Here are the Halloween-related things that I've been up to this week.

The awesome spider web at the boss family's house.

The not-so-awesome huge spider living on the
awesome spider web at the boss family's house.

Tuesday we started celebrating with orange grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Pregnant Halloween '08: I'm a pea pod! The baby's a pea!

Tuesday Night - Halloween Bunko: Pea pod, Sarah Palin, Asian girl,
pregnant nun, police woman, doctor, laundry basket, cat,
black eyed pea, cowgirl, and Strawberry Shortcake.

Sarah Palin's Foreign Relations

More foreign relations

Sarah Palin loves PEAce.

With the leaf plate/candle holder I won for being voted Most Creative Costume!

Wednesday I made D a Spider Sandwich for lunch.

Here he is discovering it.

After eating off the legs and eyes, he used the extra
pretzels to make it into a birthday cake.

Posted in: creativity, D Man, friends, Halloween on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at at 9:34 PM 2 comments    

Multiple times per week D and I have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. And every time one or both of us sing the song. You've heard it. It's been online since the mid-90's with that same animation. Today I decided to play a joke on him while he was gone to wash his hands for lunch. Here's how it went.

Posted in: D Man, video on Monday, October 27, 2008 at at 6:25 PM 0 comments    

I haven't talked about the kids in a while. So here's what we've been up to. Last Monday, the older two were out of school, so the boys and I went on a search for smallish pumpkins to paint. (It was harder than you think.) After finding them, we took them back to the house and went to work. Here are their creations:

I have no idea what D is doing with his face/neck in this picture.

Here's D's: A Nerd. The yellow on top is his blond hair. That great white mess at the bottom is his buck teeth and his body.
Here is C's: A Rocker. His right hand is holding a guitar.

His left hand is giving the peace sign.

My pumpkin was going to be a cute one-eyed purple monster. It got as far as painting the pumpkin purple and the stem red. It took too long for the paint on the pumpkin to dry and it kept chipping, so I quit.

So I've been teaching D Kindergarten and it's going really well. This time last year, he couldn't recognize all of his letters. This is what he's able to do now:

Posted in: C Man, creativity, D Man, Halloween, video on Sunday, October 26, 2008 at at 9:09 PM 0 comments    

I haven't shown you our backyard yet. Be sure to stay tuned to the end for the best part...

Posted in: creepy things, house, video on Monday, October 20, 2008 at at 7:27 PM 2 comments    

...oooh-oooh... living on a prayer... Yeah, anyway, so we are now officially halfway to baby. I said to someone the other day that I had a halfway developed baby in me, then realized that sounded really weird and kinda creepy. So here I am at 20 weeks/5 months/banana-sized baby.

It's amazing how well I'm suddenly fitting into maternity shirts, like the one I'm wearing in the picture. An explanation for the huge jump from avacado to banana came on babycenter.com. It said that up until 20 weeks, they're measuring the length from head to booty because they're all so curled up, but after that they include the length of the legs. So the baby is actually about half the size it will be, about 10 inches these days.
So at the halfway point, here are some answers to my FAQs:
Q: How do you feel/Are you still sick?
A: No already. That ended like 6 weeks ago. Thank goodness.

Q: Are you craving anything?
A: Nothing specific, just food all of the time. Always. Hungry.

Q: Do you know what you're having?
A: I assume a baby. The flavor will (hopefully) be determined at the next appointment on November 14th.

Q: Have you picked a name yet?
A: We haven't even discussed it. We both have names we like, but we haven't actually sat down and talked about it. Something about picking a name for a person that they will have for the rest of their life scares me more than anything else about having a baby. I'm just kind of avoiding it at this point.

Q: Are you settled into your house?
A: (I know. Not related to baby, but asked all of the time.) No. We (mostly I) have a LOT of stuff and it will take a while to get it all where it needs to go. Plus paint needs to be applied in most of the house and that probably won't happen until Christmas. So ask again then.

Posted in: baby, belly shots, house, Jake on at at 7:16 PM 2 comments    

Again... I'm still alive. My computer just still isn't. I haven't had the energy and/or time until tonight to sit down and post from Jon's laptop. It takes a LOT longer to put pictures and stuff on here. But I've done it! So, we found a house and bought it. Here's the story in pictures...

After signing 47,000 papers, we closed on September 19th and got the keys!

And moved in on September 20th. (This was actually the 21st, but you get the point.) When we got to the house on Saturday, I was sad to see that there was no SOLD sign in the front yard. Jon said something to our realtor on Sunday at church and after we got home, up he pulled in his little car with his SOLD sign to take our picture with it. What a great guy, that Jason James with Truman Ball Realtors!
(No, he didn't pay me to say that.)

So, people keep asking about pictures of the house. You won't see any until I'm finished unpacking and decorating (i.e. quite a while.) But here are the pictures I took the morning we moved in!
This is the view of the living room/dining area from the front door.

The dining area/kitchen from the door to the garage.

Kitchen... before our refrigerator showed up shortly after this.
Our bedroom (It's bigger than it looks.)

The nursery of the previous and current residents. And yes, the purple wall and wallpaper border will be taken care of... before March. (There's also one other bedroom just like this one... minus the purple wall.)

The wall in my bathroom that will be taken care of... soon.

So, how's Jack doing? His bed wasn't in the house on the first night, so he claimed a new one.

And then combined his old bed, his new bed, and my blanket that he LOVES into one giant bed that took up half of the living room.

I think he will eventually love the backyard, but anytime we let him out, he almost immediately does this.


So how are the neighbors? After two weeks, I went outside one afternoon and found this on the porch. It was a box of cookies! Who does that?! People in movies?! So awesome. I've met two others and they seem nice too.

However our next door neighbors are a different story. We've been hearing 4-wheeler/motorcycle/something-or-another motors every afternoon for weeks. Today I decided to investigate. I looked over the fence and saw this:

Their entire backyard is a mud pit!

They made their own 4-wheeler track.

And are riding around on it every day. (I took these through the holes on the fence.)

This is ridiculous. And loud. What I didn't get a picture of is the thing he's driving past. It's a ramp they built out of... something.

And they're standing on the shed to watch each other.

Is this whole situation legal?

Posted in: house, Jack, neighbors on Thursday, October 16, 2008 at at 8:55 PM 4 comments