halloween fun

Here are lots of pictures from our night out for Halloween. We went to the Cactus with several other couples and it was hilarious. There were so many funny costumes and it was a riot just sitting and watching people.

Josh was a lumberjack...very fitting with his big beard. (Note, he was being silly with his ears here. He looks like a cute little Dopey.)I was Ugly Betty. This is my impersonation of Betty when she's lost and looking off into space...Here are Jeff and Laura: Josh and Danny (who didn't dress up....big party pooper)

Shell and Danny:

Josh and me again:
Shell being a mean witch, me being lost Ugly Betty
Laura, Shell, me, Abby:Josh and Jeff:

Eric pulling the thong of the fat lady behind him:Here's a funny picture of Jenny dancing with the big Bugs Bunny character. I don't know who he was but a lot of people seem to remember him. Bugs Bunny is also in the picture and Luigi is almost walking through the pic. (We only know Jenny. She's the funniest thing when she's dancing.)And this was my alltime favorite costume. They were all the Deadliest Catch. There are those red guys in the background are the crab cages. The boat lit up and honked and the guys danced around the dance floor all night. Pretty clever.

football

Two of the donors that I was supposed to host at the football game had to cancel at the last minute due to one of them getting really sick, so I had 2 extra tickets to the game. Josh and Ron decided to come. It was FREEZING but luckily it didn't rain on us.

We won't talk about the turnout...or the Boiler's performance...or their record for the year. But it was fun and chilly and my favorite time to go to football games is when it's cold and you have to bundle up and drink hot chocolate.

i stand corrected

In the picture below, Josh is on a SUSPENSION bridge. Not a covered bridge. Josh is an expert on bridges, apparently. He's lucky I didn't knock him OFF the bridge! :) Just kidding...I think I might have been half asleep when I posted last night.

pregnant pepper

For dinner on Friday night, we had brats in beer, onions and peppers. Since I'm pretty much good for cutting the veggies up (and that's about it), I was in charge of cutting the pepper. You can imagine my surprise when I cut it opened to find that this pepper was pregnant!!! J says he's seen this before but I never had. You can see the little baby pepper that was tucked away in the belly of the pepper. I thought it was so cute! Here's the baby pepper. We took it as a sign and Josh said I had to eat the little pepper. I was surprised that it was actually really really hot when I ate it. (Natasha, you might be able to tell me why, but I have no clue why it would be so spicy!)
So cute. Have you ever seen a pregnant pepper??

roughin' it

We decided to take a camping trip this weekend and had such a fun time. I was, as you might expect, a little reluctant to go mousse-less, showerless and bed-less for two nights, but it turned out much better than expected! And I didn't have to pee outside, so that was a plus.

Here is J cooking some dinner on Friday night. Our campsite was right by the water with a covered bridge just a bit up the way. On Saturday, we went to Turkey Run. This was Josh's first time to Turkey Run and I think we'll definitely be back. Here he is on the covered bridge:

And here he is waaaay up high. I climbed up there, too, but was scared. And it took me like 10 minutes to get down. In the meantime, some little kid jumped up the wall and basicall ran down it. I kept telling him to be careful but it didn't phase him much.

Then I was following Josh and he did this over these two rocks, only I didn't quite have the hang of walking like this because my legs kept getting higher and higher and further apart. Before long, a small crowd formed while Josh thought it would be fun to take pictures of me.



After the "very rugged" trail, we decided to have our picnic. What a gentleman...
Then we did one more trail up to the Lusk home. We got to tour the house which was built in 1841 and has been restored. Much of the house is from the original family (beds, pie stands, floors, fireplaces, even a panic room with an original gun), so I found it utterly fascinating. There was also a grave from their 2 year old daughter who died the year after they built the house.We wanted to canoe really bad but they weren't renting canoes out because of the cold weather where we were staying. They did allow it at Turkey Run but we didn't have time to canoe when we were there. We're looking forward to next year when we can!

Saturday night was pretty cold! But we warmed up with a fireand some hot chocolate!! YUUUUM!! We cooked the milk and I taught J the secret to awesome hot chocolate--2 packets!We had our delicious hot chocolate while we cooked some s'mores.I was one HAPPY girl!!

We had a great time and can't wait to go again next year.

creepy crawlers

When we got home from camping this afternoon, we were putting the tent back up so that it could dry out when we noticed a creepy little critter on the garage light. After a little google searching, we found that the strange looking bug is a wheel bug. And they bite! But the good news is that he's eating all of the spiders that seem to love our house. With a cornfield in the back yard, our house seems to be a meeting place for lots of weird bugs. Last week, when we were having the anniversary/birthday dinner, we found a leaf grasshopper on the screen. Anyway, here's a pic of the wheel bug:

Welcome baby Alex!!!

Our newest nephew arrived this week and we are thrilled!! I can't post pictures but I assure you, he is cute!! Congratulations to Jeremy & Lisa.

Welcome to the world, Alex! We love you already!!

Pumpkin Patch

Shell, Bub and I took all the boys to Millenium Farms Pumpkin Patch today, again in the 80 degree weather. Festivals and pumpkin patches should not be done in hot weather. But we still had fun.

We bounced,

I love this one with Linc in mid-air, Parker doing a little something with his foot and Griff in the background

And here's Parker coming down from a big bounce!

We rode horses,

Note our FIRST NIECE (in Bub's belly). All these boys...we're (I'm) ready to buy frilly little girl clothes! Kennedy Ryan will be here in January!

We took a hayride to the pumpkin patch and picked out our own pumpkins,

We saw lots of animals and played in a corn pit. Hot, tiring, fun fall (?) day!

Covered Bridge Festival

We went to the Covered Bridge Festival yesterday and ate...and ate...and ate. It was hard to get into the fall festival mode when it was 80 degrees out, but we still managed.

(Does anyone see Josh doing my famous head tilt?? Hmm, no more making fun of ME!!)

And here is everyone enjoying the best ice cream ever. I think J spilled a little!

Happy Birthaversary!

Friday was Ron & Patty's anniversary as well as Patty's birthday, so Josh cooked us all a delicious dinner. Happy Birthaversary!

do we have dogs?

...or do we have cats? We're pretty sure that Lukey might be part of both! Here is a picture of Luke-the-cat on the back of the couch and Kitty-Kowe curled up on daddy's legs.

it's all in a night's time

I watched the boys on Saturday night in order for Shell to have a night out. We had all kinds of fun!! I took over a huge bag filled with all sorts of stickers and ribbons and markers and glue and we went to town making cards for Mommy. Lincoln loved it...Griff, not as much. He was more into reading a book and watching Ninja Turtles. But Linc and I had fun. Here's Griff with one of his books.
And then he showed me how he can write. He wrote his name first...
...and then he wrote "Sissy" as I spelled it out. I was pretty impressed!
Here's Linc and Auntie HeeHee (as Linc says it) playing arts and crafts
Here's the finished project!
Then we did some somersaultsThen Uncle Josh came over before he went to play cards with Danny. Linc shot some hoops with a little help from J. (Not sure what those creepy orb things are...they showed up on 2 pictures...cuuureeepy!)
Then Griff jumped around on one foot for a while

Here's Griff giving Uncle Josh bear hugs

Here is a cute picture of Griff playing his guitar

We had such a fun night and the boys were really tuckered out. (So was I!)

our first 5K!

We did it!! We completed our first ever 5K race this past weekend. Josh and I have spent months and months getting prepared for this and are so happy to have done it. Shell did it with us and we had a really great time.

This is our only action shot with us in it. One of Josh's employees was sweet enough to take lots of pictures for us, but I forgot to charge the camera so it died right before we crossed the finish line.

We all did pretty well. The goal that Josh and I set out for was to just run the entire thing without having to walk. Then, we thought that we should try to do it within 40 minutes. But after running our 3 or so miles several times a week and realizing that we were coming in at much under 40 minutes, we decided that 35 would be a good goal. We did it! Josh finished in just about 31 minutes and Shell and I finished in just over 34. He finished and then waited for me by the finish line so that we could cross together holding hands, just like we do every night when we run at home.

There are a few races that we've looked at and we're hoping to do one or two more 5Ks before the end of the year. Then we'll start increasing our distance to prepare for a 10K next year. This was so exciting for us.

bitten

It is no secret that we have some spoiled rotten dogs on our hands. We are the first to admit that we probably shouldn't let them sleep in the bed and that we (I) treat them far too much like humans as opposed to dogs. Cesar would be very disappointed in us (me).

Well, our little attack dog has struck again. She bit me the other night while in bed. I take full responsibility because a.) she shouldn't be in bed with us in the first place and b.) the whole thing came about because I felt bad and didn't want to move Lukey off of my pillow, which put me too close to her.

But taking responsibility doesn't make it hurt any less. So I decided to take some pictures...you know, the same way that abused wives sometimes do so that if they end up murdered, you know who to go after...
I ended up with 4 stitches. It hurts and I've had a headache for 2 full days now, not to mention that I was trying to get back on schedule after being on California time for 8 days. So, yeah...it's been a bit of a rough week (which you can probably tell from the bloodshot eyes!). But I will survive and I'm not nearly as worried about the scar as Josh seems to be. I think he's afraid I'm going to look like Frankenstein after these stitches come out! I keep saying that I don't claim my face as one of my better qualities anyway, so it's not a big deal to me.
So along the theme of evil dogs, I treated myself to some evil puppy chow. Evil because I could eat pounds and pounds of the crap and the calories aren't helping me get ready for this 5K! Evil, but oh, so wonderful...just like my little girl!
As a side note, the devil dog is going to the Vet tomorrow. I'm not sure what Dr. B. will do, but hopefully she can refer us to a reputable trainer. And, in case you're wondering, they have officially been banned from the bed. But one trainer that I talked to told me an interesting story that I will share, in a small way of defending my maneating little bunny (yes, I call her bunny...what of it?!). She reminded me that Lhasa Apsos were Tibetan guard dogs, which we knew. But she also told me that their small stature was helpful in having them protect the monks, as they would lie under their robes or inside their huge sleeves while the monks napped and if anyone approached too quickly or with too much force, the dogs were trained to attack. This makes sense, as every time that Kowe has bitten someone, it has always been almost an instinctual thing and a reaction to someone moving too quickly or getting too close. Just a little food for thought before anyone calls the dog police and has her locked up!