• tea time

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    my godparents had a tradition where every day at 4:00 pm (“tea time”) they’d sit down together and have a drink — gloria had some kind of sweet, fruity wine; paul a rolling rock.

    i’m proud to say that sparklet and i’ve picked up the tradition …

    … granted, it’s a little later (we don’t get home until 4:45 usually).

    .. granted, instead of rolling rock i’m drinking some kind of fruity beer that would get my man card revoked (lately, lucy from starr hill or purple haze from abita).

    … granted, instead of fruity wine, sparklet is usually enjoying the classic, refined flavor of mommy juice.

    but, it’s the thought that counts. now if we can just get sparklet to start eating dinner, again.

  • three-cheese mushroom and spinach calzone

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    made a three-cheese mushroom and spinach calzone from epicurious, and the recipe was just spot-on good. one small change — it says to use parmesan, fontina and ricotta cheeses, but i used romano, fontina and mozzarella instead (as i hate ricotta, and had just run out of parmesan).

    the other thing to point out is the note in the recipe that you can usually stop by your local pizzeria and they will sell you fresh dough — it’s true, it works, and it makes the recipe overflow with awesomeness.

  • guitar hero

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    sparklet was bouncing around today to “when we were young” by the killers, so we decided to really blow her mind — and it worked.

    shattered.

  • the others

    as shocking as it is to my fragile, miopic worldview — we aren’t the first theparkerfamily.org.

    turns out, according to the internet archive “wayback machine” there was another parker family who had the domain back in 2001.

    i don’t have much on who they were — scott was the dad and wasn’t up for “programmer of the year”, jordan was the daughter and created a fan site for horses (called “thunder horses” no less) and a cheerleading page (featuring nearly impenetrable cheerleading trivia).

    family thunderhorses cheerleading

    unfortunately, 2 minutes of googling didn’t lead to any “where are they now” stories, and that’s just about the sum total of my attention span these days.

    in other news, the new owners of evanandtasha.com — our wedding domain from a few years back — got married, went on a cruise, and if splash pages are to be believed may be thinking about babies.

    more bulletins as warranted.

    From the Wayback Machine:
    the other theparkerfamily.org
  • national zoo

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    you’d think with the number of times we’ve been to the petting zoo that sparklet would have actually pet something by now — but sadly it’s not the case.

    most of the time it’s just me and the sparklet and there are just too many things to lose track of — hands on livestock, hands near eyes, hands in mouth mouth, stroller, camera, sanity, etc.

    but this time i had help. and she had petting (that’s Flash the Miniature Mediterranean Donkey, btw).

    the result? a bit of a yawner, actually.

    sparklet only really identifies things as animals when they move — everything else is just a big carpet. but, if the animals are moving, she can’t pet them. if they’re not moving, then what’s the point?

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    national zoo
  • discriminating palate

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    i’ve got no clue what the heck is going on, but all of a sudden sparklet has developed a discriminating palate. and by “discriminating” i mean she will only eat black beans.

    the lady sparkler has been slowly working more and more real food into her diet, and it must have dawned on her that we’ve been holding out — suddenly, that crappy-old pureed vegetables and fruits wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

    not that there was every a doubt, but it looks like we’ve created a diva.

  • firsts: sheet fort

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    photo of the week // week forty-three
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    firsts: building a sheet fort