Halloween Party

Kristy hosted her annual Halloween party at Mary Jo Peckham Park so the kids got to dress up, hang out at the playground, play Halloween games, and hit a pinata full of candy. It was a wonderful way to start off the week of Halloween and push me to get out and pick up some Halloween costumes before the very last minute. (Well, at least with Van's costume the idea worked. Seph wore a dog costume from last year and I put off buying his dragon costume until the day before Halloween. But in doing so I got an incredible price on it, go figure)

Van's favorite part was the pinata although he did really understand why he had to wait his turn to swing the bat. He did understand that there was candy inside it and all we wanted to do was get it open.


The adorable little orange and black witch in this picture with Van is our two-year-old neighbor, Bryle. Her and Van are so cute when they play together.

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Happy Halloween!

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Mike 1, Snake 0

Amber and I have been working really hard on re-landscaping our front yard. We have spend many hours removing stones that the former owners were using as ground cover. I have removed multiple trees, relocated a number of bushes, and did some mass trimming (we will have before and after pictures soon). Last Saturday night, after another long day of yard work I went outside looking for Van's lost blanked and almost stepped on a snake!

I quickly decided that I couldn't leave a snake to go hide in our yard, so I got the shovel that was still in the back of my truck and went after it. It was quite a battle. After my first attempt to behead the snake it turned on me and tried to chase me down. It moved so quickly towards me that I couldn't get a good shot at it until it went back on the defensive. It chased me half way down the driveway before settling down again. And then we had a stand off. The snake coiled and would strike at the shovel with lightning quickness. Because it was coiled, I had a hard time getting at the head of the snake. I finally decided that I didn't care if I had the cut the snake into 100 pieces, I was going to win this battle. I did finally behead the reptile, and then I struggled over when best to bury the head.

I did bury the head, but if anyone has a good suggestion of where to bury a snake head let me know.

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Happy Birthday

This month is the birth month of a very important person in my family. I will give you some hints to see if you can guess. (hee, hee) She is a mom to four children and a grandma to two children. She plays the piano, scrapbooks, and loves crafts. She enjoys eating Greek and Mexican cuisine and finding great shopping bargains. She is an expert in Christmas light decorations. She makes the world's best enchiladas, stroganoff, and potato salads. She is the oldest sister of four daughters. She has perfected the concept of onomonopia to one all encompassing sound. Have you guessed it yet?

Happy Birthday Mom and Grani Jani!
We love you and and hope your special day is wonderful. We can't wait for you to come and visit; we are all very excited to see you

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New Furniture Post #2

Well, while I am writing about Gallery Furniture I might as well continue. A lot happened there, making it a very interesting experience. We went looking for family room furniture, dining room chairs, and rugs for every room. After we made a decision about the family room furniture, we decided to pay for it then and continue shopping. That way if the kids got fussy we could leave without having to pay for what we knew we wanted.

So, after paying for the family room furniture we moved on to rugs. We looked at rugs for about 15 minutes and then I realized what time it was. It was a about 8:30 pm and I we needed to go. When we paid for what we wanted, we arrange delivery that same night. They promised to be there between 9 and midnight. We thought that was amazing, it didn't matter that it was after 8 pm they were going to deliver the furniture that same night. And sure enough about 20 minutes after getting home, around 9:30 our furniture was delivered and set up.

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New Furniture Post #1

This last weekend we went furniture shopping. It was more than shopping, it was an entire event. We went to a couple different furniture stores, got some amazing deals and bought some beautiful custom upholstered furniture (the great deal and the custom furniture were not the same pieces). Most of the event will have to be described in another post, but I had to write about a funny experience (at least I thought it was funny).

We were at Gallery Furniture here in Houston, it was our second visit to the store and we were pretty sure we had settled on what we wanted. We had a couple more questions we wanted answered and were looking for a sales associate to help us. Gallery Furniture has some mini-rooms setup off the main show room, what we were looking at was set up in one of these mini-rooms and as we where looking for someone, an 'employee' walked into the mini-room next to ours. Amber saw him walk in there and went see if we could get our questions answered.

A couple things struck me as strange, first he was the first 'employee' who had walked by and did not stop to talk to us. Second, he was responding to emails on his blackberry (most furniture sales associates don't have the need for a blackberry). Then he spoke to Amber and it hit me as I recognized his voice, he wasn't an 'employee' he was the owner of the store. After he spoke not only did I recognize his voice from the commercials but I clearly recognized him.

During our shopping event we stopped the owner of the store to see if he could answer our questions about picking the kind of fabric we wanted for our new furniture. I guess Amber and I think pretty highly of ourselves if we need to talk to the owner and not just any sales man. Actually, the owner was nice but not very helpful. He did get find us someone who did answer all our question, but working will the sales associate brought about another experience we will have to share.

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Baby Monitors

When we first moved into the new house we knew we were going to need a baby monitor. It is something we have been able to avoid purchasing; living in an apartment meant we could hear the baby cry no matter which room we were in (or how many doors we closed). Our experience, particularly with baby monitors, is you get what you pay for.

Our first set (one for Van and one for Seph) each did fine for about 2 days, then the static started. It was subtle, very quiet, but always there. Then it seemed that we would go to bed with the quiet crackle of static humming in our room and by 2 am it was a loud roar that would wake us whether or not the kids were making any noise. Eventually, the static got to the point where you couldn't hear the kids making noise through the devices, but had to listen to the static change pitch to know if they were stirring. We would wake up wondering if that additional crackle or high/low pitch was just the device or our kids screaming their heads off upstairs.

Last night, I purchased our second set, at about 3x the cost of the first set. But the difference has been amazing (so far). We will have to see if it is able to keep performing at this same level of comfort after a day or two. But it was nice to sleep in silence and then wake to the sound of the baby and feel like he was in the room with you, rather than a strange burst of static, followed by the worry that he had been crying longer than you knew.

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Hmmm... That Can't be Good

Recently, we ran into some computer trouble. Aside from spending a good twenty minutes trying to figure out which key fit where; all that 'moisture' you see on the keyboard is drool.



(All this was done in less than 3 minutes. Aren't children amazing?)

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