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.
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.
Sorry it's so dark. For some reason my videos get darker when I upload them onto YouTube. The funniest part is how he puts down his sandwich part way through to really perform. In case you can't tell, I actually put the bat on his plate with his sandwich. I know. I'm hilarious.
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:
I'm so proud. Also, he lost his first tooth this week. All week long I was trying to convince him to let me pull it out since it was amazingly just barely hanging there for days. He finally pulled it himself on Thursday night and said it didn't hurt. Maybe he'll let me take care of the next one sooner, which won't be too long from now, since the one next to it is already loose. Here's the snaggletooth:
...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.
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.
Quick blog... We got the internet and cable at our house yesterday afternoon (just in time for TV Premiere Night to the Max!) but somehow in the move, my computer has decided to only stay on somewhere between 5 seconds and 2 minutes at a time. Kind of makes it hard to accomplish anything online, so I'm quickly doing this at the job.
Here I am last Sunday at 4 months aka 16 weeks aka avacado-sized baby. I had another growth spurt of my belly the night before, and I was especially poochy that day, so we'll see how it compares to next month's picture. They might not be too different from each other. When he took the picture, Jon said "Are you pushing out your stomach?" "Nope, just way bigger than yesterday at this moment in time."
Before 2004, I didn't wear flip flops. Shocking, I know. I hated the feeling of something between my toes. My BFF Erin and I were planning a trip to Los Angeles, though, and I wanted some comfortable walking shoes that weren't dorky, so I asked her what she recommended. She told me about the greatest flip flops known to mankind: Reefs. I bought them in several colors and started wearing them all of the time. Here they are making their premiere in LA:
In 2006 in Katy, TX, again with Erin. (Apparently I often wear them with that same shirt.) FYI: This was the first time we'd seen those giant red balls outside of Target so we took pictures with them for several minutes.
Even the family I work for's weirdo cat loves them. She was wearing them one day when I was at their house!
I've worn those brown reefs nearly every day, 9 months a year for over 4 years now. I had noticed that they'd started to wear down. As seen below.
Just on the right shoe, just on the edge where my big toe is.
Apparently, I walk all kinds of weird with my right foot. If you go back and look at the first two pictures, you can see me doing it. No idea how I can walk like that. So when I went to Fort Worth a few weeks ago, my mom got me some new ones, since my big toe was about to hit the pavement when I was walking. This is how it's SUPPOSED to look...
Aaaaah. Much better. Yay for another four years in brown Reefs!
The new one and the old one. I'll have to work on building my foot impression into the new one.
I have so many things I want to post about, but have been so lazy. We're so busy right now. We're closing on a house on Friday and moving in on Saturday. Yeah. Never mentioned that, did I? Jon's mom gave me her car and I sold my darling. There will definitely be a post about that, but I haven't gotten around to it. Even though it was three weeks ago. There have been weird nature-y things around our apartment building. Haven't shown you those either. I plan to catch up, but I don't know when. We're packing all week this week, and our cable and internet won't be hooked up at the new house until Thursday. If you know me, then you know I thought this could be a huge problem in regards to fall television premieres next week, but luckily not much is actually going on yet. We (or at least I) will have to go to someone's house on Sunday night to watch the Emmy Awards. Super important. Other than that, I'll survive. Dancing With the Stars premieres over Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday, but I can live without seeing those. A bunch of my shows premiere Thursday (Earl, Office, ER [Hallelujah for the last season!], Survivor, and Grey's Anatomy) but we'll be set by then. The important thing I wanted to post tonight was baby related, of course, since that's all I seem to say recently. I'll get back to the good ol' random posting like before, I promise. I went to the doctor yesterday for my 4 monthish checkup and took D, which was an adventure in and of itself. Last month I heard the heartbeat, which was pretty cool, but I didn't get to tape it because I didn't know the doctor was going to do it in the exam room with basically a microphone with a tiny speaker. So this month I was ready, but Fetus was all ready to avoid the mic. Stage fright.
Clearly, Fetus wouldn't stay still. Headless Doctor started out looking for it and found it around 13-17 seconds into the video, then Fetus made a run for it. He found it again around 40-44 seconds into the video, and Doctor informed me that "He's really active." Thanks, doc. As if I didn't know. And speaking of "he", I'm a little mad. I figured all of this time that we'd be finding out the gender at next month's appointment, around 19 weeks. But nooooooooooo. Doctor said there are things they like to look at that aren't really visible until around 22 weeks, so we have to wait until November. Boo! I just want to know now! What are you gonna do though? Well, I'll be taking another fruit/vegetable picture this weekend for my 4 month picture, but don't know when I'll get it up. I'll keep you on your toes, but don't hold your breath. Fainting from on your toes is probably worse than fainting flat-footed.
The awesome spider web at the boss family's house.
The not-so-awesome huge spider living on the
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,
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
