Time for a roundup of strange natural happenings, and of course adorable animals.

• WTF Nature is a good overall resource for strange natural things, lots of contributors.

• Mom provided a good link to a video from the TED conference where they show just how really really strange and wonderful creatures octopi really are, among other cool underwater things.  Definitely worth a watch.
• Then we have a nice few shots of a family enjoying a newly built playstructure.  A family of bears, that is.  The perils of building anything that fun when living in Alaska, I suppose.
• Biiig freaking cow, huge, really really big cow.  Very Large Cow.
  
• Insanely cute animal pictures.  Hurts my teeth to look at this.
• Extraordinarily specialized blog, narrowly covering the specific cuteness of otters, which really is an under-reported field.  Bravo.
• Finally, only narrowly animal related, a blog covering things that look like ducks.  Yes, really.

So there you have it.  All of your natural wonders covered here in excruciating detail.

This poor child has a disorder that prevents him from sleeping.  Ever.  He’s never slept a night in his entire life.  Apparently not sleeping for the first four years of his life also makes him a tad cranky.

His parents, however, are fine.  Juuust fine, thank you.  FINE I said.

We have great kids, I enjoy them a lot.  And they all enjoy sleeping a lot.  I love it when they sleep even more, however.  It’s grownup time, and some days it is as necessary as oxygen.  To think of these parents locked into a sandy eyed, bleary hell for all of this time gives me the willies.  My eyeballs would probably actually physically shrivel like raisins in their sockets, falling out periodically, inducing sudden vertigo.  Between that and the involuntary limb windmilling, and sudden screaming (I’m referring to the symptoms of the parents of course), it’s a wonder they haven’t been arrested for something yet.  Although I would imagine that would be a sweet release in a way.  Locked in a dark room full of sex offenders and murderers for 8 hours… in my books very much preferable to 4 years without sleep.

Can you tell that we value sleep at our house?

Not much from me today… just a few little tidbits that I thought I might share.

1.    Cael today on the way home from an awesome day at preschool…was my duty day today…says to me, “I’d like to go to my girlfriend’s house again.”  I said, “Well I’m sure we could arrange a playdate with them again soon.”  He replies with a really dreamy look on his face as he stares out the van window, “I’d like to marry them on a cloud.  I think that would be very nice.”  I had to agree.  How dreamy.  What a honey-dripper….

2.    Speaking of honey-dripping…(nice segue to my next topic)… Quinn had a little moment last night.  Recently I got a perm in my hair.  If you have ever had one, you will know that it stinks and you can’t wash your hair for 2 days.  I finally have been able to wash my hair, and as Quinn was snuggling in it he said, “That smells better…It smelled like they put trash in it before.”  Ah, how sweet.  Brought a tear to my eye it did.

3.    And Jordy, well she’s just as awesome as ever.  She’s becoming a really great girlfriend and it’s nice.  She’s finally  working more with the whole babysitting gigs and such … (thanks to the Stevenson’s)… so there is more shopping in our future…YAY!

That’s it for me for today… I’m going to try to make a more conscious effort to contribute more.  We’ll see how that goes with summer holidays coming…Ya right.