10,000 Words

November 5 - Today I am grateful for my 10,000 word count and a friend  to listen to them.  I half joke about having a 10,000 word count that I must get out each day, one which I try to fulfill before Joe gets home so he doesn't have to listen to my incessant ramblings of the day.  On a normal day the person that I talk to the most is my Mom but she is traveling this week so luckily for me J wasn't too busy at work and could listen. :-)

Voting!

November 4th - Today I am thankful for the ability to vote.  I know today is an easy one to come up with a thankful post since I choose it every voting day, but I can't help myself.  The older I have gotten the more I like to vote, from research to talking through the issues with people I enjoy everything but the political ads on TV. :-)  In fact there were actually two separate issues on our ballots this time that I needed outside opinions to help form my own, so it made it extra fun to talk through them with anyone that I could find.  We'll have to see how the polls favor the choices I made tonight.

While digging for some paints for Tyler to work with last night I came across these in a box.  Some people may recognize this first one from our wedding invites.  It took over a hundred pictures to find one that worked and I still had to borrow Tyler's head from another photo and Photoshop it in here.

One of the hundred that was just too cute.  I cannot believe how young Tyler looked here.

30 Days of Thanks!

My favorite time of year for blogging!

November 1 - Today I am thankful for how well my body does during pregnancy.  We were all set to host the 8th Annual Chili Cookoff at our house on Sunday, and by we were all ready I mean that the girls and I got the place ready.  Joe worked on Saturday and then we went to Chris and Heather's daughter Hannah's birthday party so the girls and I had to get the inside and outside of the house all done.  While I must admit my body is slower to respond, runs out of breath faster, and needs to stop more I am still impressed with what I can get done even being three weeks out.  Oh yeah and did I mention that Hannah's birthday party was complete with ponies!  Boy was that a hit with the girls.

Here's Gram and the girls visiting with the pony, not sure who loves this more her or them.

There's the birthday girl, Morgan and Tyler..

Tyler didn't want to ride the pony but Austin sure did, she even waited for over 30 minutes in line.

November 2 - Today I am thankful for traditions like the Chili Cookoff.  While it started with a measly three pots of chili between me and two of the guys I used to work with it sure has grown.  We had a house full of people and 14 total chili's.  This year Tadd  won with an amazing green chili spin off of posole.  First year ever that a green chili has won.  Way to go Tadd, he took home the trophy "Frank" (we call him Frank as in Frankenstein because one of the winners dropped him and my Mom - the next year's winner glued all the pieces back together except one missing one - perhaps she is where I get my love of puzzles).  You can't see the back here but it has each winner's name and year written on it.  Pretty cool little guy that has traveled so far for eight years.

November 3 - Today I am thankful for business relationships.  When I first got transferred to this new team I was responsible for bringing the team up to speed on the day to day tasks I take care of.  My now boss said that while it may be impossible to do, he would like for the other people on our team to hold the same amount of notoriety as I do going forward.  I didn't think much of it at the time but then outages happen like they did this morning.  I bet I have a friend on each team throughout all of Verizon, so this morning when there was a network outage I was able to hit up someone who is a friend of a friend of mine and get everything up and running without even involving the normal processes since they take forever in a company this size.

And Joe takes the win.

Joe takes the win for today, he went into work extra early to get a jump start and then drove home to get ready to then attend Austin's Halloween party.

Our two Mini Mouse's!

Oh yeah and then since the teacher's voice was gone he read the story for story-time.  Yep took the win today for sure. :-)

Trying to do a better job...

So I am trying to do a better job keeping up on my blog (I promise) and with November starting I get to start my absolute favorite ode to blogging with my 30 days of thanks. :-)  Better get the typing fingers ready!

We are definitely starting to see the "fruits" of public school in Austin.  I am calling them fruits because truly the only reason we are sending her to school is to the learn the things we cannot teach or show her.  Keep in mind she far more advanced than her class thanks in part to me ordering the curriculum and just taking it over.  But we still wanted her to experience the world through kindergarten complete with all of its differences.  Literally though, wow, I would not have expected such hard questions so soon.  Since Joe and I can't possibly talk through everything before one of us is forced to answer from the pressure that only a five year can exert, we have both decided to err on the absolute truth so at least we can't be called liars even if Joe and I's perception is slightly different at least it was something that we both can defend.

We carved pumpkins last night and Joe allowed the girls to use permanent markers and knives (Mom stepped away as often as possible so as to not say 100 times "Please be careful").

Here they are cleaning them out themselves and then the finished product.  Joe attempted to cut out what they thought they were drawing and could not quite cut out themselves.  Their first master pieces. :-)

And I am not sure if I should love or hate our cat right now, she has brought us two snakes in the last week.  Not thrilled about that, on one hand she is a fearless snake hunter on the other hand I can't help but think that she is just pissing off the Momma snake that is going to come and get me.  Rock me to sleep.  And yes those are different snakes on different days.  Joe and the girls LOVE them and I encourage them to do so, since my fear is irrational and crippling.

Ahhh the belly

First and foremost I will never get the allure of selfies.  I find it hard to take pictures of yourself in a mirror without looking like a nitwit.  Secondly, here's the belly.  I don't think it's as big as the girls were but then again I was bigger back then too.  Maybe this little boy is having the time of his life eating the beer fat off me, or maybe there is something to be said about actually watching what you are eating while pregnant. ;-)

Holy Cow!

Holy Cow! Where did the summer go?!?!?!

Walking through the grocery store the other day looking at the Christmas candles on display it hit me.  We will have another child by the time I put up the tree.  What the hell?!?!?!  Where did the whole 9-10 months go?

I had my first biophysical profile appointment today, lucky for me and baby I just turned 35 which means that once a week we go in and have an ultrasound to measure movement, size and fluid.  Then we sit hooked up to a machine for 20 minutes looking for contractions and monitoring the baby's heartbeat.  Well, apparently there is a score that these tests then give the doctor.  We got an 8 out of 8 this morning so we just go back next Wednesday as usual.  6 of 8 and we would have to come back in two days. 4 of 8 we go immediately to the hospital for 24 hours of monitoring and 2 of 8 we deliver today.  Whoa!  Things could have been much more exciting this morning. As we stand now he is about 20 inches long and weighing in at 5 pounds 11 ounces.  At least he is pretty much out of the skeletor phase, I would be forever grateful for the NICU if we ever needed it but it sure would be scary.  When the doctor first mentioned these appointments I tried fighting them but the further along we get and the more panic sets in that I will go into labor with the girls at home by myself I decided to give in and just hope that they will tell me a little bit about how far out the due date is.

They did manage to snap a picture of the little guy's face this morning just so we could see.  I sure think he looks more DiFabio than Wells but we'll see.

Here's little Austin's face.

And Tyler's to compare.

A picture of just how much help I have on a daily basis to get my work done.  And my poor empty plant pots.  Apparently this new house does not have the same kind of sunlight because everything has died, I need to replace them with shade versions.

For the first time ever I am attempting to refinish some furniture.  This is the crib we used for Austin and Tyler that is made of nice wood that ol' Tyler AKA Bucky the Beaver chewed on.  So I decided to sand it and stain it.

Here it is after the final coat of stain on the first piece, I will take another picture when everything is done and put back together.