Trick or Treat!

Tonight it got dark and we still had no trick or treaters. Finally the doorbell rang. We grabbed our bowl of candy and told Koty to stay back. When we opened the door we discovered it was our very own, Michael. He had snuck out the back door, and went around to the front. When I opened the door he was chewing on some Reeses Pieces and said, "I want candy!", and he was laughing. Silly boy! I was convinced we would have a lot of kids tonight, but so far we've only had about 17. I guess we'll be eating lots of candy.

Candy, yum!Steven mummifying Michael.
Michael's way of handing out candy.

Massage

Who's lucky feet are those?

Dave has it made tonight. He has a drawer full of socks down here, and Steven is getting the pills off of them with our pill machine while they are on his feet. It feels like a little foot massage...very relaxing. This is something both of them seem to enjoy.

Kid Stuff

Michael is hard at work doing homework. He is doing very well in school and is even taking an enriched course this year. Actually both boys are doing very well. I am very proud of them for all of their hard work!
This is Steven eating a banana with peanut butter tonight, his snack of choice when there are no "goodies" in the house. He made peanut butter m+m cookies last night. I ate one of them, and when I came home from work (an all day seminar) today they were all gone and he was complaining to me that there were no goodies. There is no way to keep anything sweet in this house for longer than a day with 2 teenage boys and a husband with a sweet tooth.

17 Years

Today it is 17 years that I have been married to my wonderful husband. The time has flown by so fast. Last night we enjoyed a night out together. We went out to a nice dinner and then to see the movie "Express".
Today, since it's our anniversary, I made Italian Wedding Soup....mmmm! God has blessed us so much! I couldn't ask for anything more.

The Monster Muffin Pan

We have just finished dinner and the kitchen is quite messy, however I have decided to sit for just a few minutes before cleaning up. This morning I made bran muffins for the kids and have not yet washed the pan. I heard Koty barking at something and then making a beeline for the family room. At first I thought that Dave or one of the kids was teasing him, but when I finally got up to check it out I realized he was spooked out by the muffin pan. Here he is staring at it. Once he barks he will run as fast as he can to get away before it attacks him.

Big Puppy

This morning as was seeing Michael off to school, Koty came and plopped himself right down on my lap. He's pretty big to fit on my lap, but he thinks he's still little.

More pictures from yesterday

I wonder what the story on this old place is and what memories were made here. How sad and neglected it is now. I love how the sun rays show up so nicely in the photo.

Watch out, Martha! Don't get your feet wet!

Where's the candy?

A few days ago I bought three bags of Halloween candy. One of the bags I emptied into a little ceramic pumpkin that sits on our entertainment center. The other two bags I tucked away in a cupboard, still in the grocery bag. The candy that I had emptied into the pumpkin didn't even last a day. Yesterday when I went out with Martha someone found the other two bags, and when I got home there were only 2 little Milky Way Bars left. The Snickers were completely gone. They said they really missed me. I guess they found comfort through eating chocolate. Maybe if I buy them chocolate they'll let me go out again sometime!

A Daycation

Today Martha and I spent a day together, out and about. Priscilla was supposed to come too, but is too overwhelmed with school stuff right now, so she opted out. Martha and I spent the day touring antique shops and eating out.

The fall colors were beautiful! This picture was taken near where we stopped for lunch...the first time.Whoa!

We took a scenic walk through Grimes Point (was that what it was called, Martha? It doesn't sound right.) This little bridge we had to cross over was a little broken down, so....

Martha jumped on it to see if she could break it. Not really, she was just showing me that it wasn't all that flimsy.

I thought this old tricycle in one of the antique shops was neat.

At the end of our day together, we stopped at Gudl's restaurant for some authentic German cuisine. Not only did I get to meet 2 computer friends (Gudl and Melissa) in person, but I got to enjoy a delicious meal too!! Unfortunately we were much too full for the yummy looking desserts.

It was a very fun, much needed day out together for some sister time! Hopefully the next time Priscilla can come too.

Falling Leaves

Dave just picked up the leaves last night, and this is them today. They're falling like crazy!

Home from PA

This is Dave's brother, Bill, and his wife, Jo. Jo and I went shopping at the PA outlet malls right after this picture was taken at Dairy Queen. There is no sales tax on clothing there, and the prices were way cheaper!! I got a really nice black belt at Eddie Bauer marked down from $36.00 to $1.99.

My nieces and Michael building popsicle stick houses in the playroom.

Koty and Emi playing

Steven and my niece, Brianna, having a competition to see who can bounce the tennis ball up and down on the racquet the most times in a row.

Koty wonders why Emi gets to be in the position he likes to be in.There were some beautiful colors on the way home!

A Little Getaway

We have been visiting Dave's brother and his wife in Lancaster County, PA since Thursday night. Yesterday we went to a place called "Kitchen Kettle Village". There are a bunch of fun little shops to explore here. I have been here with my sister in law before, but never with my honey. I made him come this time since my brother in law had to work a half day, and there was a picture at a store here that I wanted to get for our family room. We saw a few Amish wagons out and about.

We did buy a beautiful picture, but I'll post that later. We're wondering how we will get it home since it's pretty big.

We had live entertainment. These guys were playing music, and this woman was dancing.

This is Dave. He knew I was taking a picture of him walking into the pottery shop.

We saw some nice pottery while looking around.

These are called "peanut pumpkins". Aren't they ugly?

Dave and I pause for a picture just before heading back to my in laws house. The weather couldn't have been more perfect.

The Stone Fireplace

My honey continues his awesome work on our stone fireplace.

Ouch!

I get 3 allergy shots every week, but today I got 4 shots since they were offering the flu shot. It really hurt when she gave it to me, and now it feels like someone slugged me really hard in my right arm.

Koty's meeting with Lilly

It rained again today, but we decided to get Koty and Lilly together anyhow. Lilly came this evening at around 5:15pm, and even though it rained while they played, they had a great time. It was extremely difficult to get a good picture of them because they were constantly moving. The neat thing is that they are related. Koty's grandpa is Lilly's father. Pretty neat we only live 5 minutes away!

Fireproof

I wish I posted this sooner, but I wanted to mention that Dave and I saw the movie, "Fireproof" last Friday night. It was very good, and the theater was jam packed! If you see it bring some tissues. I didn't and I cried.

Interesting!

Last week one of my patients looked at Koty's picture on my wall and asked me what kind of dog he was. I told her and she got so excited because they also have a comfort retriever and guess where they got theirs... Dakota Winds in South Dakota! They are the 1st people we've met that have one and we are the first ones they have met that have one. Since we only live 5 minutes away from each other we decided to get the dogs together. They will meet tomorrow at a park.

Oh, and our dogs are related. I will post pictures of their meeting tomorrow.

Reminiscing

The kids have been asking and asking to go visit our old neighborhood (about a 30 minute drive) and to go to Long Acre Farms nearby and get ice cream, so tonight we did just that...except my honey forgot his wallet so we didn't get the ice cream. I was short 15 cents so we couldn't get any. The above picture is our old house. We lived here for 10 years and have many good memories here. I couldn't get a good picture because the woman who lives there now was sitting on the front step. As it was, she saw me take this one. I tried to be quick while Dave was saying, "No, don't get it!" We visited our old neighbor a little later when it was dark and he said that the woman said that someone drove by and took a picture...oops! I guess we should've stopped and said hi and told her that we lived there for 10 years, and did she mind if we took a picture.

At Long Acre Farms they have a huge corn maze and lots of other neat things to do. Dave and the boys were really having fun trying to figure out the yard mazes. There are rules that you can only do certain things and it really takes a lot of thought to get through it.
Finally the boys and I stopped at the tires for a photo as the sun was setting. The boys played on these when they were just little people. They said they were surprised to see how small everything looked, especially the pirate ship.
It's fun to go back and reminisce. Both boys were born while we lived in that neighborhood, so that's where we watched them learn to walk, talk, where they learned to ride a bike, where we took numerous walks together, where they got on the school bus for the first time, etc... It was nice to come home after though, this is home now.
Funny, after I hit the publish button and viewed my post, I saw my header photo. It was taken at the same place we visited tonight, except we lived out there then.

Cut outs

With the change in weather, the kids get antsy for our tradition of making cut out cookies. We were supposed to be making pumpkins and leaves, but this is what one of the trays looked like. (Michael's creation)

Hey, who is that stealing my dough?!...Michael. A lot of this goes on.

This tray looked a little better than the previous. The blob cookie was the last of the dough, and it's mine! I enjoyed every bite! Tonight we will frost them, and put some faces on those pumpkins.