Happy Halloween

From our crazy clan to yours, hope you had an enjoyable and safe Halloween!

The Leaf Pile

We had a great time spending the weekend with my sister. They have a massive amount of leaves in their backyard which made for some awesome piles to jump into. Take a gander at Sean diving in.

Holy Cow

After attempting to clean the basement I've decided we have way too many toys. I can't even clean the basement, where to put them all? I find this embarrassing.....so what better to do then post it on the internet? Me thinks it's time to have a garage sale. 

Fall Activities

Fall is my most favorite time if the year. I just love it. One reason is the traditions our family has. Fall means parades and pumpkin patches. So I'm squeezing the recent activities into one post. We do most of these activities with Jessica and her kids, so therefore there are a lot of kids in the pictures. Enjoy!

Parade time = large amount of candy.

Cute Greta really enjoyed herself this year.

Pumpkin patch kids with their chosen pumpkins.

Wesley and his preschool class.

In addition to a corn maze, they had a Milo maze.

The clan.

Lovin the barrel train!

Weekly Winners

The Tighty Whitey Avenger and his trusty sidekick.

My Dad rocking out to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance while showing off his dance moves he learned online for the song. He's a riot. Love you Dad. 

The new Nerf gun is getting some serious action......from Sean.

Morning cartoon time

Cute kid (if I do say so myself).

Swing girl

Rest in Peace Lady. Kitty passed away two weekends ago. We miss her a lot.

Dear GoatMan

Dear GoatMan,
We've had you for six years now. For six years I've been wishing and hoping you'd magically turn into a nice, happy and well adjusted goat. Last week you gored my leg with your horn. My calf is now a lovely shade of green and yellow. I am tired of you and your evilness. I'm tired of the red gleam you get in your eye when you see me enter the pen. I'm tired of your dominance you have over all of the other animals including the miniature horses that each have 150 pounds on you. It saddens me when I see you chase the goat babies around the pen trying to catch them. It gives me pleasure to see them outrun you and your overweight body. I don't know what to do with you. I'd eat you if I was that kind of person, but luckily for you I don't eat my "pets". I don't classify you as a pet though. Pets aren't normally spawns of Satan. Pets don't gore their owners. I don't normally will my pets to fall over dead. But you, I am making an exception. Every day I hope to find you deceased. What a happy and joyful barn yard it would be. Hay would be easy to eat, without you dominating every pile. Sleep would be uninterrupted without you running amok terrorizing all. I would be able to enter the pen without a whip at my side. But alas you seem to be the hardiest goat on the face of the planet. Since you try to kill me on a daily basis I find it unnecessary to worm you and trim your hooves. After all I can't even catch you without you trying to dismember me with your horns. Satan is calling you home GoatMan, listen to him.

Yours Truly,
Goat Mom

El Crappy GoatMan up on his royal perch.

The Forgotten Garden

There are people out there that garden year round. These magical beings must have more energy than I. They have spring crops such as lettuce and snap peas, summer crops like corn and zucchini and then they are out planting asparagus crowns in the fall. I am not one of these people. I put 110% into vegetable gardening in the spring and summer and once the heat of August comes and the plants start to fry in the heat, I'm done. I then recharge my batteries for the following spring. Hence my "garden" looks like a graveyard right now. I haven't even been back there in weeks, so you'll understand my surprise when I wandered back there last week to find thriving plants with fruit hanging all over. I'm swimming in peppers, up to my eye balls in sweet potatoes and even still finding the occasional forgotten onion. I planted eight bell pepper plants that are now producing in gusto. Then there's the hot peppers. What do I do with all the hot peppers? There's about 20 plants ranging from Jalapeno, to some mild salsa peppers (I forget the name) to the Cayenne peppers. The Cayenne peppers are drooping from the hundreds of peppers hanging off of them. Anyone know what to do with one of the hottest peppers on the planet? Because I'm scared to even touch them, little own bring them in the house where my unsuspecting two year old could somehow get a hold of them (and their oils). So alas they will probably rot on the plant unless I become motivated enough to go don gloves and do something with them. Any ideas?

I kid you not, there are hundreds.

What have we been up to?

Nothing much really. This is the time of year that we slow down. This summer really knocked it out of me, energy wise. Maybe it was the 53 days of 100 degree temperatures, or maybe it was something else. Sean tackled one of the biggest projects he's ever tackled, the house siding. We are so glad to knock that off the giant 'to do' list. Now that Fall is officially here we have just been wrapping up loose ends, preparing for winter.

Sean bought a new toy about a month a half ago. He's been itching for a new milling machine but they rarely come along falling into our price range. Yet one day he was surfing Craigslist and ran across a Bridgeport milling machine that was spot on. It's rough and in need of a lot of TLC, but a project is what he wanted so it was perfect. He hooked up the truck to a rented trailer and off he went to pick it up. Ever since it's been home he's been out there nearly every evening working on it. Removing rust, making gears work again. He's going to turn it into a CNC machine. The only problem he's run into is that the ceiling in the shop isn't tall enough for this machine, so he's had to make a few "modifications" to the ceiling.

And here is his new toy, in pieces due to it's size.

I've taken up a new hobby. Running! I bought a treadmill about a year ago and was jogging on it on and off and then got motivated to start using it regularly. So I started using it daily. I felt good, had more energy than ever.....something I was lacking. With two little kids running around, energy was in short supply. My goals started out small. Run one mile a day on the treadmill. After a few weeks I was able to do that. So I bumped it up to two miles a day, then three. I'm in between two and three a day right now and I feel great! I never thought I could be a runner, it's nice to prove yourself wrong. My sister told me I should try running on the road and so last weekend I ran through our little town logging five miles. It was fun but much harder on my joints. I got some new shoes and tried it again yesterday, logging 6.5 miles. It was fun and I'm motivated to get out again next weekend. Maybe a marathon will be in my future...my goal is to do a full marathon next Fall. This new hobby inspired me to make other changes as well. I hacked off 10 inches of hair and got my ears pierced while Sean and I were on our little mini vacation. I sat in the little chair at Claire's Boutique and told myself if I can have two epidurals then I can have my ears pierced....I am 32 years old after all.

That's about all that's happening around here.