The Lion Mummy

with the wrappings coming off because she is coming to life!!

Jalen & Nana's pumpkins

Rhys' designs

many carved pumpkins

Nana carving

Rob's smooky pumpkin

Rhys works on cutting out his superfairy

Getting guts out

Carving begins

Lunch at TJ

Having fun at Trader Joe's

Making super pumpkin fairy

Decorating pumpkins

More wollys

Making wollypop ghosts

at trader joe's

Scary lion mummy

side view

Super Fairy Rhys

Irene after

After

he does look much cuter than this - he was being silly. once the hair dried, we foofed it a little. i should have taken another picture. there was a HUGE amount of hair left on the floor.

from both kids, actually.

during

During

Irene before

Rhys before

brief-ish catchup

so - life has gotten in the way. but, at least i can post pictures with my phone. things i haven't sent this way - but probably should have -- one sick boy (stomach flu), one sick mama (regular flu), one sick boy (strep throat), trip to lodi with what turned out to be one sick mama (strep throat), subbing for a few days, girl scout meetings, girl scout events, brownie meetings, getting fundraiser stuff to girl scout fundraiser manager, one sick mama (strep - AGAIN!?!! ).

how can it be that i went 37 years without getting strep throat and now i get it twice? in one month?? ugh! the first time, i went to the urgent care in lodi - i explained that i'd been the primary go to person for rhys and that he was practically inside of me for 48 hours straight. the quick strep test said i didn't have it so the dctor came in and said it was just viral and to deal with it by drinking tea etc. that was on sunday. on monday, i felt so incredibly awful. like i haven't felt since i had mastitis. happily, our friends were able to take irene to school and pick her up. i couldn't have driven if i'd wanted to. at one point i thought i was going to faint. crazy. and guess what happened a little after noon. nah, c'mon, guess! did you guess that lodi called to say that the culture WAS positive? you're so smart. at that point, rob offered to come home (bless him!) and pick up the abx on the way. i'm pretty anti antibiotics when they aren't needed, but man oh man, they were like manna from heaven! it still took me several days to feel like i could eat something other than tea (do you eat tea? no, not really). i took the meds for 7 of the 10 days. that, apparently, was a mistake - although, this doc that i saw today said that usually they only prescribe it for 5 days and only 3x/day, not 4x/day for 10 days.

(sorry for the wrong direction - blogger doesn't want to do the vertical pictures)
here we are - waiting for doctor thomas. poor sweet bug.

anyway, yesterday i was feeling a little throaty. last night around midnight, i knew i was in trouble. and today is nevada day - not really, but it's the day that the state decided to celebrate it. what? you don't know when your state entered the union? nevada is big on it. it's a holiday for banks, doctors, schools, not mail. anyway, i needed to find an open urgent care. happily i found one and the kids and i were there when it opened. we were 3rd in line. doc was surprised that i might have it again - it's not usual to get it twice sort of back to back. who knows. i'm just lucky i guess.

hopefully the kids are totally fine b/c mom and ken are watching the kids --- OVERNIGHT!! -- for our anniversary. actually for saturday night - our anniversary is on sunday. we're hoping to go see a movie. in a real movie theater! rob won tickets way back on when he had his company picnic. it will be fun to use them for a grown up movie.

i'm going to try and add some captions to some of the past pictures.

hopefully i'll be a bit more bloggy soon.

Tea at Irina's

my friend, Irina, is from belarus. she makes lovely tea. it's probably the same tea that i would make, but it's something special when i have it there. just lovely. it's so nice to sit at the table and have a nice hot cuppa and just talk. we usually have it with some lovely honey. during the farmer's markets, i'd buy 3 pound jugs of lovely locally grown honey and i always shared it with Irina. We met Irina and her girls, Hannah and Sasha, the april after we moved here. both of our families had moved from california (they were in sacramento) in sept/oct of 2004. her hannah is 6 months younger than irene. sasha is 3 days older than rhys. it was such a lovely case of stumbling upon each other. she is one of my dear friends and i feel lucky to have met her.

Pretty & sleek

my lovely laptop needs a new battery and probably a new power source as well. so i'm using the family (kids') computer. the keyboard was awful. just awful. so when we went to the apple store, we bought this pretty new keyboard. it clicks just right. i love it.

Teaching the trick to Rhys

we went to a pumpkin patch that had a magic show going on - we caught the tail end of it and irene got a little magic kit. here she is making showing that the ball has re-appeared.

Working on making magic

my super delicious lemonade

And Rob watching the game.

Plus good music! This place rocks!!

heh heh - no, rob is NOT my super delicious lemonade - giggle.

Happy girl

and happy faced fries

BJs pizza

AND *fresh squeezed* lemonade

Playing on his "running cage"

Rhys' Pumpkin

it was fun having rhys make his pumpkin. he cut out almost everything - the mouth (his design) was a little tricky, so i helped. then he glued it all down. it turned out pretty great, i think.

Super Rhysie Fairy Wings

after last year as Super Rhysie Fairy, rhys was in need of new wings. all we had were pink wings. rhys wanted blue wings - so we painted them. the flash never works well with fairy dust so the golden dust looks pretty awful on this picture. Nana is going to help make a mask for him - yea!

irene is going to be a lion mummy. hmmmmm....interesting.

done

:)

Making fideua

YUM!!!

I got some of the coolest birthday presents this year. one of them was from my wonderful friend, tanya. she gave me a gift of different spanish foods from a company called zingermans (how had i never heard of them??) -- just in case i haven't talked about it enough in various and sundry places over the year plus that i've been blogging, i lived in spain for a year (in madrid). i have two spanish cookbooks, but i've not done anything with them in many MANY years. so getting this gift box with fideos and yummy torta de aceite and amazing dark chocolate cocoa, i got cooking! fideua is much like paella, but with fideo noodles - fideos are small thin (like vermicelli width) noodles - but really small/short. they are yummy and i had them a lot while in madrid. i'd never made paella nor had i made this kind of fideua. it turned out REALLLY well!!! not only did rob and i like it, but irene loved it (what wasn't to love, in her world - it had shrimp, scallops, calamari, halibut - all gooooooood!) and rhys ate it too.

THANK YOU TANYA, CURTIS, ROSE, & MAX!!!!!!

Me

what you might not be able to tell is that i'm wearing my birthday present (that's of what this picture is - ick - what an awful sentence!) - it's my name in sign language - cool isn't it? i love it!!

More piggies feeding

Feeding piggies

snowy mountain