Halloween for real

A big reason to do some trick-or-treating is to get to know our neighbors. The WEIRDEST thing--if a family is giving out candy, they sit on a lawn chair in their driveway. I guess when the facade of your house is mostly garage, you do things differently.

We went to the houses of people that we knew and those that we wanted to get to know. Only about 20 houses, but by the end, Indiana was walking past people, who were holding out their bowls of candy, on their lawn chairs, just feet away from him and saying, "don't you want some candy?" He would just say no thank you, and keep walking. They would laugh at him and then laugh even harder at Mimi who would run up and say:"Hi, I'm 'Guesse da yowy cow-boy DOLL!' " [Jesse the yodeling cowgirl doll]. Then she would do lots of "Yee-Haw"s and bowing.

I finally caught up with Indiana at our house, just sitting there. He's been sick, although he is feeling a little better. We only went out for about 30 minutes, but that must be the busiest 30 minutes, because we got like 15 trick-or-treaters after that, and the bowl that we left out for while we were gone was mostly full still.

So the end of the story is I have LOTS of candy left!!!

Pumpkin Patch

It's 3pm on Halloween and we had no pumpkins? That just wouldn't do! I also had 10 lbs. of candy to unload and a little bit of decorating would help to distribute it in the neighborhood. I was told that there were lots of children in the neighborhood and we should prepare accordingly. My tricks are to buy candy that I don't love so I won't be tempted to eat it and I wait until the day of to buy the it (darn sweet tooth!).

So I went to my favorite produce website and found a place.
We picked white pumpkins, since all the other ones had either been sold for days, or were in a place I couldn't find. And the only other pumpkins we found were SO weird.
I am a Halloween scrooge--we didn't even carve the pumpkins. Dot paints and that was it! My pumpkin was painted weeks ago at our Relief Society activity at church--the stem is the wart on the witches nose. While we did our little bit of decorating I realized that I still had not taken down the ugly "Bloom" flag that the previous owners had left behind. I bought a star spangled banner weeks ago and just hadn't gotten to it yet--today was the day! While I put together the big flag, Mimi found the little one. Then I looked at what Indiana and Mimi were wearing -red, white and blue. It occurred to me that a holiday that I like to get behind is anything patriotic. So we took some pre-4th of July pictures.
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ramble-ly story
I didn't think it would be tough to find the pumpkin patch, I was wrong. The highway has recently been redone and the simple right-hand turn is now an off-ramp and a real exit. And on top of it all, I felt SO guilty because I saw a giant sign on a house that read "O.D.O.T. SUCKS". My guess is the Ohio Department of Transportation took that family's house away from them to widen the highway from a quiet 2 lane road to a 4 lane monster highway.

Day off

This is one of our WARMEST quilts--thanks Adrianne!
Indiana woke up sick. It was short lived but it was his first absence from Kindergarten. I don't look forward to this time of year! I was also sick, and in his prayer that night he said :"make me better, and mom, and help us be good sleepers"

name change

Superman will now be known as Indiana. He still claims that:"when I grow up I will be a superhero and fly", but since he hasn't taken the Indiana hat off in almost a week, I'm switching his name for the blog. It's funny since he refuses ANY nickname in real life.
Mimi will keep her nickname, though, because it's fun to type. But she also refuses any nickname. How hilarious is it that Mimi sits in this basket and reads?
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This next story is about me, so don't read if you're not interested in a good NJ story...

In our new church congregation I was asked to help out in the Relief Society (women's group). The president of the group is a woman that I knew in high school in NEW JERSEY, she's very cool and, in my mind, not a typical LDS woman.

She feels like she is not gentle enough to handle some situations that may come up. I told Greg that I feel like telling her that perhaps not all situations need to be handled gently. Greg just laughed and said :"this will be a new era of 'tough love' for the Relief Society".

I heart NJ!
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I didn't think it was possible but there are crazier sports fans than those in Boston! Ohio State fans are NUTS! One new comer commented that it's like everyday is a pep rally. Really, it's so crazy here! So, at church a bunch of men were talking about the "big game" from Saturday and I curiously asked what the score of the world series game was--blank stares.

A rained-out Trunk-or-Treat = Room-or-Treat

Thanks to Grandma and Granddad, suppliers of ALL our hats for Halloween this year! Mimi went back and forth with her choice of Halloween costumes up until we were headed out the door. I'm not sure how I got her to keep her costume on, but somehow I did.

You may remember that at first she wanted to be R2D2. I found a cool idea here. Then it was "Jesse, the yodeling cowgirl doll" from Toy Story 2. Dora the Explorer came up every now and then. At one point it was Handy Manny. And then as we were leaving she said:
"I dohn want ta be Jesse en MORE-I want to be ini ana DONES!" [I don't want to be Jesse anymore-I want to be Indiana Jones!]
Since we had the hat for Handy Manny, Greg had a green shirt, and I know how to persuade him to do funny things in the name of blogging about it later, Greg went as Handy Manny.
Checking out a puppet show at one of the rooms. They were so in love with the puppet, they didn't even think about the candy.
Room-or-Treat in action
After it was all over they didn't want to take off their costumes, how could I refuse such a cute request? Besides, it meant more fun pictures.
Another part of our Halloween costume evolution story: While Mimi wanted to be R2D2, Superman wanted to be Luke Skywalker (the Jedi one). Then one day he told me that her doll wanted to be Yoda. Some one should do that! If you do, let me know:)

Politics

Make a list of places you'd like to visit or live in...

Now, really, is Ohio on it? Didn't think so. Well, now you might have a reason to visit because WE live here, and the next room I plan on working on is the guest room :)

But, apparently this is where LOTS of people want to come for the love of their candidate. I'd like to put a link here (but I can't find it--sorry) to the spot on the web where you can listen to the NPR story that told me about the bus loads of supporters--for both sides-- who are voting early in their own states and then coming to places like Ohio to get others to vote. I guess it may be a destination location after all.

I like to keep with the main focus of this blog most of the time--silly things the Gibby kids do-- but I have to tell you that living in Ohio is stressful for one reason--my vote may actually count this time around. While living in Utah and Mass, my vote didn't really make much of an impact, and I got used to that feeling. I know-I know, every vote counts, but what about the fact that there is NO campaigning in either of those states compared to the campaigning done in Ohio? In one TV commercial break EVERY ad was political-local or national. Yikes! I've got some research to do!

Even though I will remain neutral in this blog, I must send a special thanks to John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate--because we were able to witness more of the greatness that is Tina Fey.

Sonya and Sunday

Aunt Sonya came for a visit and she got right to work, she painted our bathroom and helped in the yard. I'll post some pictures of the new hedge that was planted and the garden that we put in.
Mimi:"I miss song-ga"
New red shoes from Sonya!
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As we got ready for church yesterday, we realized that there were no clean church pants for Superman, so we Greg put him in khaki shorts. Later SM told me this:"Dad said 'it's not that cold', but I think it IS that cold."

New neighbors

There's a Megan on our street, just like where I grew up! There's a Tom and a Jerry--I'm not kidding. When the storage cubes arrived our neighbor came over and asked where we moved from, I told him the Boston area, he's from the NY area and this was our conversation:
Him:"do you know how to put it in reverse?"

Me:"what do you mean?"
Him:"your lifestyle"

I guess things move a little slower here...

Mimi:"I'm Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith" *breathing like Darth Vader* "a helmet"

Funny Mimi

Can you guess what or who Mimi was talking about? (answer at bottom)
Mimi demanding something and I couldn't figure it out:"Dap bader dord a da dip"
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On our walk today we saw a guy jogging.
Mimi: "That guy running, RUN! RUN! He racing."
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Mimi:"Oh bee ko bee--Help me! Help me!" [Help me, Obe-Wan Kenobi...]
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Superman, after eating delicious ice cream:"My belly is frozen."
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Me, about the state of our house:"This place is a mess, but I'm fine with it."*sigh*
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During the move, Mimi found a jewelry box that I have saved from my childhood. She was handing out jelly bracelets to everyone in the house and then one for aunt Sonya.
"Mommy, Daddy, [Mimi], [Superman], Song-a"
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Answer:Our cookie jar that I just unpacked "Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith"

A Wish

Sorry these pictures are bad, but you get the idea that this house is boring and mostly empty.









The short story is that another big reason to move to Ohio was to buy a house. In our searching we found that even though we stayed out of debt (mostly because of our terrific parents help and guidance) and saved for YEARS, our money just didn't buy as much house as we thought it would. Although I don't want to call it settling, we did just end up picking a house. It's most of the things on our list and it's like a blank canvas waiting for the right artist. None of the previous owners have done anything to it, so I'm excited to take it on-room by room and make it my own-I mean our own. I've built up a bunch of ideas over the past 9 years of living in other people's properties, but I may still need your help. Which room should we make over first?

Half-bath
Laundry room
Living room
Dining room
Superman's room
Mimi's room
Guest room
Front porch
Back yard
Master Bedroom
Master Bath
Kid's Bath
Garage
Kitchen
Family room

Add your vote to the right...

More of the story below.

The long story

We drove to Columbus in July to look for houses and drove back to Boston in the dumps, no dream homes to be found.

Before leaving Boston, we found a temporary, furnished, month-to-month, apartment over the phone and then had a few days once we got here to search for that dream home before Greg started his new job. In my mind we could find the perfect house and get Superman registered for Kindergarten, and be all set in no time.

Well, we found another bunch of not what we wanted. Then we found this house:
A custom 1960's house that was being sold by it's original owner's children. It was a bit of a stretch, but we liked it. Then when they weren't willing to fix anything, we walked away. We were sad but we had to start looking again.

Another thing, I thought it would be no big deal to get SM registered for school, but when we showed up to the school, they informed me that they have more students then room for them, and that he would have to be bused to another Elementary school in the district for the year. I was a little worried, but then I thought, "which ever school he ends up in, that's where we will buy our house." The DAY BEFORE school stared we still didn't know where he would be going, and suddenly I got a call from me favorite school secretary EVER telling me that he could go to the school just in our neighborhood! What a relief! That means we could look for our house in the neighborhood we were in already and getting to know. And I've always wanted to walk Superman to Elementary school, and there are LOTS of houses for sale in this area. And that's when we found this house.

Now I know why buying a house is so crazy confusing and takes so dang long. So much rides on finding the right house, in the right place, and price and has what you want and what you want to change.