chicken nuggets and fries. There was nobody there because it was snowing and they were all at the store getting milk and bread.

Wonkie Watch® -- Day 56

This is how Wonkie spends her days...IN THE DORA CHAIR
Baby Wonkies are still not here, people, and we are getting desperate How much longer can we be expected to put up with this???? A normal Wonkie can only take so much, and then it's anybody's guess as to what will happen. Keep checking back. If she goes berserk, I'll post the photos!


Check out this rainbow we saw the other day.....

Science?

Have you ever heard of the Flat Earth Society?

These cats at the Flat Earth Society do not believe the earth is round!



Well, there is a story of how the people at NASA brought the president of the Flat Earth Society to NASA to view images of the Earth taken from outer space. They assumed that when they presented actual images of a round Earth, the people at the Flat Earth Society would finally believe. The president looked at the images and said, "It is truly amazing that to the untrained eye the Earth appears as a sphere." His point being that most people see things exactly as they really exist, however, those with training and education can see past that and have the ability to see what others cannot.

With that thought in mind, I want to present to you a news story, reported recently by the National Geographic Society.
This group of people would laugh at the ideas of the Flat Earth Society.
I would suggest that they consider the wisdom of Matthew 7:4!

Okay, so here is the story...

Fossilized bones of a gigantic theropod dinosaur, Gigantorraptor Erlianensis, are put on display for the media in Beijing, after the remains of a gigantic, surprisingly bird-like dinosaur was uncovered in Inner Mongolia, China.

On Wednesday, reporters were given a look at the Gigantoraptor's remains two yellowing, rough-edged leg bones both a little over 3.2 feet long and believed to be those of a young adult.



Okay, having an untrained eye, all I see is two very large bones. Are they dinosaur bones? Possibly. I suppose you could take some DNA and compare it to DNA from some other bones and make a conclusion.
But wait...these are FOSSILS! There is no DNA!

Is it possible to determine anything else about the animal that used to own these bones?
Possibly, but I dont know how much.

What happened to the other bones of the dinosaur?
Maybe another dinosaur was eating the animal, and he carried these bones over to his den to snack on.


The story continues, and proves that to the trained eye, there is so much more that can be determined...

The dinosaur, which is described in this week's issue of the the magazine Nature, has been classed as a new species and genus.

The animal, which lived in the Late Cretaceous period (about 70-million years ago), is thought to have had a body mass of about 3,000 pounds, which is surprising as most theories suggest that carnivorous dinosaurs got smaller as they got more bird-like.

In this image released by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology in Beijing, an artist's impression of a newly discovered Gigantoraptor dinosaur, top, with other smaller dinosaurs is seen.

Fossilized bones uncovered in the Erlian Basin of northern China's Inner Mongolia region show that the Gigantoraptor erlianensis was about 26 feet in length and weighed 3,000 pounds, said Xu Xing, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

The discovery of the giant, birdlike dinosaur indicates a more complicated evolutionary process for birds than originally thought, scientists said Wednesday.

"It was 11 when it died, and at the growth stage of a high school graduate, so it still had some growing to do," said Xu.

It was also armed with fearsome claws almost 20 centimeters (8 inches) long. "The claws are so long they are more like those of a meat-eating dinosaur," Xu, the lead researcher, said. "Maybe it ate small animals, or clams, or plant seeds, or even eggs," he added.

His team says the dinosaur seems to have had an accelerated growth rate, faster than that of other large theropods. "That would probably be the mechanism by which it got to its large body size," Barrett, of the Natural History Museum, said. "Instead of growing for longer to get larger, it probably grew faster."


So to the trained eye, from just two fossils, assumed to be bones, you can determine...

1. It's a new Species and Genus


2. It lived 70-million years ago


3. It weighs 3,000 pounds and was 26 feet long


4. It was a bird and had feathers


5. It was 11 years old and still had some growing to do (and remember, according to some scientists, days were a lot longer back then. That's how God could create the entire Creation is just six days! So this cat might have been a few million of our years old.)


6. It had 8-inch claws


7. It ate small animals, clams, seeds, and even eggs


8. It grew much faster than other dinosaurs


9. It was a theropod, so it had feet like a T-Rex


10. What it looked like

WOW! Modern Evolutionary Science is simply amazing!
There is no way any ordinary person would have been able to discover all of that.

Hey! I just remembered something....
A little girl asks her father, "Daddy, what is history?"
Her father answers, "Well, Hon, history is facts and events that have happened in the past."
And the girl replies, "Oh....so what is prehistoric?"
Her father thinks a moment, and says, "Well, I guess that's facts and events that happened before
the past."
And the girl replies, "Oh....Huh?"

I am really intrigued by all this, so I'm looking into some more stuff.
Archeologists are using this science to explain a whole lot of other things. Check this out...

Scientists find evidence of big, building-like building

By Tan Ee Lyn and Ben Blanchard Wed Jun 13, 6:52 AM ET

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) -


Archeologists have uncovered what they believe is clay used to make brick which were then used to create a magnificent sky-scraper like building over 6 million years ago. In this image released by the institute of old stuff in China, an artist's impression of the brick that was made from the clay discovered in China. The brick was red and did not have any holes in it as we have today. It weighed 3.5 pounds, and several thousand would have been required to build an average sized home in the area.

The clay, which was discovered in a dig that started over five years ago, has never been found by these scientists. It is moist, and very good for bricks and other objects for which clay is a good source material.

Scientist believe the clay was used to make brick, which were then constructed into a giant sky-scraper-like building that was used for apartments, penthouses, and shops, and offices. The building had elevators, hot and cold water, electricity, fire suppression systems, energy efficient or 'green' thermal windows, a helicopter landing pad, several cell phone towers, cable and telephone service, environmental systems, wireless internet access, and indoor toilets.


The building was quite advanced for its time, and could have been used to escape from velociraptors, T-rex, and other threats of the day.

In this image released by the institute of old stuff in China, an artist's impression of the building made from the bricks that were made from the recently discovered clay.

Obviously, we're very excited about the discovery, one archeologist was quoted as saying. If they were capable of buildings of this kind, it's possible that they may have also constructed patios, driveways, and perhaps even outdoor BBQ's. The possibilities are endless.

The institute hopes to publish its findings later this year in the country's leading science papers and journals.

Birthday Dinner® Update

We went to Kabuto's for Jonathan's birthday dinner on Saturday night.
Before I give that story, I'll give you a Wonkie Watch® Update.

Wonkie Watch® Update -- Day 49

>Wonkie is no longer 'warm' and she has resumed her morning Bible study with Mommy. (I have got to get a picture of that for you!)
Little Wonkies have not yet arrived!

So, they were not Christmas Wonkies. They were not New Year's Wonkies.
Perhaps, they will be Chinese New Year's Wonkies, or Valentine's Wonkies?
I dont know, but it's taking a lot longer than any of us expected!
Meanwhile, Wonkie is really big!
One more thing before the Birthday® Update...
We came across this on Sunday...



I dont know what child had this as their 'baby'.
This baby appears to have been using colloidal silver on her face.
I am very sensitive to other's disabilities, however, I think a child would be afraid of this baby.

Okay, now the Birthday® Update...
Jonathan is now 16, and has his learner's permit. He drives okay, but he still has a few things to learn! He did NOT drive us to dinner, Daddy did, but Mommy tells Daddy the same things she tells Jonathan....
"Slow Down! you're going entirely too fast for a country road. Dont you know there are deer out here?" and "Did you see that car? Why did you pull out in front of them?" and "Where are you going??? We're going to Church, you know." and "Why are you in the left lane???? There's no one to pass."
I could go on for a while, but you get it.
Here's a picture of the Darn Good Chocolate Cake I made him.

Mommy and Daddy got him a new study bible.
In this picture, he's pointing out Andy's life verse, Judges 15:15.

Kabuto's is a pretty cool place. They dont sell tractors, that's Kubota.
They cook right at your table, and you eat a course while they cook another.
They are pretty fascinated with fire.

Look at all this food!

They juggle stuff, too.



Daddy said they used to do this with the salt and stuff, but now they just use these little sticks.

Eat that thing, Andy!




We told the people it was Jonathan's birthday so they would come sing for him



They made him stand up and dance....





This would have been SO much better as a video!
He's doing the 'Soulja Boy' to the Japanese music!
Superman, Oh!

Here's Mommy with Amanda and Jaden.



Of course, we couldn't eat it all, so we got boxes to take home.
Jaden is labeling hers' so that no one will eat it!



I labeled mine, too!



Kabuto's is very cool, and really good!!!
We all give it the double thumbs-up!