This one's mostly for Grandma...

but I hope you all enjoy it too. :)

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These are a few of my favorite things...

Fall is my favorite time of the year. Both my babies (babies that are 3 and nearly 5, incidentally) were born in fall. Indiana has the perfect fall weather. Cool days with even cooler nights...along with beautiful fall colors. Here are just a few of my favorite things about fall.

1. Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. Confession: I had two of these today. Don't judge...mine were of the non-fat, no whip variety AND I had a coupon. So there.

2. Mums. Nothing says fall quite like bright gold, orange, and red mums lining the front porch. Our neighbors used to sell mums every fall. I loved being able to walk through the mum garden choosing them. But the evil empire Wal-Mart put them out of business. I refuse to buy crappy mums from the Wal-Mart though. Luckily they are readily available at a couple local greenhouses. Fall isn't complete without a few mums.


3. Dancing with the Stars. *sigh* My favorite fall show. For those of you who didn't know, this is Maks. My boyfriend.
Did I mention Maks? Oh, I did? Alright then. Moving on. Just give me a minute.
4. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Fall. Around here, the fall sky is about as blue as it can be. The yellow and orange leaves against the blue sky make for gorgeous photos. Actually, one of my dad's fall photos was chosen to be displayed at a new Cancer Center at the IU Medical Center. Here he is posing with his photo. His picture is much more vivid than it seems here. But, isn't he cute?

5. Speaking of leaves, we have some beautiful fall colors. Peak foliage season is mid-October depending on the amount of rainfall we receive. We are no Vermont, but you could do a lot worse than Indiana foliage.
6. Pumpkins. I love pumpkins. A perfect fall decoration is a bale of straw with a couple of mums and pumpkins on the front porch. I have a bowl full of mini pumpkins on the kitchen table (well, I did until Cole decided it was time to "harvest" them.) The kids and I are planning a trip to the pumpkin patch for bug pumpkins this weekend! And while we are on the topic of pumpkins, I would like everyone to repeat after me...Pump-kins. Please, people. Say pumpkins. I throw up a little in my mouth when I hear punkin. It's almost as bad as "pacific." As in, "Could you be more pacific about the punkins?" *shudder*

7. Harvest time. Even though I love being surrounded by corn fields all summer...harvest time is big in our house. It doesn't mean much to me except it makes the two men in my life uber happy. You can't imagine the thrill they get simply by driving a combine through a field of corn or beans and harvesting it. Plus it gets them out of the house and leaves Claire and me to paint our toenails in peace.
8. Cool evenings. I am a hot natured person. I am hot all.the.time. So when fall rolls around and many people turn the furnace on, I finally get a chance to throw on a sweatshirt and be cozy. It makes a girl want to sit in the stands at a high school football game. Well, maybe not...but it does make me want to put on a sweatshirt and drink wine on the porch.

9. Coldstone's Pumpkin Pie in the Sky. I don't think I need to say much more. Except that if you have not had this...you must go. Right now.

10. And last but not least...Fall Break. With all of the BS that fills my day as a public school teacher (not the kids, mind you...the kids are the best part of my day) there is a little light...a little ray of hope...a little something called Fall Break. Without Fall Break, there would be a little something called Nervous Breakdown. Fall Break in our school district consists of two glorious days off from school in mid-October. Not only is it two entire days off from school, but it coincides with the perfect Indiana fall weather. Sweatshirts, jeans, tennis shoes, outdoor shopping. Ahhh. I can't wait.

Priorities

I have a million things I could share with you tonight. I could go into detail about school and how I had a nervous breakdown today. Or perhaps the fact that my husband had eye surgery today and is REALLY hurting right now. Or maybe a list of my favorite things about fall. Or I could tell you all about conference week next week and how much I am dreading it.
I could.

But I won't.

Because this is all I can think about right now.

Seriously. If I ran into him, say, in a hotel room...or perhaps a dark corner of a bar...I just don't think I could restrain myself.

Amen.

Happy Birthday

Little Miss had her first "friends" birthday party today. This consisted of two other little girls and Claire squealing, screaming, and jumping up and down. Luckily I had plenty of crafts and activities planned to keep the squealing to a minimum.

They stuffed their own teddy bears. Okay, they put one piece of stuffing in and I did the rest. And I dressed the bears. And filled out their adoption papers. Jeesh...whose party was this anyway?
Little Miss got a Little Pony doll and new baby doll. She was thrilled and has requested both her little friends come back tomorrow with more presents for her.

The kids also decorated a coloring book and visor with foam stickers. This actually took quite some time and they were quiet while doing it. Note to self...do this every day.
Then we got out the ball pit and let the kids go wild. Think of it as a poor girl's bounce house. Without the house and without the, um, bounce.
Soon balls were flying everywhere. It was every man for himself.
My sister and I both got Claire a stuffed unicorn. The same one...twin sisters we told her. They kept these 2 occupied while we waited for the third little friend to arrive.

Did I mention she loves the unicorns? And sleeps with both of them?
The girls squealed their little lungs out in the princess castle. They hid and I found them. And occasionally Cole lifted the castle right off of them. That didn't go well.The girls had VERY pink cupcakes, ice cream, and milk out of the cutest little tea cups from Grandma. Both friends had places to go after the party and I started to panic when I saw just how "staining" the cupcakes were. So I grabbed dish towels and hair clips and voila! No mess!
A good time was had by all. And everyone is so tired from the festivities, I am planning early bedtimes all around. Good times, indeed.

Three years ago...

This is me three years ago today, at 12:59 p.m.

And this is what came out.

And this is that same precious angel...three years later.

How is this possible? *sigh*

WFMW

I have a TON of these little round stickers that I bought originally for a garage sale, then I ended up buying more for school. Needless to say, they were sitting around taking up precious junk drawer space. I got a great idea after seeing a coloring page Claire brought home from daycare. We had so much fun with these stickers today. I can see using them for letters and numbers (write a number or letter, have the kids put stickers around them to "trace"), bugs, snowman, counting...the possibilities are endless.

Today the kids made caterpillars and it kept them quiet for nearly 15 minutes. People. Do you understand the magnitude of that sentence? 15 minutes of quiet. No arguing, fighting, screaming, whining, crying, fussing...just quiet.

500 count package of paper...$5.99
500 round stickers...$1.99
2 markers...$2.00
15 minutes of quiet...PRICELESS

Cole suddenly turned Asian in this last pic...but look at that name written all by himself. So big!

For more great tips, check out WFMW at Rocks in my Dryer.

Ike Needs a Geography Lesson

Today the remains of Hurricane Ike traveled 874 miles to visit us here in Indiana. Really...a hurricane in Indiana? Me thinks Ike got turned around somewhere along his path of destruction. I can't fathom what the people of Galveston are going through. You know it's abig freaking storm when INDIANA gets damage.

Just look at that. Chicago got over 6 inches of rain today and 4 people were killed in Indiana from this storm that started in Texas. Unbelieveable. My heart goes out to those affected in Texas. We lost power and had some damage to two buildings. Trees are down all over the place. The corn and soybeans were knocked down and blown over. Then I think about how far this storm traveled...and how powerful it had to have been in Galveston.

Once the power had been out for an hour or so, the natives were getting restless. So we braved the 50 mph winds to play for a little while.

Here are the guys repairing one of the two buildings that had damage. Many of the metal roof pieces were flailing around wildly. I purposely brought my new car into the garage, away from the damage. As they were working on the metal sheets, one of them came loose and went tearing ass towards the garage....towards my new car! They both screamed, "Sh!t!" and hoped for the best. Luckily it stopped just shy of hitting the car. Phew.Hope you are your family are safe and sound this evening. Godspeed to the search and rescue teams in Galveston. As Cole would say, "Fank you God and amen."