Rainy Sunday

Ok, so I suppose I should first explain the pictures, because that's probably what you looked at first and now you probably are wondering what they're all about.

1. First Picture. Today, little John Paul took his first leap into the outside world. Yes, he jumped out of the nest. It was the cutest thing because he was all wobbly and off balance and slipped down to the bottom of the cage (he wasn't hurt). Then Mama bird flew down next to him and started jumping from the bottom of the cage to the first perch, lots of times, up and down, up and down, until he finally figured it out. Eventually he made his way back up to the nest. The picture that you see below is John Paul and Daddy Brad. The daddy finch has the orange cheeks. We'll find out in 6-8 weeks if little John Paul is a John Paul or a Johnette Paulette (as they get older their feathers and beaks change color - notice now he has all the same colored feathers and a black beak... the female birds are light gray and have light orange beaks. Male birds are generally darker gray, have bright orange cheeks and bright orange beaks).
2. Second Picture. Tonight Tim made me a meatloaf for dinner. Holy cow, it was good. My compliments to his mama for teaching him to cook! He made it from scratch and made it with carrots all around it and some buttered noodles. It was so good that I ate too fast and then had to go lay down! Yum!
3. Third Picture. Ok, this one is kind of random. I actually meant to post it much earlier and kept forgetting. Sometime last month Kyra and Tim came over and I made an apfelstrudel. We had already been drinking Coronas, so this continued into dinner time. In true German style we had beer and apfelstrudel! Ok, so Corona is not exactly the beer of Bavaria, but it's beer none-the-less. :-D

Today we took another bike ride. I know, we're getting hooked Eva. It's bad. We need gloves next because we're both getting callouses on our hands. Speaking of callouses, I think the reason I felt like I was getting them on my butt before was because the saddle was a little worn out on my old pony. I'm telling you, what a difference shock absorbers make. Yes, my old bike had none. Now I go over speed bumps and it doesn't feel like the seat is going up places it shouldn't.

What the heck is happening with my Kings?! For those of you who don't follow basketball, I'll make sure to explain it all. It's playoff time. It's done in "levels". You have to beat a team on one level to move up. It's the best of seven games, so that means the first person to win four games in the series moves on. So last night was the first game for the Kings. They are playing the Seattle Supersonics (see the right hand side of the blog for TV times and channels). The Kings played horribly. At one point they were down by 21 points. They ended up losing by 5. Not so bad. I would have been more upset had they lost by 21. What was worse was how Mike Bibby played. He's what we call "clutch". That means that he's great at hitting "buzzer beaters" (those are generally hard to make shots at the last very second that win the game). In fact, that's what he's known for, both in college basketball and in NBA basketball. He's a good scorer and generally ends up with a lot of assists (that's when he makes a pass that leads to a basket). Well, last night Mike Bibby scored a grand total of three points. He made one basket and got a free throw. And he had some miniscule amount of assists. Very unlike him. In fact, as we were watching the game, I commented that the last time I saw him play anything like that (this ended up being the worst game of his career) was last year during the playoffs when he played on a severely injured foot. Then this morning I'm reading the Sacramento Bee online and it's talking about how he hurt his foot (again - he broke it last year) and had been icing it all day. Great. I hope he and the Kings can pull it all together... darn it, I want my championship!!!

Anyways, that's about it for today. I spent the rest of the day curled up on the sofa watching movies with Tim because it was all rainy and cold. It was a really nice, really relaxing weekend! Make sure you read yesterday's blog and check out the pictures below that one!