FatJ:
-raking with ryan
-football watching?
-no Vikings
-getting dragged to have a family picture taken

Ryan:
-raking with dada
-hopefully napping
-getting dragged to have a family picture taken while running around like a crazy man

Me:
-leisurely morning watching others rake
-neighbor’s baby shower
-taking my family to have our family picture taken
-hopefully cooking nothing

Today when I was blow drying my hair, Ryan took all of his toys that have been up in our room and piled them in the middle of the floor. He said he was going to the beach, and these were his ‘beach toys.’ I went back to blow drying my hair, and for the few minutes I spent doing that I could see from the corner of my eye that Ryan was “busy” doing something. He kept walking back and forth carrying various objects from our room. When I finished the hair drying, I walked out of the bathroom and found this:

Ryan was calling this his “big pile of beach toys” that he was going to take to the beach. He also referred to it as a “big pile of junk.” Basically, he collected every object that he could pick up from our bedroom and piled it all up in this big heap. Bed pillows, throw pillows, a hamper, FatJ’s collection of magazines and books from his side of the bed, decorative cigar boxes…it was all there. He was very proud.

The last time my brother posted something on his blog was back in July when he hosted a Pontoon Boat Naming Contest. He had folks submit name ideas for the pontoon boat that resides at the family cabin. Suggestions poured in, and then from those, each family member got to submit a vote for their favorite pontoon boat name.

The results are in; and signage has been applied:

Can’t wait till conditions are favorable for setting sail on the beauty again!!

**I’m hosting a guest blogger today. It’s my friend Jen- she’s a mom of two girls, ages 2.5 and 7 months- and she and her husband are in disagreement about trying to avoid getting sick by keeping her toddler out of preschool. She wrote the following, and is looking for other parents’ opinions.**

Jen says…

I am taking a poll… some of you are pregnant but all of you are moms, and I would like your honest opinion on this subject.  Please let me know what YOU would do.  H1N1… the topic of the hour. :)

Day four of November, and I already have nothing to say. Here are some bullet-points of current goings-on…

• We are beginning what is sure to be a long, drawn-out process of reconfiguring our home in preparation for this new baby. We have two bedrooms on our main floor, one of which we’ve been using as an office. We’re now in the midst of moving the office into the basement (into our guest room/bicycle repair shop) so that the current office can become Ryan’s bedroom and Ryan’s current bedroom can become the baby’s room. What we’ve accomplished so far in this project is purchasing over-priced Ikea office furniture for the basement (which required me to make TWO Ikea visits TWO Sundays in a row- BLUCH!!), and last night FatJ finished putting the stuff together. We do have one problem at the moment, though. The loser past owners of our home left this unsightly pressboard wardrobe down in that guest room, and we have no idea how to take it apart to get it out of there. We may have to resort to a chainsaw is what I’m thinking.
• Today our garage door broke. AFTER I had pulled the car into the garage and shut the garage door. This here is a shout-out to my dad who a few years ago installed safety cables through the spring mechanisms on our garage door, because if that thing had broken without the safety cables?? We truly could have been seriously injured. My advice to anyone with this type of garage door with those big, metal springs: please install the safety cables!!! I’ve heard of people being terribly injured by this type of accident, and the repairman had similar stories for me. Even if you are out of harm’s way, a springing cable could do some major damage to your car.
• Oh yeah, and then when the garage repairman was here Leila ran away of course. Why wouldn’t she run away? I hate this animal.
• FatJ promised me that he’d get home tonight before 6:00pm, and then I alternatively promised him that if he arrived before 6:00pm we could have burgers for dinner. I’ve had a major aversion to burgers during most of this pregnancy, and I guess FatJ has been suffering burger withdrawal. So I said if he came home early enough, and if he touched the raw beef, and if he grilled them, then we could have burgers tonight.
• One of the best bakeries in town is moving to a very inconvenient location, and I’m pretty cheesed off about it. I ranted about it today on the food blog. Ryan and I went to said bakery this morning and scarfed down a cinnamon bun and a chai (for me). I also brought a chocolate croissant home for FatJ, but since he was rude to me on the phone when I called him about our broken garage door, I plan on eating it myself. It’s already halfway gone.
• Is Glee really not on again tonight??

On to the trick or treating…we hyped that up bigtime as well. We told Ryan all about going door to door, asking for candy by saying trick or treat, and then going to the next house to do it all over again. He was excited. He got to try out his maiden trick or treat over at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in the late afternoon. He donned his ghost costume and precariously made his way up their steps while trying to carry his treat bucket and not trip over his costume (this was a big hint to us that the ghost costume was NOT going to work out for the night’s trick or treating festivities).

As adorable as he was in the ghost costume, it was just a bit too cumbersome and impaired his vision a bit too much to really work out as his costume. FatJ had the marvelous idea of dressing Ryan up in his monkey costume from last year, and putting the ghost costume on over the top (a la Curious George Goes to a Costume Party…where Ryan’s costume idea originated in the first place). That way, if he got cranky in the ghost costume after 30 seconds, we could just whip it off and he’d still be in costume.

A Ghost in Monkey’s Clothing

Layer 1:

Layer 2:  (see the monkey feet sticking out the bottom?)

He got really excited about wearing the monkey costume, which I had to CRAM him into because it’s a size 18-24 months!! He wore the ghost just long enough for me to take a picture as we were leaving the house, and then that was the end of that. Dad carried it the rest of the night. And I got to carry that teddy bear, who Ryan insisted come along trick or treating.

the back view:

Live action shots…walking down the sidewalk

Look how short those monkey pants are, hahahaha!

From the moment we started, Ryan LOVED trick or treating. He was in awe of all the other kids in costume walking up and down the sidewalks, and kept shouting and pointing out the different costumes. He was not shy at all about going up to people’s doors asking for candy, and did an awesome job saying “trick or TREAT!” every time. I got him to say thank you at most houses, but then toward the end when I’d remind him about what to say after receiving the candy, he started saying “you’re welcome!” instead. Each time we collected one treat and left one house, he’d start pulling me down the walk yelling ANOTHER HOUSE MAMA?!! ANOTHER HOUSE!!! We probably only went to about 10 houses- our closest neighbors and friends of ours in the neighborhood- but Ryan could have gone all night! At one point as we were walking down the sidewalk, out of the blue Ryan yells out “I’m impressed!!!” I had to ask him to repeat that one, but sure enough, that’s what he said. Apparently Halloween was a very important night for him.

We got home about 7:00 and Ry really got into helping us pass out candy. He’d stand at the door and squeal in delight when MORE KIDS, MORE KIDS COMING!!! approached the door. There were a few really creepy costumes that came by, but he didn’t get scared at all. He kept stepping outside the door to admire our lit-up pumpkin and to be on the lookout for more trick or treaters. At one point FatJ and I were on the couch and Ryan was leaning out the door shouting HAPPY HALLOWEEN to people walking by! Hahaha! He gave us some good laughs that night.

Ryan wanted to delve into all his candy right when we got home. We let him have a couple pieces, but ever since that night he hasn’t really asked to eat any. {So far he hasn’t seemed to notice that his candy bin is diminishing in size by the hour, no thanks to his mama.}

All in all, we had a really fun Halloween. It was so fun to see our little guy get so into all the festivities and have such a great time.

We saved our pumpkin carving for the morning of the big day. We had done some hyping of the whole carving experience to Ryan, and I think he was excited about it. So it was a pretty large bummer when FatJ went out into the garage to fetch our pumpkin-patch pumpkin, and the thing basically disintegrated in his hands (and all over the garage floor) in a rotten, stanky mess. We made the mistake of letting Ryan see the destroyed pumpkin, and he wailed the most tormented wail I’ve heard in awhile. He was very devastated and heartbroken that his pumpkin was ruined, and sobbed and sobbed for a good 3 minutes.

Alas, SuperDad saved the day in an impromptu run to Kowalski’s where he picked up a huge pumpkin that was the only one left of the five for sale that was able to stand upright. We got to carving right away.

FatJ wielded the knife…he hasn’t carved in years but this year claimed he needed to be ‘manly’ for his son, and carve the pumpkin (?).

Ryan was wary of the guts at first. He warms up to new things quickly, though, and soon enough grabbed a scoop and started gutting.

We all got into the action…

Look at this, I’m in some pictures! We’re looking very ‘Saturday grunge’ on this Halloween…

The final product. Ryan’s still talking about it…

And that means it’s National Blog Posting Month! (NaBloPoMo to make it official. Although I’ve not signed up with this site, so I guess I’m not official.)

I’ve done it before- two years in a row now to be exact- and I’m going to go for it again in November 2009. {Click on these links November 2007 and November 2008, if you’re interested in any past November posts.}

My hope is to post at least once a day for the next month. I don’t have any saved up posts. I don’t have any saved up ideas for posts. So it’ll be interesting what I come up with:)

Also…my friend Jen and I are participating in November’s post-a-day over at our blog She Said, She Said. AND we’re doing a giveaway! We’d love to have you check us out!

…and all I got was a lousy newspaper.

(J/K dear!!) Deep down I knew he’d return with nothing for me, so before he left I requested that he at least bring me back a foreign periodical. I enjoy reading publications from other lands- I like hearing a different country’s perspective on things and reading their ads. So atop my coffee table at this very moment lays an October 29, 2009 copy of The Times.

In addition, stashed in a Ziploc bag of liquids and gels, are some hotel-sized Crabtree and Evelyn toiletries. I’m so lucky:)

Also tried some British wine gums today. I prefer Dots.

{{So glad that you’re home, darling!!!}}

When asked today if he wanted to walk down the block to watch the excavators and skid steers and black toppers work on resurfacing some nearby tennis courts, Ryan decisively hollered NO! No no no!! No walk!! I brought up the idea a few more times (because *I* really wanted to go for a walk), and his answer was always NO! So then I thought I’d try one more time. I gave him a choice- I said “Ryan, we can either go for a walk and watch the worker men work on the tennis courts, or we can stay home and mommy’s going to spend the rest of the morning cleaning the bathrooms.” And he chose the BATHROOMS. He wanted to HELP clean the bathrooms. So I tossed him a rag and away we went.

weirdo.

—————–

When asked today what he thought could possibly be in the special package that just arrived in the mail from Grandma Karen, Ryan’s first guess was “a sink.” ????????? And then I said why would Grandma Karen send you a sink?? And he said “yeah.”

weirdo.