My Official Review of Captain America: Civil War

I will neither confirm nor deny that we skipped school as a family a few weeks ago to go see the new Avengers movie.

It sure looks like we did

I had heard some pretty glowing reviews of this movie heading in to it, so my expectations were insanely high.  Not always a good thing.  But generally speaking, if a movie has Captain American in it, it's hard to screw up.


Pros

Captain America.  Lot and lots of Captain America.
Ant Man's hidden talent
Spider-Man's completely unknown face and adorable innocence
Bucky and Falcon's obvious affection for each other
"Dude dresses up as a cat and you don't want to know more?"
Marissa Tomei and RDJ reunited!!  (See Only You for reference)
Plot was a little thin to me, but I guess you do what it takes to make all the Avengers fight each other.   Because, let's face it, that was awesome!
The scene of all scenes when it comes to Captain America
Luke did not have to use the bathroom during the entire movie



Cons

No Hulk
Way too long and it dragged in places
The whole "prison in the middle of the ocean" or "secret lost hiding space buried in a cavern in Russia with dry ice fog and weird containment chambers" is getting really cliche
Screenplay not as punchy and funny as I had hoped
Stan Lee's cameo
So how exactly are Black Widow and Hawkeye not dead by now?
Vision.  He is not on my list of Top Ten Avengers.


400 bonus points for Rhodey sustaining an actual injury and negative 80,000 points for Disney making a movie that included the United Nations. Overall I give this movie 4 out of 5 shields.  #teamcapforlife

Opossums Do Not Eat Blossoms; They Eat Chicken

So apparently baby opossums like chicken! Last night we found this little guy cleaning up the last remaining bits of the rotisserie chicken carcass I set out for all the neighborhood cats.  

(Seriously, if you want to see a neat magic trick, put a chicken carcass outside at night and in the morning the entire thing will be gone. I imagine if you had a hidden video camera set up all night, this trick would get even better.)  

Please sir, can I have a little more?

These were our respective reactions to our visitor:

Me:  He's ADORABLE!!! But he also could have rabies.

Cindy:  He's soooo cute, I want to hod it! Wait, what are rabies?

Luke:  He has a really long tail.

Jacob:  I want to know where it lives. 

He hung around for about an hour while Cucuface and Yoshi completed ignored him. They probably thought they would just get tickled with its long nails, so I really don't blame them.  Tickling's the worst.  Finally we closed the garage door and went to bed and when I came out this morning, there was no trace of an opossum anywhere.  Here's hoping he wasn't carried off by an owl!

My Puzzler is Sore

We were finally able to finish up the cereal puzzle!!

We would have been done sooner, but every time I sat down to work on it I suddenly had to go eat a bowl of Golden Grahams.

Weird.

We also finished the circular bald eagle puzzle that Grandma and Grandpa Bingham brought back from their trip to Washington D.C.

And now we have started the piece de resistance!  The bacon puzzle.

I seriously have my doubts about the feasibility of finishing this before Christmas, though it started out easy enough.  Cindy put the border together in about an hour (??) and today the patron saint of bacon puzzles, St. Yoshi the Indolent, appeared and obviously blessed our efforts.

Eagle powers, come to me! We are going to need them :)

Orlando Science Center

I got to go with Luke on his field trip to the Orlando Science Center last week.  We got to go to a show about explosions, we saw a movie on the CineDome about National Parks, we played with electrical currents, solved puzzles, dug for fossils, learned about planets, saw live turtles and gators and even got to be part of an entire building evacuation when the fire alarm was pulled.  

And all I got was this lousy picture.

Actually, what I really got was an entire day to spend with Luke and I will take that any day.

Xanadu

We got a hot tip off of Facebook about a family in our Stake that was having a U-pick peach day for $1.00 a pound.  Hot dang!  We made the 40 minute drive down on Saturday morning and found peach heaven.  

   

     

And then we found blueberry heaven located conveniently next door.

A nice older man had immaculate blueberry bushes in his 3 acre front yard and we got those morsels for a mere $10/gallon!

And they were the size of quarters!

Okay, maybe Euros.

              

 The good news is that while we were out there picking all that, KaRyn was down in Ruskin getting us tomatoes, onions and cucumbers!  Peach salsa, anyone?

I would call that a very 'fruitful' weekend, wouldn't you?

I kill me.

And good news, the U-pick pineapples are almost ready:

A Cindy Quickie

Tonight we attended the dance recital for Cindy's friends Charlotte and Scarlett.  As the show progressed, Cindy would update me on the name of each dance I was about to see.  Since the theater was very dark, she was using the dim light of her phone to help her read off of the program.  As one number was being set up, she whispered, "This is called "Sherlock in the Shower."  I was immediately confused and then she squinted her eyes really hard and said, "Wait, no. Shadows. It's called "Sherlock in the Shadows."  Whew! Close call.  Modern dance was about to get way too modern.

Scarlett for the win!

The recital was actually held at the Polk Theater, which is a very historic place.  Elvis played here, you know.  It has been on my Lakeland bucket list for years and finally I can say that I have seen it in the flesh.  It is a very unique venue, and when we walked in and saw it fort the fist time, Cindy said, "Wow, I feel like this is where Abraham Lincoln got shot."

I was just waiting for the old men Muppets to come out and critique the show

A Cindy Quickie

The entire 6th grade at Cindy's school is going on a two day overnight field trip starting tomorrow. Okay, the entire 6th grade minus Cindy.  As a family rule, we just really don't do sleepovers and since the school will not allow her to go on the field trip and just not spend the night, Cindy gets two days off from school.  She was telling me how upset she was about this because today they had a meeting about the field trip and it is pretty much going to be the mostest funnest thing in the entire universe.  I did my best to cheer her up and I promised her that I would pay her back for this injustice.  Then I suggested,  "Hey, maybe you can go to work with Dad tomorrow!"  She glared at me and then said, "Then you would have to pay me back twice."  BURN!!

Mother's Day

My Mother's Day this year was quite lovely.  Jacob and the kids spoiled me with lots of gifts, I didn't have to go to Ward Council, and I got to go to my parent's house for Chinese food dinner.  Luke even painted this for me:

Another Luke Sweeney original

Goaty McGoatface

Farmer Jenkins got a new baby goat!  Cindy is, at this moment, thinking about how she can kidnap it and have it secretly live in her bedroom.

We have named it Goaty McGoatface.  Our work is done here.

I'M BACK!!!

After not being able to run more than a mile and a half for over six months because of IT Band Friction syndrome, I have achieved a breakthrough!

What happened?  This happened:

link

I bought this IT Band strap from Amazon, did some experimenting with exactly where to place it on my leg and BOOM, it completely works!

The bad news is that even though my leg will let me run 3.5 miles again, I physically cannot do it because I am hideously out of shape.

I feel like it's 8 years ago when I was first trying to run a 5K in less than 45 minutes.  So. Hard.

But I will not complain, I will simply get back to work :)

Star Wars Day 2016

Okay, okay.  Yes, I know that I did not do Star Wars week on the blog this year.  It makes me sad too.

I realized that I peaked way too early with this whole thing and my kids remind me every year how disappointed they are that we are not drinking blue milk, eating Taun-taun guts or carving a cantaloupe Death Star.  I set the bar way too high, way too early.

But, hey, we got shirts!  I know it isn't much, but it really represents the widow's mite 

of Star Wars celebration.

Okay, I will throw you a bone.  

This is actually how BB-8 is powered.  Who knew?

You Pick Parade

Surprisingly there are actually a lot of You Pick opportunities in our immediate area this time of year. 

Strawberries, tomatoes- and most excitingly, peaches and blueberries!  

We headed out recently to get some of the good stuff.

I don't think there is anything more Sweeney in all the world than getting up early on a Saturday morning to go pick your own blueberries and peaches.

I could do this all day.  But only for 20 minutes.

The peaches were amazing.

Well, it's not chocolate, but I guess it will do.

But just be careful, you can pick 11 pounds in about 10 minutes.

And you can also get your hair caught in a tree...

This is my DREAM.  I need a farm.

 And then the next weekend, we headed to a different farm to get more blueberries. (You really cannot ever have enough of fresh blueberries.)  This farm came complete with an old redneck man that tightly tied a bucket around your waist to really give you that migrant worker experience.  This was also the place where the man's giant truck (complete with Confederate flag license plate) was blasting bluegrass music.  And there were chickens the size of ponies.  Seriously, I think you could ride them.

Why did we need so many blueberries?

1. For buckle.

2.  For fast Sunday pancakes.

And smoothies.  And salads.  And for snacking.  And to make my mom uncomfortable.