Here's a quick, family-oriented posting that's designed to do two things: 1) It is Natalie's birthday!! She is 19 today. It's rather hard to believe that it was that long ago that I awoke at the Herron's house in 1981 after a night of Dungeons & Dragons to see the note that little Natalie had come into the world. She is every bit as cool today as she was then. Maybe even cooler, since she knows how to use the toilet. And speaking of babies, here is number 2).....



I did this all by myself, kind of. The picture on the page, not the baby. Ned helped me, too. I figured that I needed to make some changes so that this blog starts looking a little better. So here's where I begin, with Melissa. I am so proud of my big sis, and her little darling ROCKS.

I will admit this much: My initial impetus for posting this one was that I noticed that my name is second to last on Huffman's page. i still don't even know what the stinking criteria are, but here I am jumping through his hoop like a bleeding....Dolphin! That's my eco-rant for the day. We took the Vicious Horde to the Zoo in Indy today, and I actually sat through the entire dolphin show. It really makes me ill to watch it, but I kept getting pressure from my staff that I should model the participation ethic that I so fervently hound my little urchins about. I am still not so sure about that one--I figure there should be some modelling of standing up for one's principles. Some of my older kids asked later why I didn't like it, and I explained that I prefer to see dolphins in the wild. That seemed to satiate them, which is not what I wanted. I would rather explain why I think the whole concept is a bunch of bs. They even had a little part where they used a human volunteer to demonstrate the training process. They asked her what her favorite food was, and that if she were being trained, she would be provided with it when she did certain tricks. They went on to say that a dolphin's favorite food is cold, dead fish. That is such bs. Dolphins don't naturally eat dead fish. They have to be acclimated to it, or in other words, starved until they eat it. I bet Hrothgar would eventually eat McDonald's if I held off on the Nutro Max long enough. Yeesh.