One Less Lonely Girl - That Should be Me...

Ok, maybe it SHOULDN'T be me...I just have a mild case of "Bieber Fever" at the moment.

I meant to post 2 weeks ago but I was recovering from the Haunted Forest and losing my BlackBerry (and mind), car troubles (drive shaft on mine and windshield wipers from hell on his)...then Halloween! My BB was found so sanity was restored. Then I meant to post last week but I was recovering from a soccer tournament, basketball game, Trick or Treating THEN Justin Bieber, Aubri's birthday, Goatfest 2010, etc.

I DID manage to post pictures from most of these events to my Flickr Acct so I've sort of kept up...

So, to recap: We had a nice Fall Break towards the end of October, we were enjoying some down time together as a family when out of the blue the Disco decided to start acting up...not getting enough attention I guess. We ended up getting her in to the shop just in time, so that the drive shaft didn't fly off and take some expensive prisoners with it!! So we were down to Scott's truck and his window wipers decided to stay ON for all of our Friday and Saturday driving pleasures. It was a little rainy but by Saturday night on the way to the Haunted Forest, it was dry and the scree-scree-scree was driving me and the kids crazy. But we pushed through to enjoy being scared and eating some Halloween treats out in the country. Emi was a Zombie Hippie, David was a Monkey (in the Middle) and Aubri was a Bumble Bee. They were so cute in their costumes.

Emi had been to this Haunted Forest before and she's 8 now so basically an Old Pro at not getting spooked and maximizing candy and treat collections. David and Aubri were not so sure. They were both scared by the Robot, which is funny because he is the least scary prop in the forest, but he did have red eyes and he was, in fact, doing The Robot. The next day Aubri kept telling everyone that the "robot 'cared her". We assured her that the robot was just a friend in a costume but she wasn't quite so sure.

The following week Emi wore her Hippie costume to school but because they were not allowed to dress up scary or use fake blood, we had to ditch the zombie part of her costume. On Halloween night when we took the kids out for actual trick or treating, the zombie make up had dried out so Emi went as a dirty hippie. We should have let her run around barefoot in the mud to get the full effect of "hippie feet". I noticed that she also wore some purple vampire teeth so I guess she was improvising along the way. A group of us met at a friends house for collective treating and we took the kids around to a haunted garage. When we took the Little Ones through they were supposed to hold off on anything scary, but one of the "technicians" darted out to fix a prop and scared little David. He lived to tell about it...

After we got the kids into bed we got to watch the premier of  The Walking Dead. It did not disappoint. Afterwards I had to watch the news to sort of rinse my brain of the undead images of the "walkers".

This past Wednesday night a few of us soccer moms and our daughters went to see The Biebs...

And the next night we celebrated Aubri's 2nd birthday with the Little Ones' birth mom and grandparents (via Skype):

On the weekend we had another party for Aubri's birthday and went to Goatfest 2010:

It's been a very full last few weeks with lots of gatherings, games and fun...

Beautiful Boy

This is a song that Daddy sings to David most nights before bed...



Close your eyes,
Have no fear,
The monsters gone,
He's on the run and your daddy's here,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

Before you go to sleep,
Say a little prayer,
Every day in every way,
It's getting better and better,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

Out on the ocean sailing away,
I can hardly wait,
To see you to come of age,
But I guess we'll both,
Just have to be patient,
Yes it's a long way to go,
But in the meantime,

Before you cross the street,
Take my hand,
Life is just what happens to you,
While your busy making other plans,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,
Darling,
Darling,
Darling Boy.

So Where Was I...

...when the EARTHQUAKE hit?

Yipes! I was at my first physical therapy appt...actually lying there on the table while the therapist was massaging my back! The 2 story building shook for about 30 seconds and I thought it was just some helicopters flying by on the way to the airport. I imagine it would be just like the beginning of a Stephen King story.... Soon after the quake some of the therapists came back in to the building saying the tremor was felt as far away as Dallas and Clinton and was definitely a quake, not an explosion.

While the therapist was still working on me on the table I watched the news and learned that you can't really feel the quake unless it's over 3 on the Richter scale. The preliminary magnitude of this quake was a 4.3, then upgraded to 4.5 and the last I heard it was upgraded to 5.1! Maybe not a big deal if we were in California, but here in Oklahoma (aside from Jones, OK) we are not used to quakes.

My Little Ones were fine although they thought someone ran their car into the house. Scott was fine but was walking around campus so he didn't feel the quake. Emi was in the Gifted class in the portable classroom and reported that a lot of the soda bottles they were using to experiment with pH fell down as the building shook....

What a trip!

Later someone posted on FaceBook something about aftershocks sometimes being more intense than the original quake...almost 12 hours later and no tremors...

My lower back was in heaven for a bit when the electrodes were emitting heat and pulsating my tight muscles. Then there was the exquisite pain as the therapist was "picking" or "digging" at my back muscles. I explained to both therapists who tagged teamed me that my butt felt like someone frogged me in the cheeks and in my house, I can't be sure that that didn't happen. So they did their magic and showed me some really good exercises to help me heal up my tweaked lower back.

All My Children

On Being Domesticated...

This past week I have been cheffing it up a lot more than the weeks before and we have been richly rewarded. I just hope not in pounds!

Last week we had chicken and sausage gumbo (good old standby), corn chowder (this new recipe by The Pioneer Woman was way yummier than the Hip Chick's Macrobiotic corn chowdah we cooked originally 6 years ago and that was pretty darn good!)

We feasted on this Friday as well as the best fudge I've ever had! I saw a post on HEAB's blog about easy 2 ingredient fudge and while I am not a fudge person because it is usually so sweet that my tastebuds go numb after the first bite, Heather's recipe sounded yummy because it involves Coconut Milk and I am a huge fan of Anything Coconut! I melted a bag of Ghirardelli 60% Cacao bittersweet chocolate chips and stirred in a can of unsweetened coconut milk and a dash of organic vanilla! I poured it into a glass dish greased with coconut oil and let it cool for a couple of hours. Then we dug in with the spoons. The fudge was not thick enough to cut into squares but it tasted so good by the spoonful. It tasted very similar to Michael Chiarello's chocolate fondue (which involves red wine!) It's not too sweet and I may try it on some oatmeal if it's around long enough...