Polly's birthday and the year's first snow...

(Oh, and by the way, mock the Barbie cake and DIE!!!)

Thanksgiving with my parents.

Yeah, I don't know either. Is it a yawn? a dance? I love how none of us seem to notice.

As for the holiday, things were great for us. We had a lot of fun, a TON of leftovers, and I even got a bunch of great pictures. I'll try to get those posted tonight and give you guys the full rundown of Thanksgiving and Polly's birthday, but for now, enjoy the Dane flail and check back later!! :D

OK, so I've been asked not to complain on this blog and all, but I slammed my thumb in my car door last night. Yeah, big nasty black thumbnail today. Nice. It hurts so much I could say the F-word every time I hit the space bar. And just look how many I've done so far. That's how much I love you all.

But seriously. Ow.

I did manage to make pie crusts for Thursday, though, gimpy thumb and all. Thanksgiving is going to be beautiful this year. I'm making three separate pies - giving my nemesis, the old lemon meringue, one last chance to humiliate me. Oh, and I suppose there'll be turkey and stuff too, but my eye's on the pie. I WILL win this time.

But it should be a lot of fun. The house is chock full of food and Dane's working really hard at saving the good beer. He's a good sport. And I even bought pretty wine glasses so my parents don't have to know I usually just use a coffee mug -- uh-oh, they read this, don't they? ;)

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving and I'll try to post more pictures again soon. Be ready for up-close pie pictures. Ooze-free lemon meringue pictures. Maybe a kid picture or two if there's film left.

Yes, I'm still here. I've been overwhelmed with life lately and haven't been able to get much done. I'll try to catch you up.

First and foremost our hearts are with the Goldings. Still no news as the excruciating wait continues. He did undergo brain surgery which seems to have been successful and may save him further damage. Of course not knowing yet how much damage there really is that's only half a consolation. He does have feeling, though, in all four limbs, and Alicia (some of you may remember my friend Alicia from BYU) works with a lot of stroke victims and says that means he'll most likely lose his ability to speak. He was having trouble speaking before the stroke, and I hate to say she's probably right about that.

But still, like I said, we don't know anything yet but are hoping for the best for him and his family both.

So, having said all that it's difficult to whine about all my only-slightly-obnoxious problems. Things are actually pretty good for us. Everyone's healthy again (FINALLY!!!) and despite the never-ending money crunch the house has doomed us to, we're surviving.

Dane has a few days off while my car is in the shop, and that's been fun. It's so weird to see him in the daylight. It's great to have someone help with the kids during the day, and they're thrilled to have him there, too. Tuesday night I even got to go out. Yes, actually OUT of the house! Woo-hoo! :) I got to see Alicia, whom I mentioned earlier, and whom I haven't seen for (get out your slide-rules for this one) five years, and even then only in passing. So that was a lot of fun and I'm still laughing about a lot of stuff we talked about.
And then last night Dane and I stayed in together and drank a little whiskey (chased with diet root beer - I don't recommend it. ewwwwwww) and watched a REALLY COOL documentary called "Growin a Beard." It's about a Donegal beard-growing contest held every St Patrick's Day in a town called Shamrock, Texas. It was surprisingly short but very fun to watch. Dane wants to try it next year now but you have to bic-shave on New Year's Day in order to qualify. Then you have to try to grow a thick luscious beard in three months and shape it just right for the festivities. Sounds like a blast to me, but there's no way we could afford to go to Texas in March or any other time. Guess the days of the weird road trips just aren't quite back yet. On the plus side, though, he really does look weird without any facial hair at all. Oh, but don't tell him I said that! ;)

Sort of vanished from the earth for a while there. Romy had a real doozy of an ear infection. Poor kid went through days and days of torture, but yesterday the doctor gave us a new antibiotic, and the third time was the charm. About forty-five minutes after taking it she sat up and started talking again. I've never been so glad to hear about Barbies and Pokemons. :)

So now that everyone's healthy again I can resume normal life. I'm at work for the whole day today and I even slept almost a full night. Maybe we can even do something halfway fun this weekend. Something free. (two doctor visits and four prescriptions = broke)

Anyway, not much else to report. We did watch "50 First Dates," though, finally. That was hilarious. I didn't expect that to be near as good as it was. We also watched "Jabberwocky," the old Terry Gilliam movie from the '70s, but we both ended up falling asleep. I'm pretty sure we were just tired, though, because the first half was really funny. But now we have the dilemma of whether or not to give it another try. I totally associate it now with "oh, god, please just end." We gave "The Life Aquatic" a second try, though, and it was sooooo worth it. Sometimes tiredness is more powerful than even the best movie. At least when you live with Polly. ha ha.

I stole this one from Jeanne because I wanted to be Morticia Addams too. Oh well. Dane will be happy, though. :)


You're a punk rock mommy! DIY is probably your
motto, because you're a punk mama at heart.
Your kids are getting your independent spirit
and guts, and learning to solve problems
themselves. You love it when they show their
independence, even when it's breaking your
heart.


What kind of a freaky mother are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Just our two girls this Halloween. Notice Polly's authentic medieval witch dowel. She was jealous that Romy got a wand. Good thinking there, Dane. Ow, ow ow!

And Polly's new sweater jacket. Yeah, I kick ass. :)

No pictures today but I thought I'd write anyway. I'm at work having a bit of a focus problem so maybe this will warm up the old gears or something. See, I was up late last night. No, not doing anything cool or adventurous. (I have kids, remember?) But I had the bright idea of watching a horror movie while Dane was at work. He's been working late all week, and we had this movie left over after Halloween and yeah, bad idea. It was called "Darkness" and had the little girl from "The Piano" in it. Pretty good horror movie (no, not "Piano") but mostly it just gave me the willies cause there were these demon ghost thingies lurking in the shadows, and just think how many shadows there are in a big quiet house with an unfinished basement. Whee! Fun night for me.

So now I feel like death. And this morning on the way to work I actually had one of those moments where you tell yourself you can take a quick nap at a red light and then magically wake up when it turns green. "Yeah, then I'll be all refreshed. Genius!"

The good thing, though, -- I mean besides the fact that I came to my senses before actually trying it -- is it reminded me of Yvette. We were driving through Nebraska or Iowa or something and I wake up to see her driving with her head completely dropped to her chest. She was so asleep her head was LOWER than the steering wheel! Sort of like that scene in "Vacation" where Chevy's dozing sweetly in the car and then you see that he's driving.

Anyway, sorry for the had-to-be-there memory, but it cracked ME up.

I've been really nostalgic lately. I miss Yvette and all of you. I feel like I've been hibernating or something. Funny that I keep a blog NOW, now that I have no life. I should start writing about stuff that happened a long time ago and posting scary old pictures. That would scare a lot of people. :) I could hit syndication with material like that.

But no, check back for super exciting entries about knitting follies and kid cuteness.

Of course if somebody were to piss me off... >:D

Halloween with the cousins
(Dilbert, ice skater, Faerie Princess, two monkeys and a tiny witch)

Well, Halloween is over, and I'll post pictures later today or tomorrow. The girls were soooo cute this year and had so much fun they'll probably sleep straight through till the weekend.

I'll start with Saturday. We were invited to a party at the VanWagenens' and scrambled for a babysitter and came up short once again. So, being the perfect wife and mother (hey, who's laughing at that????) I told Dane to go by himself and tell everyone hi. So he was all excited to go out and even got one of those little sparkly antenna headband thingies as a "costume" and left. Fifteen minutes later he calls me because he, yes, hit a parked vehicle. So, to spare you ALL the details, he came back home and we sulked the rest of the night.

We did watch "Suspiria," though, to keep with the Halloween theme and all. Yeah, bad movie. It looked good at first and I tried really hard to stay with it but Dane started poking fun at it about a third of the way into it, and pretty soon it did became sort of hard not to notice the same exact song OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER. So, basically, my review: not bad if you're completely desperate for a horror movie and don't mind really anticlimactic endings. And Dane's review: waste of time -- horror movie chock-full of women and not a single boob.

So stay tuned for really cute pictures, and yay for Kelly for leaving comments when I so shamelessly begged for someone to write back! :D