Muggles and Birthdays

I have officially finished the new Harry Potter book The Deathly Hallows. I received it in the mail on Saturday, the day it was released and managed to finish it by Sunday evening. It was sad saying goodbye to one of my favorite series but what a fantastic read! I think she did a brilliant job ending the loved series but I hope someday she revisits Harry and writes a few more.





As some of you know Nathan's birthday was last week and we celebrated it in Baton Rouge with his family. It was kind of a disappointment or as Nathan says "anticlimactic". None of his friends made it and no one gave a single gift but me. It was kind of odd. I'm beginning to understand why he hates birthdays... I think some of you would agree it would have been a much more rowdy and good time if we had spent it in Shreveport.




The 30G iPod I got him was a huge hit and he was even more elated when he discovered most of his previously stolen music had been purchased and downloaded already. He spent all weekend with headphones on it was a little irritating :)



After the weekend was through I joined him as he headed down to New Orleans. It was fun sightseeing and we took a day to drive down to Vernon to see the coast where I saw my first alligator!



Sorry the photo's not good but I was driving and Nathan had the camera for once. As you can see he's no genius with a zoom lens. There were a bunch of alligators in the water just chillin', they looked kinda cute bobbing around in the water. I was reminded of Chuck E. Cheese's and felt the urge to want to smash them on the head with a padded hammer. It was an interesting drive down as we passed through counties that had been seriously flooded. A few houses were still spray painted with slogans like "have gun, will use." or my personal favorite " You loot, We Shoot" I thought the rhyming was a nice touch amidst all of the chaos. Seeing as how they spray painted onto the actual siding of the houses they're stuck with it unless they want to repaint. I wanted to have a photo of a least one of the houses to show you all but once again that would involve Nathan operating a technologically advanced device like a digital camera. Some day hopefully that poor muggle won't be so intimidated by technology. It will be a miracle if he doesn't find a way to brake that iPod soon.

Toldeo Bend Revisited

Our latest fishing excursion yesterday resulted in my first catch in over 10 years. I am estimating the last time I went fishing was sometime before high school, possibly even before junior high.. *sigh. Anyway, I'm told this is a bass, a bit small though don't you think? I guess I'm used to seeing the trophy photos inside Sportsman's Warehouse. Nathan caught a few small fish himself but certainly nothing worth keeping, we are strictly catch and release. Another wonderful day and the boat ran great again so we were pretty happy with ourselves.






Another beautiful sunset over the lake...

The New Adventures of Old Yeller...

This is a reference to a fishing boat that has been in Nathan's family for over 20 years and at one point in it's life was noticeably yellow in color thus it was dubbed 'Ole Yeller'. A few years ago Nathan's dad bought a new boat and poor ole yeller has only been used a few times since. It is now sitting in my driveway in hopes of starting a new life here with us. Most of you know how NOT enthused I am with the whole water scene especially murky old lakes but fishing sounds like fun right now and as small as this boat is it is actually quite roomy on the water. We spent last weekend cleaning it up, thankfully I wasn't present for the dead rat findings (yes, multiple findings) but I did my fair share of scrubbing and rinsing. It may be a tiny boat and showing a bit of age here and there but our first fishing excursion on Sunday proved it's worth and dependability. We headed out to Toledo Bend in the Hoyt fashion... about 4 hours after we intended to leave. I was skunked (meaning I didn't catch a single thing) and didn't receive the tiniest little nibble on my line and Nathan didn't fair much better catching the smallest Bass I've ever seen. I'm still wondering what a fish that small was thinking it could do with bait so large, ambitious little sucker. Later in the day he brought out his new fly fishing rod and attempted to teach himself how to fly fish for bass... he had a great time and so did I. Here are a few photos of Nathan getting the boat ready and fishing...









The end of a perfect day ...