I love birthdays!

I love my birthday. I received so many birthday wishes on facebook - it made my day to open my email and see so many messages from people wishing me a happy birthday.

I took today as a vacation day for my birthday, and it was the BEST idea!

I took advantage of the time off to drive down and spend time with my parents - this also helped Kevin by giving him a quiet house to work on his presentation for class. We had a great time visiting and catching up, and I spent the night Sunday night. Today I slept in and then had waffles for breakfast (never too old to get spoiled by your parents).

My parents' house has really bad cellphone coverage, which is often frustrating to deal with (having to go upstairs to get a signal), but for wanting a day off and to visit with them and not be distracted by facebook, twitter, etc. its really nice, Plus work knows they really can't contact me, so i truly get a day off.

I drove back home this evening and went out to eat with Kevin, and then we got dessert at Culver's -- I wanted a 'cement mixer' instead of a cake, its exactly what I wanted. Ice cream in October sounds strange, but it has been so warm this year that it is the perfect dessert......chocolate custard with brownie pieces and raspberries...yum!

Halloween Costumes

We had a great time last night. Not many people could make it to the party (busy time of year), but it gave us a chance to just hang out and catch up with Jay, Gwendolyn and Sarah. and we were able to see Gabriel dressed up as the CUTEST astronaut I've ever seen! (kicking myself for not taking his picture).

I did get a photo of Kevin and I in our costumes, he was a deranged dentist (with pliers as his tool of choice) and I was a housecat (living the easy life!). We had fun with the costumes, each was a mix of purchased things and things we already had. My collar was a pendant I own on a ribbon ($1 at michael's), and I used eye-liner for the whiskers and we used spray blood for Kevin - it looked disgusting when it came out of the bottle. The goggles are his weedwhacker safety goggles. Sorry about the photo quality, I didn't have the settings right on my camera so it didn't flash - I've had the camera long enough I should know how to work it, but obviously I don't....this is why Kevin usually is in charge of the photo-taking in our household.

I cannot wait to see all the kids in our neighborhood and what they came up with for their costumes!!

Halloween

Halloween is coming up soon - even though the weather doesn't feel much like it. I love this holiday, and our neighborhood goes ALL OUT - i even saw some inflatable decorations in yards this morning. I stocked up on candy at the store this morning, with all the kids in our neighborhood we should have LOTS of trick-or-treaters.

We're headed to a costume party tonight, Gwendolyn, Jay and Sarah are having their annual party. It should be fun, and afterwards I hope to have some photos to share of us in our costumes. For the party, they wanted childhood photos of us in costumes, so my mom was nice enough to find some photos of my brother and I. Costumes really have come a long way since we were kids. The ones we had were a mask (which was tough to see out of) and a plastic shirt that you'd tie onto yourself. I highly doubt they were flame retardant. I wonder if kids would even be allowed to wear the costumes we wore...

1981: a clown and Daffy Duck. I think we still own those jack-o-lanterns that we used for all of our candy!
1982: a princess and a pirate (sounds like a movie title)While I was out shopping recently, I saw Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations right next to each other, and thought it was quite a strange combination to see witches and skeletons right next to Santa. Stores - let us enjoy the fall season without pushing us towards Christmas, we'll get there soon enough!!!

We finally made it to a festival! We made a quick trip to the Italian Festival yesterday afternoon, quite a treat since Kevin spends a good chunk of each weekend working on his classes. The festival was on the campus of our alma mater, the place looked completely different with all of the food and drink tents, stages, and booths. I hadn't realized how much the campus has changed since I left. Several times I found myself looking at an empty lot and wondering what happened to the building that used to be there.. Most of the changes are for the better, but I miss the houses that were there when I first started as an undergrad.

At the festival we watched the kids' grape stomp (their commentary and description of how it felt was hilarious), and enjoyed some Italian donuts (yum!) It was fun, even though it was warmer than I would've liked.

Did you miss me?

I'd like to say I've been doing all sorts of wonderful, important things...but really I think I'm just sucked into the new season of tv shows being on again! Our DVR gets a workout and we actually have to plan out when we want to watch what, example: Fringe is on Thursday, but we don't watch it until Friday because we watch all of the Thursday comedies on Thursday. Luckily its not so popular that I have to work too hard to avoid spoilers.

We're watching a few new shows but the jury is still out on most of them. Mostly I'm glad to have my existing favorite shows back again. The new shows aren't doing very well when I heard that two have alreaady been cancelled, oh well each of them sounded bad and weren't ones I was watching.

Our recent discovery - stuffingless dog toys. How did I not know they existed? We saw them at Petsmart and got one that looks like a squirrel since he is always so interested in the squirrels in our neighborhood. He LOVES it, he's always playing with it and even figured out how to carry it in his mouth all bunched up so it doesn't drag on the ground. Not sure how long it will last, but its already made it one week. I'm amazed he loves it because he's usually iffy with toys, except for his indestructible bone (he chews on it every night after dinner).

Smokey's big news - he killed a mouse last week. I'm glad I missed it. I think the poor thing died of fright.