The Vampires Are Early This Year

Wow. I can't believe it's finally October 27th. That means that the blood drive that I've been coordinating for the last two months is finally over... I've learned that trying to get people to donate a pint of blood is like asking them to give a pint of their blood...wait a minute... Sign-ups, taking appointments, reminder calls, having a cookie decorating station for kids, and giving a pint of my own is more than I thought it would be. But we made our goal of 25 units and, hey, free t-shirt...

While I was with my friends from the American Red Cross, Davis got to hang out at a kids Halloween extravaganza. He was happy as long as they let him do what he wanted to, which was never. But he sure looked cute. He's a monkey if you can't tell...

Would you look at that!?! It seems that there might be a first turn bingo that racked up a nice little cusion of 76 points. We may be Scrabble nerds but at least we know it. The specific nerd that slammed this down would be me, Jenny. I "pillaged" Eric all right, so much that it made me talk like a pirate all night. Arg matey! Shivered his timbers!

Annual Checkup

Happy birthday, Davis! D-Liv had quite the celebration, if you know what I mean. He went to the Dianna Rose Farmstead and didn't quite pet the animals 'cause he knows where they've been, if you know what I mean. And he said "thisss" a lot, but we don't know what he means. It's been so exciting that Davis forgot to sleep all day. But that's okay because he has new toys to explore. Like the dancing monkey, totally worth it.

His favorite parts of his day... balloons, attention, grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, new books, all-you-can-eat banana for lunch, chasing/being chased, sitting on mommy's face, opening presents, laughing, being up-side-down, stacking blocks for minutes, and of course, chocolate cake & ice cream (after the initial 5 minutes of being revolted by it and shivering from its weird new texture). He got to be quite comfortable being the birthday boy - adoring paparazzi capturing every moment and getting away with everything, even murder of a perfectly good piece of monkey cake.


















More pictures to the right

Mug Shot

Our neighborhood has mature trees that shade the road as you enter, the houses are unique from each other and are well taken care of... But since moving into our house a year and a half ago, we've learned that our neighborhood isn't as perfect as it looks. Last summer while talking with some neighbors, we found out there have been several car theft attempts in our little strip of the street. A month ago, we drove up after going out to dinner to find a fire truck sitting a few houses down with just it's lights on. All we could see were a few people standing around what we thought was a corpse, then it tried to get up; he was taken away in a ambulance, very quietly. Then, a week ago, Eric came home in the evening and said there was a police car in front of our house. And he just sat in his car making notes with his headlights on for almost an hour. We're not sure why...

The most recent event happened yesterday as I was turning onto our street. The driver of an oncoming car flashed a hand gesture over his steering wheel right as I was passing our "Neighborhood Watch" sign. I didn't know the "assailant" and, at first, I didn't know the symbol he directed toward me. After a millisecond of confusion, I realized the two fingers looked like a peace sign. Whether it was a time traveler from the '70's or just a quick half-wave, I was caught of guard. For the most part, our neighbors are good people; I should be the one offering a friendly salute. And don't worry about our safety - apparently we are well patrolled by officials. And hippies...

This morning after our little bi-polar bear's mania came to an abrupt end, I found myself saying what I seem to be saying a lot these days - "Davis, don't rub your eye with a _____." The fill-in-the-blank has included (but not limited to): ketchup bottle, block, cell phone, dirty diaper (I don't know how he got that one...), bowl of rice cereal, flip-flop, cup, curling iron (not plugged in, of course), and pair of my glasses. Then I thought of all the objects I've used to scratch an itch. A pine cone is my personal favorite. So, I figure Davis is almost mature enough to know what to rub his sleepy, delicate baby eyes with. But I draw the line at pine cone.

We Are Fans

...so much that some of us can't even look away from the game to take a picture. It's too bad things didn't turn out so well for the Cougars in Tulsa. It's probably because Davis had to go to bed.

Eat It Up

Dinner, well any meal, turns into such an interesting mix of yinging (yell-singing), banging, and food between our toes when we step in Davis' discarded food. Yet it still seems to be getting in and sticking to his bones somehow...Cheers!

I get this nagging feeling right in the middle of my keyboard every time someone tells me that they've started a blog. Do I need to blog? I've got a perfectly good email address and cell phone that people have been communicating on for tens of years...there's always the United States Postal Service and, though slower, it is so gratifying to send and receive a piece of mail. There's nothing like feeling the sender spent more than mere seconds and just a few keystrokes to address, stamp, and walk to the mail box (not forgetting the flip of the flag if you've got one) just to make my day...a few days later. So, as a tribute to good ole mail, every once in a while I'll print out this blog and send it to you. Whoever you are...