Congratulations to Paris!

Of the jobs Paris has looked into in California, he was most excited about an HR consulting firm called Sierra HR Partners. We're excited to announce they called yesterday to offer him the job. Yay for P-Dog!

So it's packing tape and moving trucks for the next week. We're off to the Golden State. Our estimated date of departure is November 7th, just in time to give Tim a birthday gift in person.

Crazy.

Let's Go fly a Kite!

We have had the most beautiful weather lately.

Last week in particular we had an ideal kite flying day.

The kite flying techniques were impeccable!And the concentration...admirable.
Poor Wyatt napped through the pictures,
but Mommy and Ryan were sufficient cheerleaders.

I Have Decided...

There are few things in this life as pathetic as a sick baby.

Poor Ryan has been super congested this week, resulting in this lovely sight:

We've had plenty of these,a lot of this, and some of this.

The upside is that everything goes on hold for a plethora of these,

resulting in a few of these.

Blogiversary Giveaway!

Today marks one year since the birth of Boone Bunch Blog. It's been fun scrolling through past posts today, but I wish I could scroll forward a year! :)

To express appreciation to my MULTITUDINOUS devoted readers :) I'm sponsoring a dream giveaway. The prize is yet to be determined, but will likely evolve from our recent closet/storage shed cleaning efforts. Perhaps a bag of mismatched flatware or a hat that says "Gun control means using both hands."

Leave a comment for a 1 entry. Compliment my mad poetry skills for 5 entries.

Ode to Blogging

Dear, dear Blogspot...My love for you will never wilt,

But grow ever taller than man on stilt.

(And it shan't falter, like Ace's bogus lilt.)

Thanks to you many a new friendship has been built,

and late-night boredom is forever kilt.

(Oh, the beans about my poetic talent have now been spilt.)

You make me feel like I've been wrapped in a quilt.

But why do I love thee most?

You alleviate scrapbook guilt!

Fruitland Park Gem...

Perhaps it was the crisp Fall weather.

Perhaps it was the 2 adorable kids I had with me.

Perhaps it was the bright, marshmallow clouds on a vibrant blue sky.

Perhaps it was memories of our annual pumpkin patch/cemetary visits growing up, followed by a trip to the burger joint with pinball and the "Bryce Hatch Burger."

Whatever the reason, when we spontaneously stopped at this quaint, 1888 church yesterday I felt a little like I was in Heaven.

Some of the charm is the deliciously rustic paint.

There's a sweet cemetary out back the kids (and I) had fun exploring.

This old lych gate was added in 1889.

Wyatt tested its fortitude... Sturdy as ever!

I've passed this church many times on the way to or from the Russ home.

I'm glad I FINALLY stopped to smell the flowers. Hardy har har.

It is a gem. They call it "carpenter gothic."

I thought these pictures captured personalities well - Wyatt has stopped to laboriously study ants. And ponder the meaning of life. And Ryan is outta here!

On to the next adventure with mucho concentration. (And speed)

Separated at Birth...

For years I've bought the same sunglasses every summer;

brown, plastic, tortoise shell rims that cost $8 at any gas station.

There is security in knowing if I lose them, drop them in a lake,

or leave them on top of the car before driving off they are easily replaced.

(I subscribe to the inexpensive jewelry theory for the same reason!)

So I was proud of myself when I broke the mold and bought

Elton John sunglasses this year.

Paris says I look like Willy Wonka from the new C and the CF.

This, of course, makes us like the glasses even more!

We have other celebrity look alikes in the family:

Paris and Olympic Gold Medalist Phil Dalhausser

Does this make the resemblance more clear?

Then there's Wyatt's haircut circa June 2008.

Paris says he looks like Corky from (cleanflicks) Waiting for Guffman.

I get his point. It wasn't my finest work.

But Corky is adorable, if out of vogue.

(Thanks to Mom for the pic.)

I struck gold when I found a great friend from high school/Clovis 3rd Ward on facebook. They're both beautiful, blue eyed, and bald.

I have no doubt Brittney Poulsen (Carman) will be world famous soon, if she isn't already.

Atticus was the hardest. No obvious celebrity look-alikes.
But with the 'stache it's hard not to call him Atticus PI.

Getting a Handle on Daddy...

Friday nights often consist of walks and dancing at Lake Sumter Landing.
And puppies! Everywhere, puppies. Wyatt especially loves this.

Ryan has dicovered she needs no stroller for this event.

Daddy's more fun. And he has built in handles, like the passenger seat of a car!

(Check out his weird looking ears in the bottom pic.)

Other than ocassionally encountering a territorial, gerriatric line dance group

(true story) we always have great fun.

The Big Read

Amanda posted this on her blog awhile back. I thought it was fun. There were a few I'd never heard of before, but I was pleased to note I'd read more than the average. I do believe Foxtrot en Masse is glaringly missing from the list, though, so I suppose I shouldn't be too smug.

Personal Note: After you read the list comment on what piece of literature you really do think is missing. I'm curious to see the responses.


The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.Here’s what you are supposed to do:

*Look at the list and:

Bold those we have read

Italicize those we intend to read

Underline the books we LOVE
Then share this list on your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Some, but not all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read much, but not all. And I certainly don't remember much. Ugh, my life's greatest challenge!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (Loved the PBS and tried to check it out from the library. They didn't have it! I was shocked.)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (Loved the first half!)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Didn't know if I loved it or not immediately after reading it which, in hind sight, made me love it even more.)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (I think I'll read this for Halloween this year)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeep...

I was heating up

a mid-morning snack

when the microwave beeped.

Wyatt JUMPED up and

excitedly ran to the microwave

and announced,

"My pizza's timeout is over. Yay!"