The after party guest

Ashlee just posted about our neighborhood's block party, but the fun didn't end when we walked back to our end of the street. It's a bit ironic, but on the very night of the gathering intended to improve safety on our avenue, we found an uninvited visitor waiting for us at home. Our best guess is that the visitor actually came in last night, but we first found it this evening. Behold:

That's right, it's a lizard. Ashlee saw it before me, but thankfully she was across the room and able to control her hysteria. (She actually didn't freak out much at all.) This clock is in our kitchen, and is mounted above the opening to the sun room. The lizard is inches from the ceiling in this photo.

I've heard that people don't hesitate as much to kill insects, spiders, and "bugs" in general because they aren't like us. They have six, eight, many, on no legs. The may have lots of eyes, or none at all. Maybe this is why it was out of the question to do anything other than return the lizard to our front yard, a.k.a. front desert. Even though it wasn't much bigger than a cock roach and moved just as fast, if not faster, this critter had a ticket for the great outdoors, and not the grave. These pictures really don't do it justice though. It was kind of translucent. Had it just been sitting on a table, you might think it was a toy made out of rubber.

I was thinking about trying to kind of brush it off the wall and let it fall in a bucket, but I realized that wouldn't work. Once I took down the clock and scared the lizard a bit, I realized it was fast and capable of gripping the ceiling. If it fell in the bucket, it might climb out and end up who knows where. So I put the bucket over it, and tried to slide a stiff sheet of paperboard under it (like a spider in a cup). This didn't work; the lizard ended up between the paperboard and the wall. Finally, Ashlee's flash of insight provided the best idea. I grabbed the fish bowl-shaped vase that happened to be sitting on the counter (empty, waiting to be washed) and put it over the lizard. This time the lizard climbed into the vase itself, scaling the glass effortlessly. I easily covered the opening, setting our guest down on the counter, inside a glass cage:

Again, the pictures don't do justice: his rubbery appearance was quite bizarre. Anyway, after this picture, I took it out to front yard and released it on some rocks. He crawled off, moving his legs so fast I could barely make out their steps.

We realized it must have crawled in under our front door overnight. We left the big wooden door open with a fan drawing in nice cool air through the metal grate of the security door. We won't be doing that again. Titus was supposed to keep an eye out for intruders (he loves to sit there and watch everything outside), but apparently he nodded off during his watch.

Neighborhood Block Party

Well, tonight was the night of our neighborhood block party. It's sponsored by the Mesa Police Department as a community event in order to encourage people to meet their neighbors. We were both pretty excited to meet the neighbors and start working our way into the community.

Hot dogs were served and side dishes were brought by everyone, so we had a nice dinner and got to meet the neighbors. It seems like we're on a pretty good street. A couple of police officers stopped by to visit (since the PD sponsors it) and we even had our City Councilman there for a while. It was just the people on our street, so it wasn't overwhelming or anything. While people came and left, Todd and I figured there were probably 20-30 people there. The neighborhood seems really helpful and we're excited to be a part of it.

Of course...when we got home, we found our home had been broken into. But that's a whole other post. I think I'll let Todd post about it.

A Night In

Thursday and Friday were "No School" days for me - which meant the kids got a break and I got caught up on some paperwork! Luckily, I was able to work from home during those 2 days, which was great. On Friday morning, after dropping Todd off at school, I went to Safeway to do some shopping...

And boy did I do some shopping. I had a little plan in mind...I wanted to have a nice dinner waiting at home for when Todd got done with school. We had gone out the weekend earlier and I thought it would be nice to stay in (plus we like to save money where we can). I got a lot of housework done (look at me, a little Betty homemaker!), but I didn't quite have dinner waiting on the table when he was done. But he didn't have to wait long.


Mmm...There's our food! Let me tell you what was on the menu. The theme? Italian (sorta?)

Here's me, just finishing the cooking in my wonderful kitchen (more and more this house is feeling like home).


For an appetizer, I boiled the artichoke in water, chopped garlic, and a bay leaf. To eat the artichoke, you peel off the leaf and run your teeth along the end. It has an interesting flavor and it's kind of fun to eat.

Then we had pasta with a tomato alfredo sauce that I expanded on. I cooked up chicken in olive oil, with some garlic and chopped red pepper. Then I added the tomato alfredo sauce. Then I added a lot more finely chopped red pepper, plus some chopped mushroom and diced tomatoes. I added more chopped garlic to that, so it came out as a chunky but very flavorful sauce.

As a side we had zucchini and asparagus chopped up and sautéed in butter and chopped garlic.

We also had garlic bread to go along with it. On two slices of the garlic bread I placed slice tomato and some mozzarella cheese (to make poor man's bruschetta!).



To top it off, we had a glass of Blackberry Merlot wine. Mmmm mmm!



We both dressed up (me in a dress and Todd in black pants and a nice black shirt). Then we started a TV show that we've gotten into (Stargate: SG1) and had dinner and entertainment!



It was a wonderful night! I'm determined to do something like that maybe once a week.

And hey, while I'm not a chef, at least I'm cooking more than pancakes now! Right, Mom?

Random thoughts

I hear that it's supposed to get up into the 100's this weekend. Yes, yes, it's October. Haha! I love it here! The warm weather and blue skies make me smile as I'm driving to work. It's so much better than the constant cloudiness and drizzle that we experienced in Pittsburgh.

Another reason that I love the continued warm weather - our pool. It's so nice to be able to use it to help cool off in the heat. I love sitting next to it with a good book in hand. I'm sure that we'll be spending a lot of time in it this weekend (and this time we'll be using sunscreen!).

Speaking of books... I finally found my way to the Mesa Public Library, where I got my library card (along with 9 books to read). I've already finished one book and I'm more than halfway done with the second book. It's a nice library and I'm looking forward to getting a lot of use out of it! I'm sticking with my usual genre for now, though I'm hoping to branch off some more. Perhaps I'll meander over to non-fiction sometime in the near future. Well, maybe not so near...after all, there's a lot of fiction for me to catch up on!

Well, that's my little update. My class will arrive in a little over an hour...And four hours after they arrive, they will leave to go home. A few minutes after they board the bus, I will hopefully be driving towards home. My bed is calling to me.

-Ashlee, who has been somewhat ill this week with a terrible head cold.

Pictures!

Like Ashlee said, we have some pictures that we kept meaning to post, so here they are, finally. Facebook makes uploading and sharing images really easy, and they don't set any limits.

Pictures of our house (Facebook album)

Did you know?

It's possible to get sunburned in October.

Trust us.

-From Ashlee and Todd, who are both hurting a bit.

Wedding Dance

We should have totally done this.

Wedding Entrance.