Halloween a Year Later

It's amazing how much things can change in a year.  And today, I have the perfect example for you.

Last year, Cooper was a cute little pea in a pod for Halloween.  He was about 6 weeks old, all cute and little and cuddly.

And now a year later, he's bigger.  Stronger.  He has teeth.  He crawls.  He still doesn't walk, but he's thinking about it.

And tonight, he was a pirate.

We went to see Reece down the road.  He was Buzz Lightyear.

And it's not Halloween if Lola isn't in her tutu.

It was quite chilly out tonight.  But we had a wonderful time handing out candy to the local kiddies.  There were a lot of good costumes and a lot of great fun.

Happy Halloween everyone, from the Myers family!

My Weekend in a List

1) The Cardinals won the World Series. BOOYAH!

2) I realized my age when I had to take a nap in the middle of said World Series.

3) We visited family on a lake. It was beautiful and peaceful and lovely.

4) I want a lake house. Now.

5) I got to witness my father-in-law trying on his high school letter jacket. With matching hat. Yup, it still fit. And yup, he could button it up.

6) I discovered that it's time to start the anti-aging process. I will take all tips available please. It's urgent.

7) Clinton, IN has the worst laid out Wal-Mart in the planet. Trust me. I should know. I spent an hour in there walking from one end to the other. Not the way I pictured my Sunday morning.

8) McDonald's sweet tea = Liquid Gold

9) Words With Friends is incredibly addicting.

10) My Mother's first move on WWF was colognes.

I immediately resigned.

12) Never play WWF with an engineer. They know stuff. Math stuff. And science stuff.

13) I have an awesome kid.

14) I have an awesome niece.

15) Lola should not be left alone for long periods of time. It's not good for her soul. Or my house.

16) My kid got his first haircut today. He's hardly recognizable.

I hope I bring the right kid home from day care tomorrow.

17) Tomorrow is Halloween. I hope we don't have a lot of Trick-or-Treaters so that I can keep all of the candy myself.

Wait, did I just say that out loud?

Please don't judge me.

18) Speaking of candy, I discovered mini Reece's cups this weekend.

WARNING: Do not purchase unless you want to consume the entire bag.

19) Tomorrow is Monday so I had better go to bed to prepare for the middle schoolers.

Everyone have a wonderful week!

Proud Parenting Skills

How you know you've made it in the world of parenting...












 

Happy weekend everyone!

Pumpkin Carving Letdown

Last night we decided to carve pumpkins in the Myers' house.  Nate and I have been anticipating this for some time now.  Last year Cooper was just several weeks old and not really ready to carve pumpkins.

So this year we were pumped.  We knew that Cooper was going to be all sorts of excited about all of the goo and slime that was coming out of those pumpkins.  It was going to be epic.

Now, before I go any further can we just take a minute and talk about the smell of a pumpkin.  How in the world can something that makes such wonderful pies smell so horrid?  I mean, it knocks you back a few steps! It takes a little while to get used to something like that.  And then you have to stick your hands in it to get out all of the muck and then the smell gets on your hands and then they smell like that forever and then you go to eat dinner and you still smell the yucky pumpkin smell and then you are just disgusted all together.

But it doesn't stop you from eating dinner because, well, food is on your Top 5 list.

Anyways...

We got our pumpkins ready.  Nate started on the first one.  I thought to myself, "Alright!  Time to get down and dirty!  My boy's gonna love this!"

But he didn't.

He could care less, actually.

"Hmm.  Maybe I'll check this out."

"Eewwwy gooey Mama!"

"Now leave me alone.  I'm trying to brush my teeth."

He has an unnatural attachment to his toothbrush.  Don't ask.

So we thought that maybe if we sat him in his Bumbo chair we could focus him a little.

Nah.  He just went to playing with his car.

And then playing with his car while watching China on A.N.T. Farm.

Lola was there.  She wanted some pumpkin seeds.

So then Cooper was getting kinda bored.  What's the next best thing to play with?

Mm-hmm.

So Nate went on carving.

And we finally got Cooper to play with a piece of pumpkin.  But he still wanted to watch China too.

But then he got to feeling a little sleepy...

...and he wanted Daddy.

But he persevered and finally finished.

Then it was Mommy's turn.

I had dreams.  I was going to do a monogram, you see.  It was going to be beautiful.  I sketched it out.  I had a plan.  I was a woman on a mission.

Until...

Well, until I accidentally carved out the wrong part of the M.  It wasn't pretty.  And I thought at first that it was fixable.  But alas, it wasn't.  And so...

Lola got her very first Halloween pumpkin.

Don't laugh.

It's not funny!

Alright, it's kinda funny.  You can laugh.

But just for a second!

As I was carving my pumpkin, I noticed that everyone had exited the kitchen.  Like, they scattered.  They were gone.  Nowhere to be seen.  Where did they go?

Good Luck Charlie was on.

Lola even disappeared.  Seems she had a new agenda as well.

"Yo.  I'm playing with my Kong.  Leave me alone punk."

Mission: Organization, The Junk Drawer

Everybody has one.  You can't deny it.  It's a drawer, usually in one's kitchen, that accumulates...stuff.  All of those things that have no true home in your house.  You pick them up, look at them, and realize that you have nowhere to put the stuff!  And so, to the junk drawer it goes.

Our junk drawer was in definite need of some help.  Here's how I knew:

1) It was almost impossible to close.  You'd have to rearrange the contents just so it would shut.  And that was frustrating.

2) When the contents would be rearranged, something would inevitably fall out the back into the cabinet below.  Oh, the things I found in that cabinet.

3) When I would go to locate something that I knew was in the junk drawer, I wouldn't be able to find it because there was so much stuff.

This had to be remedied.  I couldn't stand it anymore.  I figured that the perfect time to fix this would be now.  I mean, it is Mission: Organization after all!

This is what our junk drawer looked like before the purge.  Scary, I know.

And then when you skimmed off the top layer...

We had a little bit of everything in there.  Lighter sticks, phone books, keys (so many keys, and I have no idea what half of them unlock), and oh, the batteries.  You name a type of battery, we had it.

I think I even found a car battery in there.

The first step was to clean everything out.  Everything that was in the drawer was taken out and placed on top of the counter.

Then, I started picking through.  And it was a process.

I cannot tell you how much stuff I ended up throwing away.  Things that were totally unnecessary.  Things that I had forgotten about.

Then there were the things that belonged in other places.  Mainly the garage.  I'm pretty sure that I found two screw drivers.  Sunglasses, instruction manuals, things that have no use being in that drawer.

I purchased a box from Wal-Mart (on clearance!) that had a divider in it.  I put items from the junk drawer in it.  It allowed me to be able to clearly see what I had within separate categories.  No more batteries rolling around.  No more iPod headphones getting tangled up.

I also bought two long containers.  One for lighter sticks, one for pens.  Because every time I went to that drawer for a pen I couldn't find one.  And I dug out about 10,000 when I cleaned out the drawer.

After I sorted, it was time to pick out what was going back in.  But truthfully, I purged SO MUCH that I didn't have a lot to pick from.  And that, my friends, makes for a successful Mission: Organization project!

It took me a while, but I'm pretty pleased with the end product.

And there you have it!  The first installment of Mission: Organization is complete!  I have so many more projects to do that it's a little overwhelming.  But the end result gives me an amazing feeling.

There's no stopping me now!  Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

A Little Home Improvement

Did you all know that I'm married to Nate "The Tool Man" Myers?  Well if you didn't, you do now.

And by the way, wasn't Home Improvement an awesome show.  Oh Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  Be still my heart.

Since we've been living in our home (over 4 years now, holy cow!) we've made small improvements and renovations here and there.  You might recall the installation of the floors.  We've painted, we've hung things on the walls, and so on.  Really, we've done more improvements to the landscaping than we have indoors.

But that's all changing.

I was visiting a blog last week and saw this mantel project.  I instantly loved it.  So I forwarded the link to The Tool Man and he loved it too.

Our mantel is (was) boring.  There was nothing to it.  Just your typical builder grade mantel.  Nothing special.  Nothing flashy.  And folks, this may surprise you, but I like flashy.

And here's what's so awesome about my husband.  He loves a challenge.  He loves a project.  This project involved math and measuring.  An engineer's dream.

So off to Menards we went.  The best thing about this project is that it was low cost.  We bought a couple of boards, a can of paint, and some paint brushes.  Done.

By the way, while in Menards my contact ripped.  In half.  Rendering me blind in one eye.

And we hadn't been to the grocery store yet.

Beautiful.

Anyways, we got home and out came the saw and the tape measure. 

And the torn contact.

That day his Dad and Susie came to visit.  Jim did a great job of teaching my wonderful hubby how to do things himself.  He fixes things, he uses manly tool words that I don't understand, and we've saved a ton of money thanks to what he learned while growing up.

Thanks Jim!

That being said, those two crack me up.  They got the boards up.  Nate made it look a little too simple.

But then, it was time to apply the paint.

And out came the low blows.

Nate went first, applying the first coat.  Jim sat on the sofa, exclaiming that watching Nate apply paint was like watching said paint dry.

So Nate passed over the baton.

Er, uh, paint brush.

It was Jim's turn.  He proudly boasted that he would finish the second coat in ten minutes.

His adoring son sat on the couch with a stop watch.

I'm not quite sure what the final time was, but I know that it was over ten minute.  Poor Jim got a razzing like you've never heard.

Anyways, after a quick caulk job on Sunday and a final coat of paint we finally have a finished mantel!

Right now we're trying to determine what to put on it.  I've had suggestions of mirrors, clocks, family initials. Or the possibility of leaving it "as is."  But I can't decide. 

So, I'm putting it out there to you.  What do you think, friends?

We're Going On An Adventure!

Or at least that's what we tell Cooper each time we get ready to put him in the car.

A trip to the store?  An adventure!

A visit to see Papaw and Grams?  An adventure!

Daycare?  An adventure!

But last Sunday we actually meant it.  We took the wee one to McCormick's Creek for the afternoon and had a blast.  Nate and I go there about once a year, usually for a work dinner, and we always say, "Why don't we come here more often?"

I mean, really.  It's like, five minutes from our house.  It has all of these trails and the Falls (the waterfall that is) and boy, is it gorgeous in the Fall.

We spent our time that day at the Falls.  To get down there is no small accomplishment, as there are stairs after stairs after stairs.  But it was such a beautiful day.

We got down to the bottom and sat Coop-a-Loop on a rock.

And then, my nerves started working overtime.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a series of pictures entitled, "What Makes a Mama Nervous."  Brought to you by yours truly.

But here's the thing.  I was very happy that Nate had hold of Coop and not myself.  Because you see, I'm not exactly known as "graceful."  In fact, I'm pretty much the opposite.  I thought for sure I was going to bust my backside going over all of those rocks.  But alas, I didn't.  Thanks goodness.

So we took off the little guy's shoes and let him put his feet in the water.  I thank the stars every day that he likes water.

He was totally digging the adventure.

In a few years he'll be doing this and saying, "Look Mama!  Snake!"  You know, just to get a rise outta me.  Not.  Cool.

And this will be the, "Ha, ha Daddy!  We GOT her!"

This kid has no pain factor.  He will crawl on anything.  Here, you will see him rock climbing.

In all we had a wonderful time.  It was so nice to get out of the house and spend the day as a family. 

P.S. I love my kid.