Chocolate Chip Cookies vs Transformers & a horrible Thunderstorm

This morning I suprised David by asking him if he wanted to help me bake chocolate chip cookies while Nathaniel was down for his nap in the afternoon. "Yes!" was the enthusastic answer I received. So shortly after Nathaniel went to bed, I got out the mixer, ingredients & David got his little chair & away we went.....

David is lovingly posing with my mixer, which I love. It was a birthday present from Richard and the boys this past November. Richard always says he doesn't like getting me stuff like this, but hey, if I want it, buy it! I've wanted a Kitchen Aid stand mixer about as long as we've been married.
I have a secret ingredient in my chocolate chip cookies. Wanna know what it is? Hmmm? If you keep reading, I might just tell you....

David enjoying the batter left on the beater.....

I also have a secret techinique for baking cookies. If you keep reading, I might just tell you......

We got 4 and 2/3rds dozen out of this batch. Would've had five dozen if David & I hadn't had 2 each.

David didn't actually do much baking. He was busy laying out the current Autobots & the Army vs. the Decepticons battle. He did come in occassionally to check on the cookies in the oven. In case you didn't know, these are all Decepticons.....

And these are the army guys, their tank, and their allies, the Autobots...... (the tank used to be an RC tank. Until it sat for a year while Richard was in Iraq & the battery went bad. Haven't replaced it yet.)

And the battle begins......

Last night we had a major thunderstorm. I didn't even know it was raining or storming, for that matter, until a huge, loud, sounded like it was in our front yard, clap of thunder went off about 3:30 am. Woke me up from a sound sleep, scared the dogs & the cat and woke Nathaniel. David? He slept through that. About an hour later he woke up cause Nathaniel was crying cause of a somewhat quieter bout of thunder sounded off. The dogs, Stormy especially, had a really hard time settling back down. She was pacing up and down the hall & kept going into the boys' room, which caused Nathaniel to keep waking up. I even had the door to their room closed and she'd nose it open. Old house, doors don't latch securely. So between 3:30 am and 8:30 am when Nathaniel woke up and crawled into bed with me, I think I got about 2 hours of sleep. So why am I still up at 10:50 pm? I'm not sure, but I'm heading for bed now. Hopefully it'll be an uneventful night. Its supposed to thunderstorm again though. I guess we'll find out later.

Is it Friday yet?

No? Only Tuesday? Darn. I was hoping it was Friday. David and Nathaniel seemed to be at each other's throats today. All day. Except the 2 1/2 hours that Nathaniel napped. Then there was peace. You see, David likes to play with his Transformers and have the Autobots fight the Decepticons and set up these big battle scenes. And Nathaniel? He likes to come knock them all down. Which then upsets David and he either gets mad and tries to beat Nathaniel up or he gets upset and cries and says that he doesn't like his brother. Which we all know is not true. David also likes to color, and he's very good at it and he doesn't like to share his big box of Crayola crayons or the Crayola art kit Grandma and Grandpa got him for his birthday. Which I can understand. I wouldn't want to share those things either. Especially with a little brother that tends to break crayons 2 seconds after he picks them up.

So what did I get to do all day? Try to distract Nathaniel and keep him from bothering David, which only succeeded about 50% of the time. That child is so stubborn. Anyone care to venture a guess where he gets that stubborness? Yep. His Daddy. Cause I am not even close to being that stubborn.

I'm going to bed now. I'm exhausted. I feel like I played referee all day or something, and ended up being at the bottom of a pile of kids. Well, I didn't really, but I sure feel like it.

David's back & Transformers 2 review

We picked David up at Cabela's in Owatonna, MN today. And also our nephew, Conner. He's spending the week with us. David was happy to be back with us, I think. I got an awesome squeeze hug from him!

Ok, now for the Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen review....

To start with, I've been looking forward to this movie since I found out they were making a sequel to the first one. Despite the horrible reviews from the professional critics, I was excited about it as it got closer to its release. I grew up with Transformers. The cartoon, the toys; Chris had a bunch of the toys, but got tired of them as he grew older and sold them in a garage sale when he was in high school.

So anyways, there are a lot of action sequences. There was probably stuff in the opening sequence that I missed that I'll catch the next time I see it (once its out on DVD). The Autobots from the first movie are back, minus Jazz, since he died at the end of the first movie. There are lots of additional Autobots - Arcee, the Twins, and my favorite of the new Autobots, Jetfire. Next to Optimus Prime, the Twins have the most dialogue. Most of it swearing, unfortunately. Most of what I could understand of their ghetto style talk (the best term I could think of for it, but I'm sure there's a better one) was swearing. Enough about the nasty dialogue.

One of the reviews I read said that there were a lot of sequences where Sam and Michaela were running in slow motion. This is true, however it didn't bother me as much as it did the critic, I think. Shia LaBeouf (sp?) and Megan Fox do have some good on-screen chemistry, in the couple of semi-romantic (but non-sexual) scenes.

Lots of action sequences involved lots of exploding things - cars, buildings, Autobots or Decpticons, but nothing involving blood or body parts. It also shows people flying through the air, but again, no blood or body parts.

There are several scenes that the movie could have done without, since they have no relevance to the entire plot. If you have to go to the bathroom early in the movie, go when Judy (Sam's mom) comes into Sam's dorm room with a baggie with a pot leaf on it. Its a good 3-4 minutes of Sam & his dad chasing his mom around campus while she's high on pot brownies. Not relevant at all to the movie, although it is funny. Also not relevant and very unnecessary are the scenes where the dog Mojo is humping the new Witwicki dog. Twice.

Former Captain Lennox (now a Major) has a part in the show as well. He leads a human/Autobot team that goes after Decepticons. He has a funny scene with the new liaison to their human/Autobot group involving a parachute. I think this was the funniest scene in the movie.

There is a scene towards the end (the last 30-45 minutes) that I got a huge kick out of. I'm a big fan of the show "Clean House" on the Style network (channel 235 on DirecTV). One of the hosts, Matt Iseman, has a very small scene, 1 or 2 lines, with Major Lennox. He comes down the steps of a big plane, says his lines and goes back up the steps. As soon as he started talking I knew who it was. I only mention this in case someone else likes Clean House & is planning on seeing the movie. Watch for him. He's there.

There are a couple of scenes that definitely made this a no-watch for our boys. One is in Sam's dorm room. You'll know it when you see it, although its pretty short. The language is a big thing. There is a scene with Sam & Megatron that was the clincher for me. It creeped me out. If you have see any of the Stargate: SG1 series, part of it reminded me of a Gould symbiote. Enough said.

Two spoilers. If you don't want to know, don't read this:(Highlight it with your mouse) Optimus Prime dies. Sam dies.

All in all, I really liked the show. If they had not put in so much swearing, I would've really, really liked it. If they'd have taken out the unnecessary scenes I mentioned above, I would've loved it. I like it enough to buy it on DVD. I'm looking forward to being able to watch it with subtitles on, so I can catch the dialogue I missed since it was spoken so quickly.