day 92: We went to the park today with Valena John and Isaac. He didn’t seem to love the playground and he didn’t want to roll down the big grass hill … but he sure seemed to enjoy pushing Ben down the hill. Here he is just after giving Ben a good shove.

day 91: I’ve heard of sports stars having superstitions or lucky charms they carry with them to help them play better. I doubt any of them carry a fork. Maybe it was less about luck and more about the lack of a convenient trash can, but Cecilia carried this fork with her throughout our entire game of bocce ball.

day 90 : I baked a cake this evening for an office birthday party that we’re having tomorrow. The cake itself is pretty straightforward if you can follow a recipe, but the buttercream I make is a totally different story. It involves whipping egg whites, boiling sugar and lots of other wizardry. Made correctly it tastes like fluffy beautiful goodness. But one degree off on the temperature and it turns to a greasy, curdled mess. Thank goodness for candy thermometers.

day 89: I have been working on homework for the last 5 1/2 hours straight without a break (and it’s still not quite right… how frustrating!) and I am much too tired to run through the pile of photos I took today to find the best. Here’s the first one I shot today…

day 88: While waiting for my car to be done getting an oil change, Ben and I wandered into a drug store that happened to be selling Thrifty ice cream. For those of you not familiar with Thrifty ice cream, it’s delicious (and dirt cheap) drugstore ice cream that I used to get as a kid (back when the drugstore itself was called Thrifty, hence the name). The best part? They use a scoop that produces cylindrical ice cream instead of the standard sphere. Ah Thrifty… so tasty.

day 86: Ben and I ate at the Bay Cities Italian Deli for a late lunch this afternoon. The wait for a sandwich was a half hour at 4 o’clock, and they got Ben’s order completely wrong, but it was still delicious and worth a trip back. Especially because they have a crazy selection of old-timey sodas. Mmm nu-grape.

day 85: We cook a lot. And we buy a lot of red peppers to cook with. Today we decided we’re done with buying peppers and instead we’re going to (attempt to) grow our own. Here is our new pepper plant… ready to be transported to its home in our front yard. I can taste the delicious peppers already!

day 84: I’m addicted to ice cream. I love it. Today was a very very long day and the perfect afterwork remedy was some HGTV and ice cream (eaten with a tiny spoon of course). Delicious.

day 83: It’s been a while since I posted a self portrait. I was driving home from class tonight and noticed how big and full the moon was so I had an idea to shoot a self portrait in front of it… unfortunately in comparison to my head the moon didn’t look nearly as large… or impressive… and I don’t have a big enough zoom lens to get back far enough that my head and the moon would be more similarly scaled (which was the original idea). So pardon the lame moon photo. My next self portrait will be more thought out. I promise.

day 82: Our flight itinerary for the trip back had us scheduled to be on the ground in San Diego sometime before noon on Wednesday. Unfortunately Dallas had other plans. Plans which involved a green sky and massive amounts of lightning. Needless to say we weren’t about to go anywhere in weather like that. We finally made it home, but only after many hours in the Dallas airport’s TGI Fridays restaurant.