Abby.... something.... Abby Normal

I really like this halloween time of the year. Saturday night we went to MR's (becoming famous or infamous) halloween party. I decided that this year I was actually going to put forth the effort to go to the party in costume. In past years I have done half-hearted attempts with stuff I had in the closet, but I was actually thinking ahead and started planning early. I actually went to one of those halloween u.s.a stores, but I really can't afford a $40 costume. I am thinking that I might go back later this week to see what kind of sale they have (60% or more???). My first thought this year was to actually grow a beard and do a lumberjack type thing or something along those lines, but the thought of a month or so of itching and maintaining a beard for one night didn't sound like that much fun (maybe next year). That and the fact that I saw that you could just buy a beard at the halloween shop. I like having a beard in the winter, but only if I am going to be outside alot. Jen isn't a real big fan of the beard either. So looking around the house for costume ideas I remembered seeing a Santa Clause costume during the move last year and I remembered putting it up in the attic. I don't remember where the costume came from, but it didn't matter. So I went up there and dug it out. I also came across a garbage bag of old T-shirt that I have collected over the years and ended up digging out a couple of those too. The one shirt was so vulgar that I have owned it for years and never wore it, so of course I put it underneath the santa costume with plans of revealing it when I changed to go to the airport to see my mom flying in from China.

Lucky for us we were able to find a babysitter for the kids at the last minute since my mom was in China and Jen's parents had a party at their house that night. We left for MR's party with me in the santa suit, and all of a sudden I am thinking, what happens if I were to get into a wreck, or if someone sees me driving the car with big fluffy red and white shirt? I do a panic look at the gas guage to make sure we have enough gas since I sure has hell am not getting out of the car to put gas in it in this costume. We get to the party and after putting on the beard and wig, I proceed to go into the house. The look on everyone's face was priceless, with about everyone's face saying "who the hell is that?". It wasn't until Jen came in after me did they quickly figure it out, since our attendance to the party was doubtful earlier in the week. So we started to eat and drink and MR had to do a run to Meijer to get a new "Operation" game since his finally bought the farm. Around 10:30pm I change from the Santa suit to regular clothes with the vulgar shirt and walk out to the front room, and no one notices the shirt. I stand there for about 10 minutes or so and finally leave to go to the airport (after putting on a sweatshirt). I get to the airport before my mom's flight arrives and notice that my Uncle isn't there which is kinda strange since he was picking my mom up. While waiting for mom's flight my cell phone rings. It's the babysitter and she says that Andrew has been screaming for about an hour and she can't figure out what's wrong. So I am giving her instructions on what to try and tell her that I am going to leave the airport and grab Jen at the party and head home, whereupon she tells me that my uncle had called the house earlier in the night to tell us that her flight was cancelled. You see, my trip to the airport was a surprise,but it ended up being a surprise on me. So head back to the party to pick up Jen, where the ratio of girls to guys in favor of the girls. I am not sure how many of them were married, but I was thinking that MR and MH might be in store for a good night. We head for home and Jen comforts Andrew who quickly falls asleap after about 5 or 10 minutes. We figure it was either gas or the fact that when he woke up it wasn't his mom or dad comforting him.

Overall it was a pretty fun night with only a few things going spooky. Poor Lori had an issue with a Jello shot in the car when leaving MR's party, sorry about that Keith. And next time you see MH, just slap him on the nose and say, "bad Marcus". The chirstmas party is little over a month away, I better start making arrangements now.

Boo

Hey all. You know me. I had to play. The following is a link to a Halloween daveandjj.com webpage. I was trying to get it to be my main page, but I designed it a little late and I haven't had a chance to get together with Keith so he can show me how to do that. It might take a little while to load so be patient

www.daveandjj.com/halloween

I am now starting a design for Christmas. I figure I am either going to change my main webpage to the season, or I am going to create a flash intro where you can choose which home page that you want.

Shit

Sunday was a very windy blustery day here. So on the way back from church jenny and I were discussing the meals for the day for the kids since jenny had to work and we didn't have much in the house since we ate it all. So we decided to run to the store and pick up a few essentials, of course we decide this after I have already driven past the store, so I have to turn around. We pull into the parking lot and I ask jenny if she just wanted to run into the store by herself or if she wanted me and the boys to come with her. We decided that since the boys were both awake to make it a family trip into the store. That and the fact that when I go with her we end up buying stuff that she wouldn't have bought, cookies, easy cheese, etc. As I was opening my door a huge gust of wind grabs the door and rips it out of my hand and I hear a huge "thump". I look over and see the side view mirror of the car next to me just hanging by a wire. Son of a M*&^ F@#$$#% B@#$%@. The look of terror in my face must have been priceless. I just felt sick to my stomach. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I might have dinged a car or two in my life, but never taken off a part of the car. I was thinking maybe I should call Keith, since he has alot of experience with hitting cars and taking off side view mirrors (just kidding buddy). So I sheepishly write a note apologizing for what happened and my name and number. We go into the store and end up buying bananas and mac and cheese. I am thinking "great, a $1.78 trip to the store is going to cost me a couple hundred". I ended up getting a call from a guy about an hour later and lucky for me he was very understanding and cool about it. I still don't really know how damaged my car is since I was more worried about his, but I think I only have a huge black mark where it hit. So basically Sunday was sitting in front of the TV saying "shit".

Haunted Nemo

William has this cute flashlight of the "Finding Nemo" character, Nemo. When you push the button you hear bubbles and the mouth pops open to reveal the flashlight. Like I said it's a cute little thing. The other night was bath night for the boys and I was getting ready to put Andrew into his bath with William "helping" me. As I was walking into the bathroom with Andrew I noticed something in the bath. Now it's not unusual for William to "help" me and put bath toys in the bath, but I quickly noticed that it was the Nemo flashlight. I wanted to scold him for putting it in the water, but hey I figured that I really couldn't fault him since it was Nemo and just like the other nemo bath toys. So I took the flashlight out of the tub and put it in the sink to dry out. After a day or so I pushed the button on the flashlight and it still worked. Cool, I thought.

So fast forward to that same night. In the middle of the night I wake up thinking I am hearing something, but it just doesn't register, and both the boys are still asleep. So back to sleep. A few minutes later I hear it again. It's the bubble sound coming from the flashlight next to the bed!!! I didn't touch the button. I figure the button is just stuck so I press it a few times and go back to bed. Nope. The thing kept "bubbling", so I just threw it under a bunch of clothes to kill the sound and went back to bed. The flashlight "bubbled" all night long. The next day I took it down stairs to put with the rest of the toys. That night Jenny fell asleep on the couch downstairs and it bubbled next to her and about scared her half to death. She took the batteries out of the light and it kept "bubbling". Now if the little mouth would have opened and the light came on too I would have quickly performed and exorsisim and chucked it out the window for sure.

I figured the flashlight is pissed for getting dunked and is seeking revenge. We have since banished the light to the closet in the den. Hopefully it won't escape and get the other toys to join him in a revolution.

Mom's China Adventure (the China Syndrome)

My mom left on Saturday for a two week visit to China with her friend. Her friend's daughter married a diplomat and is stationed in China at an embassy or something like that, so at least they will have someone who knows the area.... and can get them out of trouble when they get into it. Those of you who are saying, "what trouble can they get into?" don't know my mom very well. One of the reasons I love the World Wide Web, it that I just received a couple e-mails from them telling me what they are up to, how cool is that? My mom is going to have some stories to tell when she gets home because in the first day they were there my mom has already got into dickering with the merchants at the markets even though she doesn't speak the language. But she sure has the value of a dollara (or whatever) and the conversion down pretty good. She also found out that her visa doesn't work there, but her friend's ATM card from a local Credit Union does, go figure. She has also been in a car crash. The cab they were riding in rear ended another car, but everyone is alright. ALL THAT IN THE FIRST DAYS OF VACATION!!! I hope that there is a China left when they leave :).

More to come.....

And now the news....

This weekend was the typical, "OMG it's getting colder, now is the time to try and get all the projects done I should have done this summer" kinda weekend. Saturday's project was to fix the yardlight in the front yard. It was working when we moved in, but stopped working sometime in the spring. I knew that we had clipped the line when we transplanted some of the plants around the house, so I figured here was the problem. The head of the yard light is in need of help too. Like everything else in this house it's seen better days and is being held on the post by a screw.. maybe. So the plan was to replace the head of the yardlight and fix the wire. I am thinking maybe an hour or so. Nope. Took most of the day. I cut the wire where we had clipped it and attached a light and found out that it still didn't work. So I dug out most of the wire, backtracking until I found a spot of the wire that was very crispy and burnt. Repaired that and the other part in the wire that I had just cut. We decided to make the trip to the hardware store a "family" event with the whole crew. We ended up going to two different places and still didn't find a light that would be close to matching the other lights. That and the kids and Jenny were cranky so the last stop at Menards was quick. So put the old head back on the post and hooked everything back up, and it actually works.

Sunday's excitement was a trip to a school carnival, or harvest festival (my first). This was an alright event where there was a ton of kids in cramped space all running around and playing games trying to win pieces of candy. I took William to most of these games and he actually did pretty well in some of them. Most involved him throwing something, which he is real good at. We went to grab something to eat, Hot dogs and Chili, and they ran out of dogs. bummer. They brought out more, but quickly ran out of those too. The highlight of the night was that I took William on a Straw ride (not hay ride) on a trailer pulled by a tractor. We had a lot of fun and William enjoyed it, but man they packed in the people into the back of this trailer and the kids were all over the place trying to shove their way to the front so they could look out the front. I had to actually have William in my arms and keep my arm up so the other kids wouldn't crush William. Besides that it was a pretty fun night. The night ended up about an hour early since they had such a huge turnout that they ran out of everything and had to close up.

Andrew Update

We took Andrew down to Indy yesterday to have his operation on his eye. Man what a stressful day for Jen and I with little to no sleep the night before. But good news, the operation went very well. The problem with his eye was exactly what they thougt it was. A muscle on the bottom of his eye was very thick and wouldn't Andrew to move his left eye up, so he moved that muscle to a different part of his eye as well as moving another muscle to allow maximum movement. Andrew was really tired and cranky the rest of the day after the operation, but from what I could see his eyes are almost even and they move with each other correctly. The one bad part is that he will never be able to look straight up in his left eye, but that is small compared to the other stuff that could have been wrong. Another trip to Indy next week for a follow up to check things out. The doctor said there might be a chance for another operation to "tweek" things up a little bit depending on how things turn out after everying heals.

Hopefully with this being over Jen will be able to destress a little bit in her life. She has way too much crap going on that stresses her out, and not much I can really do about it except try and take care of the kids and the house when I can. Hopefully one less thing will help.

Who would buy this??

I saw this gargoyle over the weekend at a garden center. I asked the person working there, "who would buy such a thing?" She told me that there were two people actually interested in the statue. One was a another landscape owner with a huge yard and pathway to stick among the other statues that he has, the other was a person who wanted to put it in their front yard. Wouldn't you love to be that neighbor? Now this statue isn't one of those cute little halloween props that you usually see, this is an actual cement statue that's at least 5 feet high and probably a ton or two. There are two obstacles in buying this statue. One is that it is $600 and the other is that they don't deliver so you have to pick it up yourself (if you can). This is one of those things where you really want it..

Now I know I am a parent

While giving William a bath last night I stepped out of the bathroom to grab his pajamas. While out of the room he dropped a duece in the tub. When I came back into the bathroom he was trying to hand it to me.

Now I know I am a parent

Don't shoot it.. you will just make it mad!!

I know I have a few jobs as a husband that are truly only mine. One is Spider Killer. Jenny's job is to point them out to me and say "kill it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". I think she actually put a cup over a bug for a couple of days I think trying to starve it. I was hoping to pass along the job of spider killer to my son, but he just calls the spiders "ladybug" and doesn't know exactly what they are. This time of year brings alot of bugs into the house, but the one lately have been these wolf spiders. They are huge, harry, ugly things that are extremely fast. I spotted one of these things in the family room the other night and proceeded to hit it with a shoe that I had laying around. After hitting this spider, it just looked at me and said, "huh? excuse me? can I help you?" and kept on moving whereupon I lifted the shoe up as high as I could and made sure he wasn't getting out of the next hit. Yesterday morning I was eating a bowl of cereal and saw a little wolf spider in the front room and promptly stepped on it. While finishing my cereal I saw another HUGE mo-fo along the side of the room. So I decided to finish my breakfast first then kill it. I looked up and the SOB was gone (they are so fast). So I tracked it down to the corner of the room. Now, the fun part of this spider hunt that there are toys all over the floor so they can hide under them and surprise the crap out of you when you move it. So I am moving toys away from the corner of the room and all of a sudden there are 3 huge spiders in the corner. Was it an ambush?? The spiders scatter so I start stepping on them like I am dancing a jig. They are so big there is actually a "snap" when I crush them (ick). Now not much scares me, but even that gives me the heebie-jeebies. ughhh.

Overkill

Why is it that sometimes I go into overkill with some of my projects?

Problem: I wanted to make a sign to put next to a pile of rocks in my front yard to advertise that I am selling them.

Simple solution: Get a piece of cardboard and a marker and make a sign.

My solution: Get a flat 18"x24" piece of wood and paint it white. (two coats of course). Since my writing is so poor, I go on the computer and type up a sign that says "flagstone for sale - 486-xxxx". The idea is that I am going to print out the sign and create a stencil to spraypaint the sign. Of course I can't print out 18"x24" on a piece of paper so I end up printing out 3 different sections and taping them together. I start cutting out the letters with a knife. Then I think... I can't spray paint this because it isn't stiff enough and it will not be clean lines. So I find a piece of thicker cardboard and transfer the stencil again and cut out the letters again. I tape the stencil on the board and proceed to spray paint it. Also upon finding a can of red spray paint I decide to make the letters black and the phone number red. Why? I don't know. So I lay out the stencil and spray paint the letters onto the board. I pull up the stencil and it looks like crap. The lines aren't as sharp as I want them. I want it to look nice if I am going to do it this way. So now I am going to take the stencil and outline the letters again and probably use a marker or a paint brush to get the clean effect that I want. So far I have been working on this little project for a couple weeks trying to find the time here and there to work on it. I figure one of two things are going to happen. Either snow will be flying by the time I get done, or I am going to find out that this sign isn't allowed by the neighborhood association and get in trouble for it. I am thinking #2.

Birthday Party

Sunday was Andrews 1st birthday party. His actual birthday is on Tuesday, but kids' birthday parties usually fall on the weekend before and usually on a Sunday (or so I have been informed). Usually Jen and I plan the hell out of parties that we have, but we didn't do that for this one which was nice, and a bit unerving. We had discussed the menu a little bit a few weeks ago, but hadn't really talked much about it lately. We have both been working so much that we hadn't had a sit down together meal in a while. Jen tells me that she is getting ready to mail out the invitations, where I inform her that it's less than a week away, so phone calls instead of snail mail. The day really snuck up on us. We rushed around trying to get the house cleaned up, and food prepared for Sunday, which wasn't easy with both of us working during Saturday. I was planning on getting alot of stuff done, but I worked 6a-3p and Jen worked too, so I got a few things done Saturday night when she got home, but the real work came Sunday morning. We were both rushing around cooking, cleaning, washing boys, etc, etc. Finally about an hour before the party Jen informs me that she has to go out and get balloons for the party. What? And they have to be special balloons and go all the way over to the mall (on a sunday afternoon). I am thinking that Scott's or Krogers have balloons too, what makes them so special. Well found out there wasn't really anything special about them other than they had Winnie the pooh characters on them. I guess they aren't available at Scott's/Kroger? But it worked out.

The weather on Sunday was very nice. It was so nice I ended up wearing shorts and my "Charlie Harper" (two and a half men) shirt all day and was comfortable. The swingset got it's first real test with 4 kids crawling all over it and jumping in and out of it. Finally we grabbed some lunch. I cranked up the industial hot dog steamer that has been in our family forever that is capable of cooking 40 hot dogs at one time. I also defrosted some of my coney sauce. So after eating we did the whole present thing. Of course Andrew has no clue what is really going on so William was very helpful into tearing into Andrews presents and playing with them too. Now if William will let Andrew play with his own toys that would be good. We moved on to cake and ice cream, and we gave Andrew his own little cake. I was expecting the whole scene where the kid tears into the cake and gets it all over, but Andrew wasn't really sure what to do with the cake in front of him. Either that or he was wondering why everyone and 3 cameras were pointed at him. So finally we put a little bit of frosting into his mouth and then he got the concept. OOOHHH GOOOD. He tore into the cake and downed about half of it (of course alot ending up in his shirt to). After the cake, everyone basicly headed to the door which I didn't understand at first since I am used to people hanging out for a while, but hey it's a kids birthday party. After a quick half-assed clean up, Jen and I hit the couch exhausted. That's one down....