pumpkin carving!

so… I’m kind of a bad mom when it comes to stuff like dyeing easter eggs and carving pumpkins. I really just don’t like to do it. I really don’t feel that bad about the easter egg thing, but I do feel bad about the pumpkins. but, nonetheless, I think the last time we carved pumpkins in our family was when layla was about 2. pathetic. BUT we had 4 big pumpkins growing in the garden and we (and by ‘we’, I mean shane and layla) were determined to carve them!

well, I guess I haven’t been checking on the garden so much after everything else quit growing or got eaten by deer, because when we went out on sunday evening, to harvest them, we were surprised to find them all still in varying shades of green! oh well, we brought them in and decided to carve anyway.

after I clipped them on the vine, shane basically took over the whole operation (score!). he grabbed the wheelbarrow and brought it around, loaded the pumpkins in, brought them over to the hose and washed them off, and then we brought them into the garage, where we weighed them (all between 11 and 17 pounds), dried them off, borrowed newspapers from the neighbors, and set to work. initially, we had grand plans to carve all of them. layla chose the smallest and orangest pumpkin to be hers. of course she decided she was scared of the knife, and later, the guts, so she basically told shane what she wanted and where, and he carved it for her.

repeat with the largest, greenest pumpkin for micah! after those two, we took a break to eat dinner, with intentions of shane carving his own pumpkin.

well, he was coming down with ‘the heinous cold’ and wound up losing his motivation. so, we had 2 jack-o-lanterns, which we brought with us to my parents’ house – where we traditionally spend halloween. I thought they were pretty darn cute.

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christmas eve

christmas eve is probably my favorite church service of the year. our sanctuary is gorgeous with the trees and the poinsettias, with ALL 4 advent candles lit AND the christ candle in the middle… it probably helps that this is the church I grew up in and I remember waiting for all that stuff as the season progressed, and how exciting it always was when it FINALLY got there. And then there is the music. growing up as the kid of the organist, who did christmas eve “right”, I have high standards. we MUST start with “oh come, all ye faithful”, and we MUST end with “joy to the world”. the church is always packed, so the organ is played at full blast, with all the extra bells and whistles. it is unbelievably awesome. deanna, our new organist, does not disappoint. the music is always wonderful. near the end (right before ‘joy to the world’), we always turn the lights down and sing “silent night” by candlelight. I don’t know what it is, but I have NEVER made it through that without tearing up. ...

Piano Concerto #2 In C Minor, Op. 18 - Adagio

I got tagged by Mary so here it is. Let's see what your music has to say about you... Here are the rules: 1. Put your iTunes on shuffle. 2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer 3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS 1) IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY? My Dreydel - Raffi 2) WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY? Slip Away - The Commitments 3) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? Sweet Talkin' Woman - Five Iron Frenzy 4) HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY? Nocturne #20 in C sharp minor - Chopin 5) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? Haru Ga Kita - Raffi 6) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? My Style - Black Eyed Peas 7) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? Swinging on a Star - Frank Sinatra 8) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN? Undignified - David Crowder Band 9) WHAT IS 2+2? Shake My Sillies Out - Raffi 10) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND? Five Little Pumpkins - Raffi 11) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE P...

random diaper musings

do you ever feel at odds with yourself? i constantly feel like i'm a big wad of contradictions. and being the living-in-my-head, overthinking type i can spend years, i mean hours pondering things. it can really get me down. example: diapers. one would think that this was a relatively easy thing to handle. i've got 3 kids. i'm pretty familiar with diapers. it seems so simple; your baby needs a change so you take the old diaper off and put a new one on. done. right? no. i have this constant dilemma going on. cloth or disposable. i have 25 perfectly good fitted cloth diapers that i paid a lot of money for when i decided a couple years ago that i was done filling up landfills. so micah wears them a good share of the time. but it bugs me that they're so bulky, especially with the covers on and clothes fit funny and that totally drives me nuts. so at home, he just wears the diaper w/ no cover and when we leave the house, i put a disposable on him. not usually...

revisiting the 2010 bucket list

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how to make a bad situation worse:

around 7:30 on thursday evening, we had a situation like this: not a good scenario. about 2 hours later, we were in this situation: awesome, right? so how do we get from point A to point B? like this: see the awesome metal ‘edge of death’ on that bowl? yeah. that’s the weapon. in my effort to speedily get the bowl under layla’s face, I actually HIT her in the face with it, and the edge SLICED her upper lip open. yup. right open. it was NOT awesome. I freaked out, of course. she’s still in the middle of feeling terrible. dave was not home yet from a meeting. yeah. mom is majorly freaking out. fortunately, dave walked in the door just as I was sending the “GET HOME NOW!” text. it wasn’t really bleeding a ton, but it was obvious that this was not a band-aid situation. so I called my dad to come and stay with the boys while we took her in to the ER. it’s very nice to have an older kid, so we didn’t have to wait for him to get there before we could leave. but not knowing how long it...

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