Dear Owen,

Ya little bugger. I don't know how you did it - secret messages or what have you - but Emeline spent most of the morning (after ripping off her Pull-Up) running from and Joe screaming, "NAKED! NAKED! NAKED! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

Please to not encourage, ya goofy lil boy!

Love,
Aims

Laura, I'm sorry your birthday plans ran aground (sorry). That was such a sweet idea on Brendon's behalf, though.

Cashmere, Blue Liv is adorable, but yikes she looks an awful lot like a kid in that photo.

I think I need these shoes. Do I get the practical black or the red?

They're pretty affordable, so...

Red! Then you can look at your feet and say, "I'm a whore!"

Silly girl. YOU BUY THEM BOTH.

God did not intend for us to choose between red and black shoes.

Red! I wear my red flats all the time. They are practical!

God did not intend for us to choose between red and black shoes.

Coincidentally, neither does Satan.

sj, trying to view that page just (twice) made Safari, "unexpectedly quit," so I couldn't see the shoes, but I'll vote red, because everybody should have more red shoes.

Just finished making the gumbo. Very good, though I think I might futz with the spices and herbs a bit. Thickening things with a roux is fun -- it's magic! (Or chemistry. Whichever. I just watched Alton Brown explain how it works a few days ago.) Turns out gumbo z'herbes, when it hasn't sat for hours in a college cafeteria serving line, is actually deep green, not muddy greenish brown!

The muffins, my first experiment in vegan baking, seem to have turned out pretty well. Not really the texture I was expecting, but still very good. They're soft -- closer to a cupcake texture than to what I think of as a muffin texture.

I think I'm going to forget about the sweet potatoes for now. I can make them tomorrow. For now, I've already used up more cooking utensils than my dishwasher can hold.

Red Shoes, because both Tom Waits and Elvis Costello have written songs about red shoes.