Omer Family Visits!

At the beginning of March the Omer family came down for Joey's baby blessing. Here's the crew minus Dad, who's taking the picture.

We had a blast together! We decided to pretty much just hang around the house instead of going out to do anything. Mom spent a lot of the time inside with Abby. What a treat for both of them!

Meanwhile, the boys spent some serious time (mostly Saturday AM) in the back yard working on the second patio area.

Grandpa Talbot was particularly useful. Without his help, we would have been virtually toolless. Grandpa single handedly repaired both the tiller and the rake.

Meanwhile, Mom did spend some time out in the garden with Abby and Arty (our monstrous artichoke plant, shown here). Amber spent some time out there too.

The crazy thing about bringing the dirt level down a couple of inches is that it's a crazy amount of work, but you can hardly tell anything's changed in the end!

And of course, the most important part of working in the yard is properly resting after (and sometimes during, or before...)

We had some fun with our new Canon Powershot camera, and Abby was always happy to act as a subject for our experiments.

For about a month we had a special treat: Uncle Mark! He was deployed here at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, so we got to have him over for dinner a couple of times.

And here's Abby torturing, I mean, taking care of Joey.

So to sum up, we had a great time!

So there!

Green Omers

We Finally Put Grass in! WOOOHOOO!

The starting look!

Dave did so much work to just get ready to lay the grass down. He is wonderful!



The final result is wonderful! We love it! It just feels so nice go out and feel soft grass under our feet and to look out the back door and see green! Abby loves to play out back for hours now (yah!). One step at a time we are finishing our back yard. We've been in the house a little over 2 years now...so it's about time for grass eh? Hope you all know you are welcome to come visit and have a picnic any time! :)

Here's a quick shot of the Fall time vegis we have planted. Hopefully we'll harvest some yummy brocolli, spinach, lettace and onions sometime! :)

Garden Fun!

We found a HUGE catepillar in our garden! Watch out. They eat through leaves pretty quick! This one had quite the stinger too.


Here's one of our first picked watermelons. It was yummishous!

Abby gave it kisses! lol

We Can't Find Our Camera...

...so you get my drawing instead:


Oh, I should mention again that this is Dave writing.

First, I could never draw Amber well enough to do her beauty justice. So just image the most beautiful woman you can here.

***************

And now for some explanation! We conquered the garden on Labor Day. It had simply gotten out of hand. I drew the spider, because there were no less than eight of these monstrous beasts holding our harvest hostage. I actually used our old vacuum to suck them all up, and then disposed of them discretely. You may say that that's inhumane. I say they're inhuman.

In all honesty, it was more a matter of safety. The overgrowth had attracted bugs, spiders, and even mice. Since our neighbor recently found a young rattlesnake in her yard, we decided to try to discourage snakes from exploring our yard by taking away their food source.

On a brighter note, we're now up to 11 watermelons on the vine, which vine has taken over a full corner of our yard.

And on a more personal note, I hope that you enjoy my 'tweets' on the corner of our page here. I try to keep them witty, relevant, and enjoyable to read. It's all in preparation for building a community around our upcoming webcomic. Stay tuned!

-Dave

Thoughts on the Yard & More

Before I go any further, this is Dave posting.

Amber has pointed out a couple of times that I don't post very often. The simple fact is that I haven't ever truly posted, and there's a good reason: Amber's got the photos. And we all know what a post without a photo is. Boring.

But be that as it may, I've decided that I'm going to post from time to time, just to give my perspective on things. And perhaps instead of pictures, I'll include fun or interesting links!

So on to the litany of fun subjects! First off is

The Backyard

Yes, we've put a lot of effort into the back yard this year. The reason is that I set a goal to have it completed by the end of this calendar year. I know, some people finish stuff like I'm doing in a month. But I'm notoriously methodical when it comes to yardwork. Furthermore, I really don't know what I'm doing. So I've taken copious amounts of time to study each aspect before diving into it. And the last part is this: it takes $$ to make a yard. And that hurts the wallet a bit less when spread out over time. The end result? 1 yard / 2 years. As long as Amber's OK with it, so am I. But I really like how it's turning out.

Progress may be slow for the next while, as monsoon rains and high temperatures rule normal work hours. But fear not; grass and the second flagstone patio are coming soon! Which leads me to something I work on in the mean time:

The Webcomic

Yes, your spellchecker will tell you this is not a word. I assure you that it is. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a Webcomic is a comic - on the web. Tricky, huh? But here's the real trick: some of the best webcomics are only on the web. This means that you'll never (or almost never) stumble upon these comics by picking up a paper. But let's face it: print is dyeing. (That's a pun, people. You laugh now.) Newspaper readership is down, and they pay their artists 1950's rates. This drives more and more artists to skip the middle-man and present their product directly to you - the viewers.

"But wait!" I hear you say. "How on earth do they make a living without the Syndicate paying them??" Excellent question. The Webcomic Business Model is based on a smaller fan base which actually supports the artist directly, either through donations or merchandise purchases.

Before I proceed, I'll add a word of caution. The Web lacks one thing your newspaper has: an editor. This means that people are free to post whatever they feel like in their comic. Consequently, viewer discression is advised. You may have clicked through to the comics linked above. These are the only comics which I can whole-heartedly recommend, and even these may have mild violence or language. Once you go to these sites, there will be links to other comics which may not uphold the same values. There are several comics I find exteremely etertaining, but you have to be prepared to stop reading at the first sign of trouble.

And so we arive at the point of this topic. A few month ago, I began collaborating with Cannon Hamaker on a new webcomic. We've made a lot of progress, but we're not going to launch the site until we have 30 strips finished and several more in a buffer. (Did I forget to mention? Most webcomics leave their entire archive open to readers. Years of comics at your disposal!) A preview of some art can be found here. The title is subject to change, as is everything else. We'll let you know when the site launches!

So in short, I spend some of my time working on this. And Amber's a Saint to let me. She's also an invaluable resource for perfecting ideas and providing an outside perspective. Which leads me to the next subject:

The Family

You hear a lot from Amber, but she doesn't say a ton about herself in this blog. I just want to set a couple of things straight.

From my point of view, Amber's the best Mom in the World. She's beautiful, sweet, charming, sensible, patient, fun...oh, wait. That's my list for best Wife in the World! (She holds both titles.) It's clear to me just how good of a Mother Amber is when I come home and play with Abby. I know that Abigail's picking up all of her Mother's best characteristics, whether she's being taught them directly or simply by osmosis. It's simply a joy for me to come home to both of them every day.

I don't know if she's mentioned this, but Amber's also been scrapbooking for quite some time. I know it's not easy while Abby's awake, but she's made significant progress on both her old mission scrapbooks, as well as on new books for Abby. I'm grateful to have a wife who so creatively preserves our family history.

Amber's also involved in a couple book clubs. I'm personally jealous of the books she's read in the recent past. (Perhaps if I wasn't writing a comic...). She often summarizes the books for me, which leads to great conversation on many diverse, interesting topics. I love discussing them with her.

And Abigail! What a cutie! Amber's covered this pretty well, but she's just the smartest, cutest, funnest little 1-1/2-year-old ever. No, really. No, really!

Which leads me to the next subject for this post:

THE END
(Of the post)
(I'll post again some day)