Trick-or-Treat

Each year we've done trick-or-treat with the kids, even though I have mixed feelings about it. While I did pumpkins with the kids, I shared that story that's been going around the internet for awhile, how carving a pumpkin is like how Jesus picked us (like we picked our pumpkins), he cleans all the yucky stuff out of our hearts (like we clean the yucky stuff out of the pumpkin), makes us a new creation (like how we make a new face on our pumpkins), and shines his light in us (like we shine a light in our pumpkins). Not sure I got it exactly right, but that's the general idea.
The boys were really grossed out trying to clean out their pumpkins. I was just being silly here.

We've never put up decorations or anything like that, but this year Eric and I even dressed up with the kids. We went out with them while my parents, who were visiting, passed out candy.

It was nice to walk along and say hello to everyone, and we certainly got a lot of comments on our costumes, especially Eric.

As we went from house to house, once in awhile we came to one that had scary decorations. We also landed on a street that went all out on being scary. The kids didn't like it, and I didn't try to talk them into approaching the scary houses. It really spoke to me. More and more I feel like I want to substitute trick-or-treat with a different fun family activity. I love how many churches have a carnival on trick-or-treat night. Maybe we'll find a church like that when we move.

Even with my mixed feelings, I look at all the candy and can't help but say YAY!!

We'll see what next year brings.

Yeah, I Could Live Here

Well, I must say, I LOVE it here! The view is absolutely beautiful. These aren't the snow-capped Rockies, but still spectacular.

I'm pretty tired right now. We spent the day looking at houses in all kinds of neighborhoods. I loved the developments that were more at the top of the mountains, an incredible view. The tough part was that living on a hill means a sloped yard. Hard to mow.

Another area we visited was not surrounded by mountains but had bigger, flatter lots. More than anything, it was really good to get out here and see some of these places in person after studying them online for the last few weeks.

We aren't ready to buy a house yet, still need to get ours on the market, but we'll be coming back here in another month (without the kids, what a challenge that was!) to look more intensely.

And Away We Go!

I'm so excited!! We're leaving today after lunch for a half-day's drive to check out the area we'll be moving to in February. I've heard it's absolutely beautiful there, and our area is even at the tip of a mountain range. In high school I went on an extended hike through the Rockies and love love loved it. I'm not sure if these mts will even come close to the beauty of the Rockies, but we'll see! We've been warned that they have bears there. Bears?? Bring em' on! At least I know they won't be sneaking into my house or crawling into my bed at night like spiders do!!

I'll take my camera so I can post pictures as we go.

My Jedi Name

Find out What's Your Jedi Name at LiquidGeneration.com

Happy Birthday Grandma!

We love you and we're so happy you're here!

Boy Talk

The boys had this conversation in the van today...



Owen: The first is the worst. The second is the best. Third is the one with the treasure chest. Fourth is the one with the polka dotted dress. Fifth is the one who lives in the West. Sixth is the one with the hairy chest....

(PAUSE)

Owen: Hey Ethan. Do you want a hairy chest or a beard?

Ethan: Oh a hairy chest. No wait. A beard. Can I have both?

Buddies

I love it when the boys play nicely together. Here they are playing Zathura. What's really great is Owen can read the cards.

Well, mostly. Each card starts with a description and at the bottom has a command. For example, the card might read, "Pass Planet Galactagon and encounter less wind resistance" or "Your navigational experience is needed" I found Owen calling out, "Mom!" every time they drew a card, which was about every 30 seconds, so I finally showed Owen to just read the command at the bottom of each card, which would read something like, "Lose a turn" or "Move ahead 1 space." That helped them be able to play more independently, and I was able to get stuff done around the house.

Well, mostly. Emily is getting more demanding every day it seems!

Thinking I Should Cut Back...

I read this.

What's Your Name?

I saw this meme on Linda's blog and it looked super fun! (Not to mention you get to create a Star Wars name!!)


1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)

Duke Odyssey

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)

Brownie Oatmeal


3. YOUR “FLY Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)

A Mat


4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)

Pink Owl


5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)

Lynn Sumter


6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)

Mat An


7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)

The Green Dr. Pepper


8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)

John LaVern


9.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)

Iona Arlen (I actually love that. If I had another girl, I would consider naming her Iona Arlen).


10. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)

Piehl Pittsburgh


11. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)

Summer Daisy


12. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + "ie" or "y")

Grape Jammy Pants


13. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)

Special-K Maple


14. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)

The Reading Sunshine Tour

Pumkin Patch

Ethan's class went to a pumpkin patch for their autumn field trip. Emmy and I went with. We had to bundle up. It's amazing how just three days before it was 95 degrees outside, and for the field trip we needed coats, hats, and gloves.




We began with a really nice hay ride. They took us on a trail through the woods. It was beautiful, and the most fun part of the ride was finding the animals along the path. They took a variety of animals (I'm assuming they were originally roadkill) like skunks, squirrels, raccoons, groundhogs, deer, even a couple red foxes and had them mounted and placed all throughout the trail. The kids had fun finding them.




The hay ride ended at the pumpkin field. Each child got to pick three gourds and a pie pumpkin. Ethan was so excited! Of course, he grabbed the first three gourds he saw, but took his time finding the perfect pumpkin.

We saw some live animals, too. I didn't get a picture, but there were pigs in the barn. The kids could also feed the goats.

I'm 100% anti-petting zoo, unless I can actually be there to scrub my children's hands practically raw so they don't get super sick like the kids I've heard about in the news. I remember Owen went to a different pumpkin farm for his field trip. I asked him if there was a petting zoo. He said there was. I asked if he went to it before or after lunch. He said before. I asked if he pet the animals. He said no. I said good boy! Then he said, "But I fed the goats! And got goat slobber all over my hands." Ugh. I asked if he scrubbed his hands really really well and made lots of bubbles, or did he just kind of rinse the soap off without scrubbing. He was honest, which I want him to be, and said he just rinsed it off. BLECK! Needless to say, Ethan chose not to feed the goats.

They had a miniature donkey mother with its baby. I'm not sure if this is the mom or the baby.

This is a rabbit village.

Here's a close-up of the rabbit village. These bunnies were huge and fluffy and adorable.

We stopped to take a class picture in front of this wall. Pretty!

In one of the barns they had a rope ladder. The idea was to climb it to the top and ring the bell.

It looks like it'd be easy, but it was very very wobbly. One of Ethan's buddies held the ladder while he climbed. I wanted to try it too, but there were parents watching.

This was fun! They made slides out of this huge tubing. I don't know what the tubing is for, but the kids really zoomed down those slides!

When we got back to school, the kids used their gourds to make a gourd family. Since we are a family of 5, the teacher gave us a couple more gourds.

We had to impale the gourds on nails hammered into a board.

Then add faces....

And here is Ethan's finished project.

We had a lovely day!

Houston, We Have a Problem.

A really big eight-legged problem. When I posted about spiders last time I was complaining about the SMALLER spiders, approximately the size of a dime. I could handle those, no problem (sort of). But now I am finding the BIG ONES IN MY HOUSE.

While Heth was visiting, I had another "hallucination." Everyone has them at some point as they are about to fall asleep. Most people think they see someone walk into the room, or maybe feel a "presence." Me? I see spiders, the-size-of-my-palm spiders falling from the ceiling on top of me. Of course I screamed "help me!!" insanely and scared my husband. I do remember getting really angry at him for not turning the light on. These halucinations look so real and feel very real. I can feel the spiders crawling on me. I know in my mind that spiders that big can't live in the northern U.S. because it's just too cold. But I can't convince myself that it's not real when it's happening.

Anyway, Heth was in the basement playing Wii with the boys. As they were leaving the basement to come upstairs, she just happened to step on a big spider. I'm talking the size of a quarter when it's DEAD. Imagine a spider all wrinkled up dead, the size of a quarter, stretching its legs out to crawl about. It's the size of TEXAS. I'm not even kidding.

So. Today Ethan also stepped on one of these big boys in the basement.

I decided after the kids went to bed tonite that I would just do a little spider check. I do them regularly, I even have a bed-time routine. Check on the bed. Check under the pillow. Check behind the bed. Check the wall behind the bed. Check all the corners of the room. Check the space between the wall and the bed. Fluff the flat sheet up and check in the bed. I CANNOT go to sleep or even turn the light off without checking.

So. I start heading to the basement. I just HAPPEN to look in Eric's t.v. room which is just one level up from the basement (split-level house, this would be the "bonus" room). There, next to the front right speaker is another big one. Dead. I was too creeped out to scoop it up and throw it away. It's still laying there, Eric will have to take care of it when he gets home.

Down in the basement I go. What do I see? A web with a smaller dime-sized bugger on a sheet web connected from the toy box to the floor. Squashed it with a newspaper and destroyed its web. Got creeped out thinking of the horror movies where spider pheramones are used to attract more and more spiders. I just killed a spider, what if it emits pheramones and attracts more spiders?? Seriously, this is what I was thinking.

I check all over. All over. Up the walls, in the beams, between the boxes, everywhere in that basement. Then under the stairs I see another mass. Seriously much bigger than the other dead ones I found. From a distance of about 10 feet it looked to be the size of a golfball. I found another smaller one not far from the golfball-sized one.

I got even more creeped out and started to walk back. I felt web. Immediately I dropped my flashlight and did the frantic wiggle thing to get the web off. As I reached down to get my flashlight I saw a LIVE ONE.

Hello A LIVE ONE CRAWLING. It was then that I realized I was walking around bare foot and could have stepped on it. Where in the world did it come from??? I had JUST walked there and didn't see it. See what I mean?? They are sneaky little creeps. Anyway, it lifted a leg up and then crawled a couple of inches. I literally said What the H-E-double hockey stick word out loud. Seriously, I never swear, but this was too much.

What am I going to do??? What if Emily is crawling around and finds a dead one, or even worse a live one, and eats it??? I am calling Terminix tomorrow and insisting that they come ASAP. I am moving the Wii upstairs and hooking it up to a t.v. up here. I'm making Eric clean out that toy box (it probably has spiders in it) and we are putting it in the boys' bedroom. I'm not making them play down in the basement anymore.

And when I find one in my bedroom? I'll be sleeping in the car or booking a hotel room. I'm not even kidding.

Blindside Pictures

As you can see from the crowd, we moms fit right in (snort!)...






Christian, lead singer for Blindside...

Heth, Toby and I with Christian...

Here we are with Simon (guitar and bgv)...

And with Tomas (guitar)...

We didn't get a picture of Marcus (drums), but here's a really cute picture of Heth's shoes.

Toby was such a good baby the whole weekend long!

I had a fabulous weekend with you Heth! See you at Christmas :)

Party Like It's 1995

I am having an absolutely thrilling weekend. My sister-in-law Heth and her youngest son Toby flew over for a little visit. This is wonderful because I live 8 million miles away from all my family, and I miss them terribly.



Heth and I shared a boxed of Twinkies and looked at numerous cute and trendy hairstyles on the internet, drooled over an apple cake recipe in Family Circle magazine, stayed up way too late chatting, did some laundry (she folded the monstrous pile of clothes in my bedroom while I dropped my kids off at school, she just can't stay away from that laundry, to my delight of course) typical stuff that thirty-something moms do.



Then we drove HERE!!!!



We're in a hotel right now. Heth and Toby are still sleeping, but I'm one of those people once I wake up, I'm up, so I thought I'd do some bloggin'. I wonder if Heth can hear the click-click-click of my typing...




But LAST NIGHT we saw our favorite band, Blindside, (along with some impressive local bands and Edison Glass) at The Underground, this really amazing Christian hang-out/concert venue.



This is my third time seeing Blindside with Heth. The first time was a few years ago. We were fairly close to the stage and even wound up in the middle of a mosh pit (most terrifying!) The second time was in my hometown in Iowa, just a couple miles from my house. And then last night.



Although the target audience for Blindside is high school/college, that didn't stop us from going and enjoying the music. The cutest part was that several people approached Heth, with Toby in wrap, and asked if she was Christian's wife (the lead singer of Blindside) or one of the band wives. I'm guessing Christian is in his mid-twenties. But you see, that's just Heth. She's so glam and so stinkin' cute. When people saw her, they were thinking, "She HAS to be someone from The Band." She has That Look. And wears it very very well. You'll see when we post pictures which will be coming soon.

I'm old. My ears are still ringing. But it was so worth it.

My Dell

This machine is fabulous!! And mighty fast, too. It arrived yesterday, and I was nice and patient waiting for Eric to come home to set it up for me~NOT!! I'll admit, it arrived at around 5:45 p.m., and I called Eric right away and said, "It's here! It's here! PLEEEEASE come home now and set it up??" Of course he said he was on his way :)

After he got it all ready to go, we both sat at the table and played computers. I researched the area we are moving to, and he did work work. (Work related to his workplace). It was cozy and cute sitting at the table across from him, watching his lips move as he read through his bazillion emails.

Anyway, I am so happy to have an Inspiron, and I'm sure it will last me for many years to come. Thank you honey!! <3

Little Andrew

I'm so excited! My dear cousin Jessie and her husband Jeremy have a beautiful baby boy!! He is their first son, born just one day after his Grandpa Joe. He weighed in at 8 lbs 8 oz, and I forget how long he is. He has black hair like his mommy did when she was born (but not quite as much). I have to wait all the way till CHRISTMAS to meet him, because we are so far apart.

I'm flooded with memories of being a little kid at Jessie's house. Nate and I were always so excited when we got to ride the bus home to her house. The farmland and woods were an endless playground for us, filled with snowmobile rides, huge forts, giant snow drifts, writing plays, jumping on the bed (S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y--NIGHT!), trading stickers, trying to get Jessie to give us her Halloween candy that she had saved clear till Easter...so many great memories...and now you have your own little baby who will play with his cousins and make lots of wonderful memories, too!

And, by the way, I love Andy Pandy Pooper Dandy for your little guy. But you could call him Andy Pandy Pooper Dandy Squared, me being the first Pooper Dandy and all. But I'm willing to relinquish my title for that cute little scrumptious baby.

We love you, such a precious family of three (I mean four! Hugo was your FIRST baby!)!

Give little Andrew tons of kissie kissies from us!