Worms for Brains and Bobbing for Apples

It all started with the latest issue of Taste of Home...and ended with me eating a big plate of delicious leftover spaghetti for lunch Saturday. I love Taste of Home, and in their October/November issue they had the CUTEST Halloween party ideas. Almost impulsively I shot off an email to Meredith asking her to join me in hosting a fun costume party. An evite and job divying email later and I was scratching my head about costumes. I was very proud of our guests - everyone came as something!

For your viewing pleasure...

Caleb, the Hippie - Caleb is very anti-hat, so I knew I couldn't dress him in anything that involved headgear. Of course he's also too little to appreciate dressing up, so I spent days brainstorming what he could wear that would involve as little non-regular clothes as possible. I saw a baby dressed as a hippie in Babytalk magazine and knew I had found the perfect costume for a wiggly little guy like him!



Rob, Chief Justice John Roberts...great use for an old graduation gown! And Rob has LOTS of old graduation gowns.



Me, Miss Alaska...great use for an old bridesmaid dress! Like the crown? I made it myself from aluminum foil.



Meredith - my co-host - King Tut!



Ben, Meredith's husband as Nacho Libre - Ben and Meredith were the first to arrive, but right before they got there I heard a little knock at the door. I peeked out and there was a little boy in a boyscout uniform. Expecting people in costume and forgetting it was October 27, not Oct. 31, I thought he was a trick or treater... but he was a boyscout selling tickets to an event. Rob is a sucker for anything boyscout and I knew it didn't matter what the kid was selling, he would want to buy it. Rob was getting dressed for the party, so I made the transaction. In the meantime, I look up and here comes Ben in all his Nacho Libre glory! The little boy looks back and I start stammering, "It's a costume party! We're having a costume party!" Ben says, through the little mouth hole in his mask, "Hey, are you here for the party?" The kid starts dropping stuff and I notice his mother in the distance, I smile apologetically and the kid hurries off. Rob and I laughed and laughed about it.



Baby J. and Andrew as Jack and the Beanstalk and the Giant.



Jessica - Baby J's mom - as a Marine, she's not a Marine, Andrew is. She said Andrew won an award for his skill in face painting, not an award actually, more like a distinction :) Not to discount Jessica's artistic ability, she made Baby J's and Andrew's costume, and the beanstalk.



Chris and Baby M. - Ornithologist and Ladybug - ok the ornithologist is a stretch, but he did carry a net. M's mom Nina was a flower, but somehow I didn't get a picture of her.



Lane - Farmer, very convincing...



Norman and Cyndi and family - a rodeo clown, a circus clown, a Roman (not Greek) goddess, a bride, and a pumpkin.



Baby J. and Andrew both won the Crowd Favorite for costumes in their category, actually Andrew and Ben tied, but we only had one ribbon, so we shuffled the ballots and picked the winner at random. Personally, I voted for Nacho.

After the costume contest we bobbed for apples - this was Rob's idea and I really didn't anticipate how fun this was going to be. There definitely was some sort of competition going on among the men.





For dinner we had spaghetti - the recipe in Taste of Home called for portions to be served in hollowed out orange peppers with jack-o-lantern faced cut in them (titled "Worms for Brains"). Since orange peppers are a jaw-dropping $4 a pound, we had a few for garnish and just ate the spaghetti normally. I made popcorn balls and a reasonable facsimile for caramel apples. They were apples, they were on sticks, they had some brownish sticky sweet stuff on them, they did not taste right. I was determined to make the coating from scratch, and this is were pride gets you - humbled by awful not-exactly caramel apples.

It was a very good time. Next year, Rob says, we'll have a weenie roast. Hmmm, I bet the Home Owners Association will be all about that!

Overprotective?

I went to my first Bible Study yesterday in...well...a long time. Actually I've gone regularly to some sort of Bible study ever since we moved to Cutler Ridge (almost 4 years ago), but they were either lecture format or participating in a youth discussion. This one was one of those small group, sit in a circle, share prayer request sort of Bible studies. I haven't been to one of those in years.

Just don't ask me what the topic was because I don't know!

A friend invited me to this Bible study because I told her I was interested in attending a Bible study where Caleb would be welcome. The women's Bible study at our church is "welcoming" to children, but it's kind of an "in name only" kind of thing. No one with children actually attends the study and there is no childcare. Caleb is just past that sit quietly sleeping phase.

At yesterday's Bible study there were lots of kids and lots of babies. Since Caleb really likes playing with kids, he happily joined the bigger kids on the porch while the real babies cuddled in their mommies' arms in the living room. The only problem was that the porch was not visible from my seat in the living room...and there were no adults with the kids. I didn't come intending to babysit, so I hesitantly asked a 6 year old (homeschooled) girl to keep an eye on Caleb and make sure he didn't put things in his mouth.

Long story short - Caleb was fine and he had a blast. He loved being with the big kids. But me! As time went on the windows of time I could go without going to check on him got shorter and shorter and shorter! It was a plenty safe area for kids to play, but Caleb is still mostly a baby! So enter my dilemma - I want to keep going to the Bible study, but is Caleb really ready for this kind of independence?

Well How Do You Weigh Your Dog?

Mako missed us so much while we were in Arkansas that he didn't eat much and lost 2lbs. We aren't too worried, actually we're kind of glad - those 2lbs mean about $8 in savings when it comes to buying heartworm pills.

An Alternative to Counting Sheep

The main character in Bleak House is Esther. She is a classic Dickens type – Dickens was in love with a young woman whom he thought was perfect. Things did not work out as he planned and he never married her. Instead he married another woman and had a houseful of kids. He never forgot his first love and molded some of his characters after his perception of her inner beauty. Agnes in David Copperfield is another example of this type. Both Agnes and Esther have incredible control over their emotions and are beautifully ladylike and graceful. They are also considered trustworthy. Dickens gives each of these characters a basket of keys that symbolizes their “job” as wise household managers.

One night Esther is trying to go to sleep and she can’t settle her mind, so she begins to think of the oldest people she knows and tries to mentally turn back the clock and see them as they were in their youth. I thought this was and interesting thing to do. I imagined my grandparents and old people at my church. It is a very hard thing to do. I’ve even seen pictures of my grandparents in their youth and still it was hard to imagine those pictures as vibrant, colorful people. It was a fatiguing thing to do with your mind – similar to counting sheep – so I can see why it would be something to do when you can’t sleep.

I volunteer with the youth group at church on Wednesday night and one night we were talking about the old people in our church. I was shocked that these 15 and 16-year-old young ladies said that the elderly didn’t know much, “because they didn’t know about technology”. I’m sure they weren’t imagining Mrs. Suggs as a young girl walking to her dad’s store or old Mr. Bennet as a part of the “greatest generation” fighting in World War II. But then I’m not sure they ever imagine themselves growing older, when you’re 16 you just don’t do that sort of thing.

While I was in Arkansas last week, I took the opportunity to ask my grandmother about some family history that I had been curious about. My great uncle, her brother, had polio as a child. I wanted to know how he had contracted it – since none of the other siblings had gotten the disease. Also my grandpa was 10 years older than my Nanny and he was from another town. I was curious to know how they had met. Interestingly enough, her answer to both was the same, “It was just one of those things.” She didn’t seem to consider either event as extraordinary. They didn’t know anyone else with polio; it was a mystery as to why Johnny had it. Grandpa just had a job in Holly Springs, she met him at church.

Old pictures, old stories, it’s all very sobering to me. We spend so much time in a hurry and sometimes wanting things to change. I feel so blessed to be in the part of my life where I’m still taking pictures of my baby, still petting my much loved family pet, still struggling to make end meet. These are wonderful days and the more I reflect on how quickly days pass, on how recently all those gray haired ladies at church were silly 16-year-olds, the more I regret the moments I spent without being thankful for all the blessings in my life. Those old pictures are so nice; Esther wouldn’t have had real pictures to show her what those old people really looked like. Take a moment tonight as you drift off to sleep, and imagine some wrinkled face growing smooth and young. See if you can do it – it’s very hard.

Ga Gees, Catfish, and Airline Vouchers

It's always amazing to me how varied our country is and that fact is never more apparent to me than when I fly to Arkansas. When you leave south Florida, the land is hidden beneath a sea of Spanish tile. Nearly every house down here is covered in red tile and they are so close together that you don't notice anything else - except for the abnormally high percentage of swimming pools in back yards. When you fly into Little Rock, the landscape is so green. You fly in over the east side of town passing rice fields and river delta.

Everything else is changing overnight, but Arkansas seems to stay the same. I know it's changing - and probably if I spent more than a short week there I'd notice the differences. But many of the kids in my mom's 1st grade class are the children of people I went to high school with - and they were children of people my dad went to high school with! How different it is to live in a small town!

The main reason we went to Arkansas was to go to my grandmother's 85th birthday party on October 14. She is the oldest of 5 children - all still living. I didn't take this picture, so I can't take credit for the perfect lighting, but that beautiful backdrop is my parent's front yard.

Nanny is the one in pink. (Back L-R Veda, Lorice, Bob. Front Dot, Johnny). I'm sure they all have life experiences that would be interesting to retell, but other than my Nanny, I'm most impressed and interested in Uncle Johnny's life. He had polio as a child and had a withered arm as a result (he hasn't always been in a wheelchair). Inspite of his handicap, he worked full time (as a postal carrier on a rural route) and raised livestock. He didn't let him hold it back. Pretty inspiring, I think.

This picture shows my cousins on my dad's side. (L-R Rex, Alison, Lane, Nanny, Corey, Lori, me, Brian - my brother)

Here's Nanny with her two great-grandkids - Caleb and Tyler, my cousin Lori's son, he's 5. Caleb really liked Nanny!

The week I was in Arkansas went by in a flash! On Friday we went to Dorey's Catfish Resturant in Leola. Leola is in the middle of nowhere - that is it's on a country road that connects two highways (highways, not interstates). Even still, Dorey's is always packed. They have a petting zoo with deer, goats, llamas (all animals that Caleb delightedly proclaimed to be "ga gees" - which is also what he called my parents' dogs and has used for Mako since we've been back).

Our flight back on Sunday included about an hour layover in Atlanta. The flight was overbooked and they needed 6 volunteers to give up their seat. We volunteered and in return they gave us $800 in travel vouchers and $28 in meal coupons. They also put us up for the night in the Crowne Plaza Hotel - it was very nice.

I would advise avoiding the Atlanta airport if at all possible in your travels. It was way too crowded and busy. When we checked in the next morning, the line for security had (this is in no way an exaggeration) at least 1000 people in it. It was insane. We mistakenly thought that we had been given the boarding passes for our new flight, so we just got in line. When we realized our mistake, Rob left me and Caleb in line and went to get the passes. I eventually had to step out of the line and waited for him, then I felt panicked (like a lost kid at Disney World) and went looking for him. I found a payphone and tried to call his cell, but it ate my quarters. By then I couldn't remember what shirt Rob was wearing and knew I wasn't where he told me to wait, so I went up to an airport worker, and of course, burst into tears. (I'm still not sure why I did that! Rob said he knew I would cry and shouldn't have left me.) The worker pulled out a cell phone and had dialed half his number when he came up to me. It turned out that our stroller let us skip most of the line and we got through security in time to get a Cinnabun. And let's face it, Cinnabuns are the real reason we fly.

How 'Bout Them Hogs!

I've never writting a blog about sports before, so forgive me if my writing is a little unclear. When you are born in Arkansas they innoculate you against every giving up that Arkansas might one day be a great football time around the same time you get your MMRs. Oddly enough I married into the fan club of this year's #1 team. But today, Arkansas did something that Ohio State didn't do - they totally rearranged the football rankings!

It's not that we're cynical, it's just so many Arkansas games look the same. I always know how things will go when they starting making field goals. I don't know much about football, but I know enough to know that field goals should be carefully placed. Early in the first quarter (when Arkansas usually makes them) they are more of a concession than anything else. Late in the game, they are stratigic moves that can guarantee victory. Today, they made one of each, and ended up beating Auburn (#2 in the nation - or should I say they were #2) 27-10.

With less than 4 minutes to go, I called my mom. Rob was saying, "It's over!" But I cautiously told my mom that I thought we might win. She responded with the same caution. My dad usually says that Arkansas didn't win a game, the team they played lost, but I don't think that was the case today - even though I really don't think Auburn was up to par - I'm curious to know what my dad thinks!

Regardless! What a great game! I'm so proud to be a HOG!

Rule Breaker!

I confess! I did it! I just read 3 Nicholas Sparks novels in less than a month...and he's not even dead!

If you read my blog regularly, you're familiar my "Rule of Dead Authors". The basic rational behind my rule is that there are so many new authors and who's to know which ones will be classics! I don't want to waste time wading through every new face on the library shelf only to find I could have been reading something that has been proven worthy of that distinction by time. Additionally, I like historical novels that were written in their own time period. I feel like I get a better idea of what it was like to live before everything was electric when it's described by someone who didn't know what it was to have electricity.

Alas...it all started when Meredith left The Wedding for me after our trip to Ohio. The Wedding is the sequel to the book made famous by the movie The Notebook. So of course I had to read The Notebook and I read A Walk to Remember, which was also made into a movie. The Wedding and A Walk to Remember made The Notebook kind of a shocker. (I'll abbreviate from here on out), TW and AWTR area both wholesome, borderline Christian books. In TW, the main character, Wilson, talks about accepting Christ as his Savior, it's all about his marriage and loving his wife (however there is a sort of side story that hints at reincarnation). AWTR is a true redemption tale (and a tissue soaking love story), and while it doesn't lay the gospel out in full, the main character, Landon, emerges faithful and believing in miracles.

The Notebook is different. I guess most people saw the movie - I did not. I guess you're not supposed to know that the guy telling the story is also the young man the story is about. Maybe that ruined it for me. Anyway, I felt like the characters were not as well developed as they should have been. It was clear that Noah and Allie were in love, but I didn't really see what they saw in each other. So he was a poet and she was an artist...and... The only character I felt was adequately developed compared with his role was Allie's fiance (I forget his name - that gives you an idea of the weight of his role!). Compared with AWTR, you knew why Landon fell in love with Jamie - her character was so fully apparent that you adored her too.

The important part of the The Notebook is Noah's faithfulness over the years and (***spoiler warning***) it's devastating to realize they had so many memories together and Allie couldn't enjoy them anymore. While TW wasn't as sensual (and therefore might not make as profitable a movie), I felt the story was more satisfying. I thought the emphasis of sex in TN was to it's weakness. I know Sparks mean for you to understand the relationship between Allie and Noah was deeper than something physical, to me, it didn't seem that way.

Sparks writes for women - all 3 of these books were chick books, but without being meaningless and trite. They are emotionally charged and mostly realistic. I might read some more of his work. His writing did make me want to go vacation in North Carolina...

Now that I have that behind me, I'm reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens. I have to admit I wasn't too excited about reading a book with "bleak" in the title. I almost skipped it to move on to Alexandre Dumas, but I felt like I just had to take it. It is suprisingly good, so far very different from other Dickens novels because the main character is female, but peppered with funny named characters and plenty of social injustice. Of course, I'm only 67 pages in - 67 out of over 800! whew!

Amazing Dog Tricks

O.K. not so amazing, but amusing none-the-less.

Presenting... MAKO!

sit

down

wave

roll over

high 5

bow

chase your tail

(AKA the "best trick", that is, it's his default trick

when you ask him to do "a trick")