Cake!

Anne made this cake for Jane's reception. It was awesome!

Cutting down the Lilac Tree!

Most lilacs are bushes--and that's the way it should be. But OUR lilac was a tree. It was as tall as our house and heavily wooded. I cut it down with our sweet saw! (Brandon helped). Now it's gone, but we're really glad we sprayed the perimeter of our house for ants today because...THERE WAS A COLONY OF CARPENTER ANTS LIVING INSIDE THE TREE. It was completely hollow inside. Also--they crawled on me. It was horrible. Apparently they don't bite, though--or at least they didn't bite me!

An artist's rendering of the awesome/terrifying experience!

Techority 48-Hour Challenge!

So...there's a website called Techority run by a woman in Australia named Peach! Annually, they have a challenge for aspiring video game programmers, where, in 48 hours, you design a game based on a series of words. So, last Saturday at 3am (I was awake with my pain), I logged in to find "waterballoon, love, bucket, and shoe." So we designed an awesome game based on hamsters in love! You had to pop waterballoons to fill buckets and manipulate see-saws and other objects to cause the hamsters to roll together! We call it, "Buckets of Love!!"

Brandon has more information on the design and screen shots from the game at braneof.com! It's his new electronic headquarters for his video game company! I think the game turned out great, and Brandon is a super-excellent designer! I'm so proud of him for his hard work on this and the other games he's been working on! The world is about to experience a new Nintendo! Stay tuned...

And for this game, I was the artist!!

this is me doing my artwork! our table is really cluttered. We'll take care of it--some day. Maybe when Brandon makes it to the big time with his video games, we'll just hire someone to do it!

This is the main character, Hammy! He is stuck in his little blue hamster ball, staring out for his girlfriend, Hammette!

 We were supposed to find out the results of the contest today, but there were a lot of entries and so the judging is going a little slower than expected. But this is what we hope to find out soon: