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we spent a couple of nights in des moines over the weekend. that’s where i found out jenny’s brother ben was an expert in canine footwear. teddy, ben & janice’s dog, over does it when he licks the snow out of his paws. he licks so much, they start to crack. so ben & janice bought these little dog boots. they say when it’s REALLY cold he wears a sweater too.

ben was cracking us up last night… him and his hat head hair! he came over an hour later with the rest of his family (christy, josh, and kaitlyn). when they said “what should we do?” jenny said “let’s dance in the living room!” i played a corb lund song on youtube, always keep an edge on your knife. after the roof blew off and the smoke settled, we thought we were done… then kaitlyn said “play it again!” so we started dancing and yodeling again as corb lund sang:
never put your hat on the bed, son,
never put your hat on the bed
cuz if your hat’s on the bed you might wake up dead
so don’t ya never put ya hat on the bed

here is the irony of ironies: by the late 90′s, all of the arcades i went to as a kid died when people realized they could stay home, and play games instead– fast forward 20 years, new wave toys is making retro arcade games 1/6th the size of the originals that you can play in your home! they have all the sights and sounds of the old games, and retro gamers like willy (pictured above) are going nuts over them. if there was ever a place to create & destroy worlds, it was the 80′s arcade. i loved going to alladin’s castle at northpark mall, spaceworld in neosho, lemans and malibu in kc, and all the other dark rooms dimly lit by a game’s marquee and screen… and now i can can be in two places at once!

our niece, maddie, crawled into the deep recesses of her mind for this super cool design & posted it on instagram yesterday. she used the phrase “moody jungle vibes” to describe this beautiful hand painted art on black paper. you can see more of her creations on her website: merrylittlestudio.com.

this little plastic dinosaur sits in our window next to the driveway. he and i both thought the sun was gonna come out this morning when we saw the little patches of blue sky. i’m really glad i took this photo because the clouds eventually moved in and squashed our hopes. some friends took notice when i shared this moment on facebook. chrisy commented “he looks lonely.” i responded “he’s lonely for the sun.”

last night i saw a trellis out of the corner of my eye. there was something about the white lattice work on it that reminded me of a phone booth, and just for a second that’s what i thought it was. this morning i imagined singing where have all the phone booths gone to the tune of that old 60′s song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone. i know where they are by the way… in our pockets.

max can be pretty persistent. he doesn’t talk. he just keeps jumping up in front of the computer screen until i play with him. i took him off the desk three times before i gave up & took his picture. happy presidents day.

time had a weird habit of stopping at our house for awhile, and not just when the batteries needed changing in the wall clock. when the big hand and little hand kept getting tangled up with each other, we knew it was time for a change. so we said goodbye black espresso clock, hello hot pink neon clock! originally i wanted a clock that could plug into the wall & didn’t need batteries. unfortunately, the only affordable ones i could find were made in the last century, and their remaining lifespan was dubious at best. also, jenny didn’t want something like this in our living room to make it look like a man cave:as it turns out, i DO have to plug in our new clock… but that’s only for the neon.

i wasn’t the only one to get a new pair of shoes over the weekend. when i said “check out my new shoes,” to chloé yesterday, she said “i got new shoes too!” so i took this pic of her vera wang’s and my skechers, hashtagged #fancyfootwear, and wondered why my feet appear to be levitating.

if the moon crashed into the earth, life as we know it would be over– BUT if a fifty pound object fell on my toes, i would be alright! how do i know this? i checked the safety stats on my new pair of skechers last night. the boys at the lab say that i have an ASTM F2412-2011 I/75 C/75 steel toe rating on each shoe, and now my feet are WAY safer than they used to be! these shoes can even take direct pressure up to 2500 lbs. before the steel toe starts give.