Pie Crust Art - as dictated by Spaulding

I baked pies for a few months. Mommy helped, since fruit juice stains bear fur. Anyone, who has ever baked a pie, knows slits have to be made in the crust or the steam has no way of escaping. The first few pies, I slit like normal, but that got boring and I'm a very artistic bear. I decided to make art on the pie crusts. Here are my temporary works of art.

First, I did a self-portrait on a blueberry pie, but this represents all the bears in the family.

Well, if you're making a self-portrait, it's just polite to draw family members next, so I drew a doggy on the next strawberry-rhubarb pie to represent my wife Lady, my daughter Dee, and Lady's dad Axlerod. (Okay, not so much Axlerod, because he's a basset hound, and I was drawing spaniels, but we must keep the in-laws happy too, so I included him.)

I know. Pie art is hard to see, so I've drawn the outline on it, so you can see it better.

Well, if you know anything about Teddy's wife, Valentine, you know she likes to be included. (I'm not saying she's pushy. I'm not stupid.) So, this peach pie has a bunny rabbit on it.

Again. Sometimes hard to see, so here's the outline.

Then our baseball team, The Phillies, were doing very well, so I drew a Phillies logo on the strawberry pie.

That upset the two cats in the family - Tee, Teddy and Valentine's son, and Lee, Phil's wife - so I drew a cat on the peach piecrust.

And, that's hard to see, so here is the outline again.

Which left one more family member, who needed her portrait done. I know we haven't introduced her, but we have a stick pony in the family now. Do you remember the horsey's with a stick, instead of a body? Kids used to climb on the stick and gallop around on their ponies. Santa gave us our own pony last year, but she became part of the family. Her name is Nelly, as in "Whoa, Nelly!" Here's her portrait. (To make up for forgetting her so long, I wrote her name on top of the strawberry pie, too. She liked it.) I think it came out clear enough. What do you think? If you can't see it very well, maybe I'll outline another time. She's looking left, if that helps.

About this time, Bob T. Bear alerted us it was Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day. I made a pirate to celebrate, but Mommy couldn't help me post, so it's a bit late. Yeah, this one really does need to be outlined.

Here's the outline, but I think his beard came out right, so I didn't fill in all those lines, too.

And, what goes better with pie than a cup of coffee? Mommy doesn't drink coffee, so she forgets how much we need coffee. This was a gentle hint about our need. Do you think it's the perfect artwork for our first apple pie of the year?


I have to admit, I wasn't thrilled with pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I mean I love pumpkin pie, but no piecrust on top to draw on. Oh well. We're done making pies until Christmas. Hope you liked my artwork. I hope the new medium catches on.

Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day

Bob T. Bear reminded us today is International Talk-Like a Pirate Day. Argh, my maties!



We know little about pirates past Johnny Depp's Captain Sparrow. But we tried it.


Lately, Mommy has assisted Spaulding in baking pies. Now, if you remember anything about pie-baking, you know you have to slit the top. Ever see the slits people make for pie tops? Boring! So, Spaulding took over and started inventing his own piecrust art.


What does that have to do with Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day? Well, that explains why we'll be late on bringing our own slant to the day. Spaulding made a pirate to top our pie and Mommy has been kind enough to take photos of all of his artwork. But (there's always a "but"), we need both Daddy and Mommy's help to upload them. Spaulding's computer (although Mommy thinks it's hers) won't accept the camera's memory card, so we must wait for Daddy to upload it onto Teddy and Phil's (although Daddy thinks it's his) computer, and then transfer it to Spaulding's computer. (Daddy has had insomnia for a while, so it's best to ask him, when he's not in a mood.) And then, Mommy has to work on the images in the photo software program, because…well, have you ever seen a photo of something tan on tan? It just doesn't show up well, so we have to enhance the photos so you can understand what you're seeing.


(Did we mention Spaulding has been doing piecrust art for a while now? We have several photos of his artwork, but, honest, today he made a pirate on the piecrust.)


So, since there's no way of doing this today, we'll tell a pirate joke, instead.


Phil dressed up as a pirate for Halloween (his birthday, too), last year. A lady answered the door and told him how cute he looked. (Do people not understand pirates are fierce, not cute?) Then she asked him, "Where are your buccaneers?"


"Under my bucking hat!"

The Teddy Bear Brothers' Most Excellent Adventure

Okay, as you know our typist (Mommy) has been too busy writing to help us type. Well, finally, she's listening to us and is combining her writing with our stories. Now the bad news is that she's doing this on that site that caused her so many problems last year. The good news is, so far, she's still on it.

With that, we're going to add the links, so you can read everything, including comments from folks reading them. (They don't know it's real, and Mommy is playing along. Grown-ups are weird that way.) If, some time in the future, she can't go back again, we'll just put it all up on here. Being Internet Savvy Teddy Bears, we know Google will think someone is stealing writing. They don't know any better. It really is us dictating one of our adventures to Mommy.

Now it's something called "an epic," which means it's a long story. That means it will be told in parts for a while, so come back and check to see if the next part is up yet. So far, we're averaging an update every 6 daysish. So, here are the links. Hope you enjoy it as much as we are.

(Good thing about Teddy Bear World. We can spend time in People World, and then slip right back into the Teddy Bear World whenever we want. We really are telling the story as it happens, so wish us luck. And, if you're a stuffed animal and want to join us, just let us know. We'd love to run into some of our buddies while we're having our most excellent adventure.)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6    New March 20th
Part 7     New March 30th
Part 8     New March 31st 
Part 9    New April 3rd
Part 10   New April 9th (hold your stuffies close.)
Part 11 New April 14th
Part 12  New April 20th
Part 13 New April 22nd
Part 14  New May 2nd (Phil wants it understood, he's just pretending, despite what the story says.)
Part 15 New May 13th
Part 16 New May 15th
Part 17 New May 17th
Part 18 New June 6th
Part 19 New June 9th
Part 20 New June 16th
Part 21 New June 18th
We interupt this story for a special video of our garden.

Part 22 New June 23rd
Part 23  New June 30th
We missed it, but Mommy and Daddy had their own adventure in the garden on June 30th.
Part 24  New July 2nd
Our adventure isn't over, but, you know how we've been telling you that Mommy is too busy to type for us on our blog? You know how we keep saying she's going to write books about our adventures? (Well, we're telling, but she's typing.) We're finally doing it! Yippee! But, it takes place in a park near our home and Mommy doesn't know the area we like to hang in, so she came down to look at it with us a couple of days last spring. She wrote about her misguided (hey, she didn't listen to us) adventures in search of where we hang out and took us and the camera with her.
It's a two parter, and we're adding it here so the parts to our epic adventure don't get lost in blogging order. (We can't change the dates for this entry.)
Part 1 of In Search of a Novel Setting
and
Part 2 of In Search of a Novel Setting

(As we write this, we're in search of another prompt that helps us tell more of our epic adventure. Sometimes prompt givers don't give prompts that help. Don't give up though.)
Part 25 New July 16th
Part 26 New July 19th
Part 27 New July 22nd
Part 28 - The Finale New July 25th

It feels good to be home! (Now, how do we talk Mommy into writing for us some more?)

Mommy's been Busy, But...

We found a great post, even if the author missed the point.

So? Who's been vacationing in Australia or The Ritz-Carlton? (-o:3

Bear with Us

We tried to post something fun. Blogspot is a bust. We're waiting for Google to get back to us. We're probably moving back to our old blog again. Sorry for the problems. Blame some of it on Google/Blogspot.

Garden Tea Party by Tine and Dee

The rest of our family got to have their own time in the garden, so Grandma let just the two of us - The Garden Girls - have fun all by ourselves.
Well, there are so many living in our garden, there really isn't any "all by ourselves," but we didn't get stuck with boys, or even have to be watched by our mommies, so we did what we wanted to do.

So, first we had a garden tea party with our good friend, Dandy. Dandy has brothers, too, but they didn't want to play, so they just watched. Here we are together. That's Tine, Baby Doll, Dandy with her pet Snail, and Doll Baby in front of Dee. (Doll Baby can't sit up by herself yet.) We had a lovely party with lots of hotdogs, teacakes, and coffee. (We're Abearicans, so drink coffee, not tea.)

Now, of course, Dandy loves our babies, so she volunteered to babysit after our coffee klatch. She also volunteered her brother's chair for a bassinet. Tehehehehehe

We wandered over to the other coffee cup on the table to see what is growing. This is a campula, which will be full of blue cup-shaped flowers later in the summer.

While sitting high on the coffee cup, we noticed how tall our rosemary has grown. Also, the English Lamb's Ear is blooming beautifully. We went for a climb. (It felt strange not to bring our babies.)

We heard a friendly voice we haven't heard for a while. Chief Gnome, our oldest gnome, called us over.

While visiting, another old friend stopped by, Fuzzy Wuzzy. Fuzzy Wuzzy is our topiary teddy bear. He laughed and told us he needs some help. We give him a trim every year, but he needs some more work. He looks like he's wearing a dress, and his head is becoming unstuffed. Topiaries need help like that occasionally. (When we came in, our brothers volunteered to help him this summer. They don't think it's funny that a boy looks like he's wearing a dress. What's wrong with dresses?)

While visiting Fuzzy Wuzzy, we thought we saw some buds on the Butterfly Bush, so we climbed over. We like climbing, too.

Chief Gnome reminded us to visit his brothers, so we found Jerzey Gnome. We adopted him (or he adopted us), when we were on vacation at the Jersey Shore. Now, like any good gardener from New Jersey, he protects our tomato plants.

But, he has help. Tine visited another guardian. He's so fierce; he has his own sign, "Watch Out for Bears." (The sign is hidden by snap pea leaves.) Of course, we watch out for bears! Half of our family is bears.

Near the tomatoes, we climbed down to visit our newest members – Mama and Baby Bear. Baby Bear was sad we didn't bring our babies, so we climbed back up to check on our kids, and brought them down to visit, too. (Grandma had a Pepsi break, so forgot to take a few pictures. She's like that some times.)

Sunny invited us into her favorite hiding place. It feels like a fort.

We heard another young bear call us up to the Basil. Here's another Mama Bear with her cub in a log. They protect our basil.

Since we had climbed so high, we climbed over to our shelves next to our basil. Our brothers visited Mrs. Turtle and her children a while ago, but she hid from them. They came out and spent some time with us. We're special.

On the way down, we stopped off to visit Chief Gnomes' other brother, Sleepy Gnome. He's a'posed to protect the beans. He was sleeping when we visited, but the beans look good, so he must be doing something right.

Once we visiteded everyone, we inspected the garden, but those pictures are gonna be posted another day. That's it for today!

The Nightmare by Spaulding T. Bear

Nightmares are strange things. Most the time, when you tell someone about it, it sounds so funny; you're not sure why it scared you. Of course, as a teddy bear linked to Mommy's mind, it's often hard to tell who had the nightmare. Both of us know it's scary, until we talk it over. Two nights ago, our nightmare was so bad; neither of us thinks it is funny.

Mommy and Daddy were walking home with me in my special traveling bag. It was beary late and they were tired and lost. Now, everybody knows that Daddies don't like to stop for directions, so Daddy kept walking past a diner, and Mommy stopped in to ask the cashier how to get home. My traveling bag was heavy, because there was a laptop in it with me, so she set it down against her leg, as she often does. All of a sudden, she forgot where we lived, and I couldn't tell her, because stuffed animals can't be heard talking in public. Daddy came in to get her, so she went to pick up my bag. It was gone!

Sheer terror! Our biggest fear is being bearnapped and I was bearnapped!

Daddy and Mommy ran out into the parking lot, and saw this 12-year-old kid trying to look innocent. Do you know the look? The "who me?" look that gives it away immediately? Yeah! That look!

He started to run away, but Mommy caught him by the collar. His buddies were a few feet behind him and looked like deer caught in the headlights. The boy gave Mommy attitude because she insisted on getting her teddy bear and laptop back. He had one of his friends bring a bag out behind one of the parked cars. (That's why this dream was so scary. In most dreams, the scenery and people switch around, but this made sense from beginning to end.)

When his friend handed him the bag, he pulled out a different teddy bear and laptop, and thrust it at Mommy. (Scary thing – the bear looked just like my good friend Marlowe! I'm glad this was a dream, or he would have been bearnapped, too!)

"That's not my teddy bear or my laptop!" she yelled.

He said that he had already gotten rid of hers, so he was giving her those instead.

"I need my bear! I want my laptop!" she yelled.

(Hurray, Mommy, but you should have experienced the thoughts she was having. Something about "how can I live without Spaulding?" And, "what do I do if I can't type on his blog anymore?" Seriously? You'd think scarier thoughts would be flooding her mind besides this blog, wouldn't you? I'm bearnapped, never to return! How could either of us live after that? How did this blog get into her dream….errr, my dream? Okay. Maybe some of the dream didn't make sense.)

One of the boy's friends gave her my traveling bag with me safely in it – and the laptop was there, too. (Kinda weird, since we haven't used a laptop since I was young.)

She grabbed my bag and let the boy go. He ran away across the parking lot with his friends, and then threw a rotten apple, hitting Mommy in the side of the head.

Mommy and Daddy were so tired that they planned to let him go, until he did that. Daddy was so tired, he still wanted to let those kids get away, but Mommy was beary angry. She went back into the diner and reported the crime to a woman police officer. (The woman was actress Shohreh Aghdashloo.) The policewoman was upset that Mommy was reporting a solved crime, and Daddy was upset, because he was tired.

Mommy decided she had enough of this nightmare, so woke up. We grabbed each other and cried.

We've had other nightmares before, but Mommy has never cried over one. We’ve been afraid to go to sleep ever since. I may never go out on another adventure in our traveling bag again. Some nightmares stick with you for a long time.

The Drive-In

Hello, I'm Phil T. Bear and I'm one and a half! And, last night, we went to the Drive-In for the first time in my whole life, even if Spauld and Ted have gone before.

What's a Drive-In? Same thing I asked. A Drive-In is when you take your car to the movies, but you stay in it and watch the movie on a really big screen in front of the car. (If you're seeing the screen out your back window, you've parked wrong.)

There aren't many around anymore, so this one is an hour away. It was also the first time I left my home state, too. We drove over a really big bridge with a river under it. The Delaware River's so big, I'm not sure I could swim across, but Spaulding told me no one wants to swim across it there.

And, wow, I'm telling you, if you've never been to New Jersey, you're missing a magical place! People in New Jersey must be really rich. They're houses aren't even attached to their neighbor's houses. They got these things called "side yards" and these other things called "front yards." And they have grass all over the place, and trees, and bushes, and sidewalks, not just for everybody to walk on, but special sidewalks that they walk on to avoid grass when walking to their front doors. Why have grass if you don't want to walk on it? But, anyways, it's amazing to see!

And some of them must be really, really rich, a'cuz they don't even have neighbors! They have woods and fields! And, there's nothing in the fields but shrubs and tall grass. Nothing at all!

And, and, and, they have these thingies all along the roads called "strip malls." And, they have to drive to them, because everyone has so much land, and who's gonna walk that far with so much space between houses? And, once they get there, they can park their cars, drop off their laundry for something called a "dry cleaner." Imagine! Someone else doing your laundry! And, then you can walk to the next store and rent a movie. Imagine, renting movies without a mailbox! And, then you can walk to the beary next store and spend just a dollar for anything in the store. I wonder if they have hotdogs?! And, and, and, then you walk to the beary next store and buy a pizza. Yeah! I'm telling you! Strip malls have pizza parlors in them, just like we have on street corners.

Now, we did have Mommy and Daddy stop in one strip mall. (There's a whole lot of them in New Jersey.) Well, they had to stop. We had driven a good 15 minutes, so we were hungry, and it had a Weiner joint. You know you're in fancy place when people call their hotdogs "wieners," but we weren't fooled. They were hotdogs. We ate them all.

And another 15 minutes later, Mommy and Daddy stopped for dinner at a diner. At least, New Jersey has dinners, too. So, while they ate, we were hungry and went into the kitchen. Apparently, every diner knows my brothers. They didn't even ask to be introduced to me, until the hotdogs were grilling. AND, they had one of the kids (who was really, really old) take the truck to buy more hotdogs, a'cuz they knew we were going to eat all they had. And … we did. Yummers!

So, we were stuffed afterwards, but we're always stuffed! We're stuffed animals, after all. And, 15 minutes later, we stopped off at a WaWa. Did you know a WaWa is a convienent store? All this time I thought it was a morning coffee, but the coffee was named for the store. (I also thought the store was named for the coffee.) We polished off the WaWa hotdogs, too.

So, we finally got to the Drive-In! It was a bit dicey until dark. There were people walking around checking out cars, and we were afraid they might bearnap us, until Mommy s'plained they were making sure people paid extra if they brought their own snacks, like we did. Apparently, the cost to see the movie is collected by the studios and the movie place's moneymaker is the snacks. But, we brought our own popcorn and muffins, a'cuz popcorn at the movies has too much salt and fat. BUT, when Mommy and Daddy weren't looking, we polished off the hotdogs there too. We would have polished them off twice, but we only stayed for one movie.

So, before the sun went down we watched people throwing all kinds of stuff – baseballs, footballs, and even these things called "Frisbees." That's sorta like a pie pan made out of plastic. Matter of fact, Daddy taught us that they were pie pans when people started throwing them. And, we saw why Americans rarely win soccer games. (I know, that's "football" everywhere else, but, if you ever saw an American kid kicking around a soccer ball, you'd know we have to call it something different. It's just not the same.)

And, and, and, the movie sound came over our radio, so we had to listen to the right channel, and we bears got our floppy on, when dancing to the oldies before it got dark out.

But, of course, we came to see The Prince of Persia and then Robin Hood, so it was really exciting when the Star Spangle Banner started playing, until … another car pulled in next to us. Our radio turned to static. We forgot someone stole our antenna, again. We don't need the antenna too often, a'cuz we have a CD player, so we forgot.

Mommy volunteered to go rent a radio. We couldn't hear any of the Previews while she was gone. We collected out quarter when she came back and used colorful language. We tried to get her to use more colorful language, but she's wise to us, and just smiles, before handing over the money. She wanted to leave. It seems people wait until the last minute to get their snacks, too, and there isn't a separate line for rented radios and chairs. It was a beary long line!

 BUT, Daddy saved the day. He inched the car up a little, and we got sound. Later on, we found out it was only beary loud sound. We didn't care. The quiet sound was the two main characters talking mushy stuff. We were there for the action. And there was lots of action – sword fights, battles, chase scenes, and even a special kinda race. (I'd tell you more, but don't want to give any of the plot away, but they weren't racing like you're thinking.) AND, it had magic in it! What else could a guy want to see in a movie? Oh, wait – no stuffed animals and there was yucky kissy stuff. Still, it's a beary good movie for the whole family to see.

It wasn't over until close to midnight. Mommy and Daddy decided to go home before seeing Robin Hood. We would have complained, but we were falling asleep. I was a bit disappointed, a'cuz I hoped to see more of New Jersey on the way home, but they don't have something over there that we have – streetlights! Well, they only have streetlights if we're coming up on an exit, so there was only darkness and the road.

That's the last thing I remembered seeing. I fell asleep before going over the big bridge again. I woke up with my honey, Lee in my arms. It just doesn't get better than that.

"Elder" Explorers as told by Spaulding, Teddy, and Phil

Yesterday, our sons referred to Teddy as an "elder." We need to clear this up. Spaulding is ten, Teddy is eight and Phil is one and a half. Ding is nine and Tee is seven. So, whooooooooooooo are the "elders?" Just saying!

So, anyway, as "elders," we have to be more productive when we explore the garden. We're still kids and teddy bears, so we're having fun, but we're productive in our fun. We explore to see how everything is growing. Our Garden Gals need full reports, even if they come out every day to check, too. So, here is what we do in the garden.

This is fun to climb, but we're checking out the asters. The leaves are nice and soft when they're little, kinda like Lamb's Ear. These asters are called "Wonder of Staffa." We've had them for two years and are still wondering who or what Staffa is.

Another good excuse to climb. Our pea vine is starting to bloom. Too bad it's not a bean vine. Who knows? We could find a giant at the top.

Can you see the flowers by Phil's left foot? They smell as pretty as Sweet Peas. The peas start popping out right out of the flower. We took this picture last week, and ate the two snap peas in a stir-fry last night. We would have showed you the peas, but it's been rainy. More flowers and peas are coming now, so, if it would quit raining, we can take a picture, eventually.

Underneath our pea vine are tomatoes. Spaulding is demonstrating how tall our one tomato plant is. He can hide under it.

Here are our other tomatoes. We bought all five tomatoes on the same day, but these aren't as tall. We found a couple surprises though.

Phil is looking at our first tomato flower. It's right above his left paw.

Teddy is showing what else we're growing in that container. He's touching one, while pointing at another. We bought onion sets this year, and are hoping the onion smell will discourage squirrels from eating our maters. That and onions tasteses good, too.

Remember how Phil saved some dill when we were weeding? He has become the official dill keeper now. That's Phil's dills.

And, since Teddy's wife is Valentine, the stuffed bunny, Teddy has to check on her carrots, too. They sure look ready to eat to us!

We have a swing in our garden. Well, it's not a regular swing. It holds our patio tomato, because we don't have a patio. Phil's swinging and checking the tomato's progress.

Right below the swing is our Red Romaine lettuce. It's now big enough to make a soft landing, when Phil jumps off the swing.

It finally got warm enough at night to bring out the aloe. Aloe isn't supposed to be that big, but Mommy left it away from direct sunlight for too long, so it grew into the sunlight. After this picture was taken, we cut back its roots and transplanted her babies. She had three more babies last winter. We also checked out the bay and other herbs.

Spaulding checked out our English Lamb's Ear. We bought it last year, and it didn't do anything, include grow. Now look how big it is! And it's about to flower. Regular Lamb's Ear doesn't bloom magenta flowers. (We're married, so we've learned girlie words for pink.) If you look closely at the top of the stalks on the right, you can see the one ready to bloom.

He came back out two days later to have his picture taken with the blooming flowers. (Okay, something weird is happening. The phot os prepared to fit horizontally through out photo fixing program, but when we upload it, it keeps uploaing vertically, ans side way. We can't fix it, so look at it side ways. Sorry.)

Two days later, it was ready to rain, so Daddy took this picture without Spaulding coming out.

And that's how "the elderly" explore our garden.

Young Explorers as told by Ding and Tee

We take after our parents. We like exploring, too.

We explore the tall jungles.

Some times, we take our elders with us, when we explore dense jungles.

The denser the jungle, the more we like it.

Yes, we're really in there. See?

If it's over our heads, we like it.

It doesn't have to be thick.

We like discovering cool things when we explore. See whom we found in the Jade?

They're hiding, but to Tee's left is Mrs. Turtle and her two children.

We introduced you to who we found yesterday – Sonny, the Hide N' Seek loving teddy bear, in our garden.

Not all bears are teddy bears. This is Mama Black Bear and her child in the basil and dill. (We don't know if her child is a boy or a girl. We don't want to insult a black bear by asking.)

And, not all the creatures in our garden are bears. We introduced you to Sleeping Gnome yesterday. Our Daddies found him in the woods on a vacation years ago. He was Woodland Gnome back then, but we've renamed him, for obvious reasons.

Now do you know why we needed to rest yesterday? Exploring is hard work.