Cookie Jar that never holds cookies

playing with Mimi

It's cold and yucky outside, and we are playing the part by staying in PJ's all day and playing with whatever we can find around the house. Here's her "boots". She LOVES this basket. I can't keep anything in it.

"It a grog damp!" [it's a frog stamp]

Nerd Cred

Indy, in a attempt to further establish his nerd credentials, asked how to say Rancor in Spanish.

Math

Indiana is taller then a chick, a duck and a pig. Those lines? That means he is EQUAL to the height of a sheep. Math nerd.

Let's Party!

I love apples. I love apple cider even more. Here's a fun commentary about them.

Feel like wasting time? I can't seem to save more then 73 apples a game. Thanks, mom.

Pea Toss

Mimi has started trying to toss food in her mouth--NO idea how where she got this idea. I personally haven't tried it since I nearly choked myself when I was 12 with a skittle.

"and try another one"
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And here's a joke:

"Why did the hippo cross the road?"
punch line:
"it was the chicken's day off!"

97 bulbs, 2 cars, and a dvd player

That's what we did today! Greg has been studying since we moved in and we haven't really had a day to get things settled. Today was our day. We cleared out the garage so now 2 cars can fit! And we planted 97 bulbs, Mimi is surprisingly helpful at some things --thanks for the tulips, Nana. One box we found had some of Greg's childhood toys. This one is a Transformer, keep in mind it's from the 80's, it's a robot that changes into a cassette tape player--ah, my child of the oughts.

Mimi's Star Wars dialog

Mimi, referring to the toilet paper tube on her wrist, with her right arm and left arm talking about it:
"Look! I R2D2! Yup, you R2D2! It brake, it perfect. It fits, yup, it fits, yup, you R2D2. It's mine, no it's mine! Hey, share"
*munch*munch*munch*
me:"AUGH! don't eat the tube!"
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More of Darth Vader
"I put my helmet on! Yeah, this I little Darth Vader, this my little Darth Vader."
*Breath like Darth*
As I'm uploading this Mimi says:"Dis is gonna be great!"

A post about Greg

So there's this guy who hangs around sometimes, and we are getting to know him again. Greg's new job allows for him to be home SO much more, it's like heaven to all of us. And especially when he doesn't have an actuarial exam to study for, it's even better! This weekend he put in a new toilet downstairs. It's funny how owning a home suddenly makes you a plumber. Now when we flush, it doesn't feel like Lake Erie is running through our living room.
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One birthday/Two Cakes
Mimi set the table. Greg's never had a Halloween themed cake, even though it's in the beginning of Nov. Our friend Drew was our inspiration.
Greg picked hamburgers for his dinner, for BOTH parties.
We had another party when we could get together with Greg's mom and dad and sister, thanks for coming! Can you see the change in the window covering from one day to the next?
Mimi and Greg making Orange juice for his belated birthday breakfast.

What's that sound?

...my sigh of relief, ONE room is functional in our house--the laundry room.

The Laundry Room before:

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Why is it taking me so long to unpack and get set up? Well, while I spend any time trying to finish one room, Mimi was busy taking apart every other room!
Here she is surveying her damage with her telescope, backwards, by the way.
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Here Mimi and Greg jam out to the Wonder Pets.


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While the clear winner from the poll was the living room and only one vote for the laundry room (and it was mine), I went for it first for several reasons:

1) It just made sense that since we were still paying rent at the old, furnished (including washer and dryer) apartment so I could do laundry there until things were all set up.
2) One of the wisest women I know, Nancy, told me that everyone deserves a nice place to do laundry
3) My mother spent far too many decades doing laundry in something akin to a dungeon and tried to make the most of it with white wash and painted flowers on the walls-- and I wanted to do something that nice for me :)
4) I knew if I didn't do it now, I never would.

There are other things I want to do, change out the light, touch up some paint, get some cool art for the walls, but for now, I'm moving on.

Thanks to Nana and Sonya for your help!
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Although there was a lot of buzz for redoing the Master bedroom, and believe me that's a room I want done asap, there's a problem, and it's weird, there's a sink in our bedroom, just outside the rest of the bathroom, so until I can afford to correct that weirdness, I'm just painting walls of that room and saving up to do something drastic.

Next room... my guess is the guest room, since I want all of you to visit, just a few at a time...

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.