Ethan is Front Page News

Making gingerbread houses in Ethan's kindergarten class was front page news this week (clearly, our sleepy little suburbian town doesn't have a lot of news to report :-). Needless to say, Ethan was delighted to see his name and his cute mug in the paper. Gotta love those milk carton and graham cracker gingerbread houses.

It's Become Comical

I'm not usually one to dwell on the occasional lemons in life, and I especially don't care to keep an ongoing chronicle of such things. But, recently we've had such an onslaught of broken stuff, it really has become downright comical. Forgive me as I make a list of the things that have broken in the past ten days:

1. My Car - $1500 repair to pass emissions, ouch! ...and it still needs brakes.
2. DVR - Just quit recording, total hard drive failure. New one arrives tomorrow.
3. Telephone - After 1-1/2 hours with tech support we have dial tone again.
4. Treadmill - Mat started jerking. New $140 part on its way--let's hope it works.
5. Garbage Disposer - It's making weird noises and frequently needs to be reset.
6. Dryer - Sensor isn't working--dried one load all night long.

Brent's just happy that his finicky lights above the kitchen island are working well!

Thankfully our bodies are healthy and for that we are very grateful!

I Wish I Had...

Last week Ethan's kindergarten class celebrated the 50th day of school. In honor of that exciting day, my darling, sweet, little 5-year-old (the one who constantly gives me hugs and kisses and says he just wants to snuggle with me) drew the picture above captioned, "I wish I had 50 machine guns". WHAT?!? Not 50 pieces of candy, 50 Chuck E. Cheese tokens or 50 dollars? Nope. 50 machine guns. Oh boy!

Help!

My good friend and next door neighbor nominated her niece, Stephanie, to win a new VW Bug through a contest at a local dealership. Stephanie made it as a finalist and is currently in the lead with the most votes for her story! In order to maintain her lead, she's making a plea to friends of friends to help out. She's hoping to get votes from all 50 states (and specifically asked if I could round up some voters in Utah and Cali). So, I'm asking you now--I know you have a million other things to do today, but could you take a minute to click through and vote for Steph?

Stephanie has made it through four re-occurrences of brain cancer and is currently doing great. She just graduated from college and is hoping for a new car to get her to work (hopefully in PR at Children's Hospital in Chicago where she's spent a lot of time over the past 10 years). She's a sweet girl from a very sweet and humble family. This would be huge for her! THANKS!
The LOVEbug LOVEbug 2 Contest… Presented by Fox Valley Volkswagen

Carving, Costumes and Candy

The Carving

Every year we pick our own pumpkins at Thompson's farm in Wisconsin (only about 30 minutes from home). You can fill a whole car with pumpkins for $60. We usually split the load with two other families and end up with more than enough pumpkins to decorate our porch for the month and carve for Halloween.

The Costumes

Oscar the Grouch, Captain Cody the Clone Trooper, and a Rubik's cubeThe Candy

The neighbor friends always get together to sort and trade after the first round of trick-or-treating. The "junk" or "free" pile was full of Charleston Chews...who hands out Charleston Chews?

The Compilation Collage

Our Cousin Charlie

It's been over a year since we've had cousins come to visit (hint, hint...anyone want to come visit :-) so we were excited to get a call from Charlie's mom saying she had last minute tickets to Oprah and was bringing Charlie along for a visit. We loved hanging out with Charlie on our turf. When he showed the boys how to make trampoline snowboards out of duct tape and cardboard boxes we knew they were kindred spirits. They constructed a blanket fort in the basement, visited the Kohl children's museum, and had lunch at McDonald's on the tollway oasis bridge (it's always a novelty to eat a Happy Meal while watching cars race by below). I'm surprised how much the boys look alike in these photos--there is definitely a family resemblance.

My New Favorite Photographer

Love, love, love this photographer, Brittany Cascio http://www.casciophoto.blogspot.com/! She is so talented I just can't stand it. She came out to Chicagoland to snap photos of several families here, but she resides in the greater SLC area (Logan-ish to be exact--but she travels to the whole greater SLC area and beyond). So if you need photos call her, she is amazing. You won't be sorry. I am so excited that she'll be doing my sister, Rachel's, wedding next July and can't wait to see what kind of magic Brittany works with a beautiful subject like Rach.

Click here... photos ...to see the whole session Brittany recently did with our little family at the beautiful Illinois Beach State Park along the shores of Lake Michigan (a few favs are below). My ONLY regret is that she couldn't take 20 pounds off me and add it to Brent. But I suppose that is outside of the scope of her job. How to make an uncooperative 5-year-old smile.

One for the 3rd grade ladies...he's dreamy, isn't he :-) My girl! You'd never guess this precious little guy was being so silly and uncooperative. Somehow Brittany magically captured beautiful photos of him.