Recent happenings

I recently gifted one of our new baby agaves to a friend as their house-warming gift.  It made me think about how small ours was before/when we first moved over to California.  I managed to find the photo of it (thank goodness for this blog!) and so here it is, 3 years ago in a pot.  And this one was gifted to us by our neighbor in Arizona:

And looks at it now compared to Charlie!  And it still have 2 more new babies.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet:

In the meantime, our friendly neighborhood squirrel has been visiting our backyard quite a bit.  It's constantly burying stuff unbeknownst to Bobby who is busy reading his newspapers:

I'm just glad the boys are just not trying to shoot the squirrel!  Not sure who the biggest kid here is.  Hmm... Ha ha!

A friend of mine posted recently about a breakfast she had at home - broiled sweet potato with honey.  Totally reminded me of home (Malaysia) so I decided to make some too.  Yummm... that smell and taste definitely made me think of home, even though this photo is not doing that sweet potato much justice:

I finally bought a new pan and definitely my favorite so far!  It's perfect for making Pancake and it doesn't overheat too quickly unlike the previous ones. I'm also using avocado oil instead of olive oil.  That seems to help too:

Graham had a water polo game a few weeks ago. Quite the view from the school:

Unfortunately he didn't get to play so we are working on his team spirits and attention during practice/games:

Graham came home from swim on Monday with some red markings on his face.  Supposedly the coach had his dog out of the car and roaming around the swimming pool:

Not sure if the dog got into Graham's mask or towel but thankfully after a proper shower, Graham was back to normal.  I wonder if Graham will ever get over the dog/cat allergy.

I made some lemon muffins with lemon sweet cream a couple of weeks ago for a friend's daughter. It was her birthday and this was the only way I could figure out how to transport them without ruining the cream! 

By the way, the muffins were especially yummy when they were still nice and warm.  And I was only able to spare 2 so Graham and Charlie have been constantly asking me when I'm going to make more.  Maybe without or slightly less sweet cream though - these boys don't need any more sugar!

Unfortunately, the new baking cups I was using bled into my pan!  It's the red colored ones.  I actually wrote to the company but then they redirected me to their supplier.  I've yet to send them a note:

I managed to paint a few more panels last week and got a little bit more clever with laying down a tarp for cleanup:

And thankfully I did because I managed to find my missing earring!  I had previously gathered the corners of the tarp to put away and as I re-laid it down, all the paint scrapings were gathered together.  So I got out the brush and dustpan to sweep it all up and oh boy, something shiny!  Thankfully it was just a cheapy earring but even so, it was a style that I liked and I had just put it on that day.

So now Bobby is saying the fluorescent light needs to go.  Sooooo.... I did managed to pull off one panel to check out the wiring:

Replace it with LED or with a fan and LED.  Good thing I have a gazillion more panels to paint before having to make that decision.  Ha ha!

It's been really gloomy and cool lately.  These clouds yesterday had some funny formations:

And I had to take Charlie out today/early this morning.  Check out the fog!

That's it for now.  Can't believe it's already November!!!