Happy Halloween!!

Just wanted to post a few pictures before we head out to my parents for some trick-or-treating.

Here's a blond version of Harry Potter!

That wand is the best - it lights up and makes sounds if you wave it around.

B wanted a skull on his jack-o-lantern and I have to say it turned out pretty neat!

Hope everyone has a wonderfully spooky and fun Halloween!

B through the years

I was flipping through some baby pictures of B last night and I thought it would be neat to put some pictures up of B from when he was born up until now. It's amazing how much they change in a just a short amount of time!

Just a few hours old...
Homecoming - 12 days old...At 6 months...One year old - his first costume! He is so adorable in this picture.
18 months old...2 years old...
3 years old...4 years old...And now at 5 years old...

Happy Birthday B!

Five years ago today, at about this time (~8 am) I was on my way to the hospital after being pretty sure that my water broke in the shower. I still remember like it was yesterday. I was sitting on my pilates ball counting the minutes between contractions wondering what the heck could be going on because I still had 6 more weeks to go! Thankfully I did manage to eat breakfast (maple and brown sugar oatmeal) and left for the hospital after J got out of the shower. Once we got to the hospital it was determined that I was in labor, my water did in fact break and we were having a baby - today! Before my baby shower. Before I had anything prepared for this poor kid! So off they carted me to another hospital (as the first one did not have a NICU) and during the 20 minute drive (which seemed like an eternity to me) I dilated from 3 cm to 9.5 cm. Had I been sitting up, he would have been delivered in the ambulance! Immediately upon arriving to the second hospital I was whisked away to the delivery room and 30 minutes of pushing later he was born at 11:39 am weighing 4 lbs, 7 oz and 17.75" long. He was small, but otherwise quite healthy for being born so early. Thankfully he was only in the NICU for a couple of days, then he spent a little over a week in the special care nursery so he could gain weight. He came home on Nov 9th.

And here he is now - at 43" tall and almost 45 pounds -

And yes, I made that cake myself - Lightning McQueen from Cars. It took me 4 hours to frost it... It took them 10 minutes to devour it...

B and his cousin - they get along so well together!

Need feedback

Ok - no one commented on my post that contained a snippet from the book I am writing and I am dying to know what people think - good, bad and indifferent. So if you have a moment to read it, please shoot me a comment and let me know what you think!

**One more thing - keep in mind that the intended audience for this book is between 5-10 years of age. And keeping with the theme of one of my all-time favorite movies, The Princess Bride, it is meant to be read aloud to said audience.

I know we have a lot of black bears around...

...but I never thought I'd see one in the back of a truck! Luckily it wasn't real. I was on my way home with my mom Saturday morning after getting our hair done for my cousin's wedding when this truck pulled out in front of us. Hilarious!

Update on house happenings

This past weekend went by like a whirlwind, but despite all the craziness, my cousin's wedding came together wonderfully! More on that (including pictures) later on. For now, I wanted to give an update on the house stuff. Our masons are almost done on the tall gabled-end of the house. These pictures are almost 2 weeks old already, but I will take more once we re-finish the gable vent so they can finish putting up the rest of the stone.

From here you can see the door and windows to the basement.


And the upper window here is actually the 1st floor. The 2nd floor windows are hidden by the scaffolding, but regardless - that's a lot of stone!

Excerpt from the new book

Just wanted to let you all know that I am in fact putting together a children's story as I first mentioned here. The progress has been slow (I only have 8 pages so far) but I'm about a third of the way through the story. So for those of you who are interested, here is an excerpt from chapter 2 -

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After a nice breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, Brady quickly finished his glass of milk and headed for the door to put on his shoes. He was so excited that he was finally going to see the tree house. He was still putting on his jacket as he ran out the door and started down the driveway.
“Come ON mom! You’re going too slow!” he exclaimed.
Near Brady’s swing set at the bottom of the hill, they turned onto a little path that the deer use to cut across the yard. Brady started running towards the tree house, making sure to jump over the branches and rocks that were on the path. It had rained the night before and the ground was quite wet and muddy in some places. As he got closer to the house he realized just how big it really was. And high up too! It was a very cloudy morning, with drops of rain falling from the leaves of the tree. The entire area seemed to get darker as he approached the house.
“Whoa!” Brady said as he got closer to the tree, “that’s a really big tree house! I wonder who built it?”
“I don’t know,” his mom replied, “it was here when we bought our house. But I’ve never seen anyone play in it.” Just then there was a loud rustling in the bushes behind Brady.
“What was that?” he asked as he whirled around to look at the bush, but his mom had already started walking around to the other side of the big tree and hadn’t heard him. So Brady quickly followed his mother to the other side while looking cautiously back towards the bush.
“Mom, there’s something in that bush over there,” he spoke softly as he walked up next to her.
“Oh, it’s probably just a squirrel or a chipmunk,” she replied. “They’re pretty busy this time of year getting ready for winter.”
“Oh, ok,” he responded, although Brady thought that whatever made the noise in the bush had to be bigger than a squirrel.
As they approached the other side of the tree, Brady ran over to the ladder and quickly forgot about the rustling in the bush.
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So what do you think? Good, bad, whatever - please comment!