She knits! (Gasp!)

At long last, yes, I do still enjoy knitting and actually carved out a couple of hours to make a cabled sock for Gabe this week. Don't fret; its match is also in the works. Sadly, while the sock itself looks pretty cute, I made it a little longer than I should have, and I somehow managed to make the toe look horrendous. I might just make the next one right and then make a third to match and discard this one. We'll see. (And yes, I had to get this in today, right under the wire for Socktoberfest! Yes, I know, I'm a big, big dork.)

Halloween 2008

The nice thing about having Halloween on a Friday is that the fun isn't over yet. We should have more festive photos to share after tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!

Baby, Baby, Baby!

Guess who has a new nephew! Isaac Robert was born late last night. My brother delivered him! Congrats Andy, Kara, William, Gurion, Samuel, Beatrice, and Shiloh! Isaac, we can't wait to meet you!


Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. -Psalm 127:3-5a

The LORD bless you and keep you: The LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. -Numbers 6:24-27

Bless you Isaac, and bless you Family! We love you so much!

No House, Halloween, Alpacas, Pumpkins, and Football

...or something like that.

It looks like we aren't going to get this house after all. No final word yet, but we've run in to one too many road blocks, and we're especially disappointed this time as we'd grown quite attached to the little white house down the way. There's not much to be done about it though, unfortunately. (I think we'd be more likely to accept it and move on if this were only the first time we had gone through this... )

On a brighter note, we are still finding a little time to enjoy the changing seasons. Last weekend we bought Halloween costumes for the kids. I wanted to make them, but I knew I wouldn't have time this year. Thomas will be a firefighter (he loves it, and we are pleased as it was the only non-violent boy costume in the store), and Gabe will be a monkey, of course. I sort of wished I had found a way to make Thomas a yellow suit and hat so that he and Gabe could have gone out as Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat, but I didn't think of it until someone mentioned the idea at work on Friday. Maybe next year! (Gabe's costume is GINORMOUS.)


We brought them to another orchard last weekend, and it was a beautiful morning, though bitter cold. We went early on Sunday, and we were the first ones there. We had our pick of all the beautiful pumpkins, and Thomas chose a 21ish pound beast for me to carve. Of course we came home with more cider too, but not before stopping by the alpacas for a visit and letting Thomas run around on top of the hay maze for a while while we watched the horses.


The cold prompted us to find a nice warm winter coat for Gabe, but we didn't find anything close by, so we made a trip over to L.L.Bean today in seek of this sweet little fleece suit. Of course they didn't have the right size in stock, so I had to come home and order it, but I'll be looking forward to seeing that package on my doorstep within the next week or so!

Tomorrow will probably be a fairly quiet day in, complete with an afternoon of football and some traditional autumn beef stew. Mmm, fall. =)

Autumn in Upstate New York

... and Thomas and Gabriel enjoying it...

Kids, games, adventures, books, and glitches

Update: Gabe is now 8 1/2 months, has six teeth (2 on the bottom and 4 on top), loves crawling, following Mommy, and watching Thomas, and as of last Saturday weighed about 16 1/2 pounds. (Comparatively to other babies that's small, but for him that's great!)

Tonight Brian took the rings from the Fisher Price stacker and put one on his own head. He kept it there for a few seconds and then tipped his head to make it fall off. He put one on Gabe's head, and Gabe stood stick still for a minute so that it would stay, and then he wiggled his head just a teeny bit, as though he was getting a chill, to make it fall off. It was so cute. I have some video, but it's super super dark. I guess you just had to be here.

Thomas had another asthma episode last weekend, and we narrowly escaped another trip to the ER thanks to Saturday morning hours at his doctor's office. He ended up on another course of Prednisone and is now taking Advair twice a day for the foreseeable future, plus we had to borrow the doctor's nebulizer until Monday morning, but Thomas had his own delivered that afternoon, and we haven't needed it yet, so hopefully we're on the right track. (I have asthma and also take Advair, but I have never had any episodes quite like Thomas has, so this is all a bit of a learning experience for all of us.)

He is doing well with his Tae Kwon Do. He now has two stripes (on his belt). Most importantly though, he still enjoys going there every day.

His Book It! program this year has him reading for twenty minutes every night. Not that he didn't read every night before anyway, but he loves the extra motivation of getting to color in a pumpkin each day on his calendar, so he keeps asking if he's read for his twenty minutes. (Maybe he's stopping at twenty minutes, though, when he might otherwise ready longer... Still... ) Tonight he read three books (two Berenstein Bears and a third book about a kitty) and then re-read the first one to fill in the time.

We must have hundreds of books, yet he has probably read all of the appropriate level books already. He wants to read chapter books, but the subject matter is a bit advanced in the few we have; he doesn't understand a lot of the terminology.

In the past we have generally tried to limit the number of new books we have bought for him, only because I collected children's books for a long time, so we already had a ton, but Thomas has surprised and impressed us with how quickly he took to reading and how speedy he has been at reading every book on the shelf. I'm thinking we should be able to get Gabe his own bookshelf soon after we move, and then we can separate them out by age and maybe start re-building Thomas' collection. (Most of my books were pretty girlie too!)

Yes, I said after we move. We're still working things out. The inspection was today, and the only serious issues were those that we were already aware of (Wahoo!), but the most urgent of those was the electric, and the seller's disclosure said that the house had 100 amp service, which we still knew desperately needed to be updated and planned to do ourselves shortly after moving in, but it turns out that it actually only has 60 amp service, and the home inspector seemed to think that our lender might not allow anything less than 100, so we are waiting to hear back for sure. This will be our third significant challenge with this house, and the closing is still over a month away (unless we are able to push it up - and we'll try if we can). I really hope everything else works itself out.

We're getting cautiously excited about painting and arranging and all of that stuff. I'm sure it will actually be challenging when the time comes, but since we've never been able to do that, we're having a little fun thinking up ideas. It will be a while before we can do some things, but I think we will at least try to pull up the carpet and see how the hardwood is underneath, and maybe we'll paint a couple of rooms. Here's hoping! =)

Enter October

Thomas gathered these harvest treasures on his class trip to one of many local orchards today. We hope to visit another this weekend. Whether or not we opt to pick apples, I'm longing to sip from a great big mug filled with hot mulled cider. One thing I've learned about this area, too, is that October just wouldn't be October without sharing a small bag of fresh hot cider doughnuts outside with my family while we enjoy the seasonal colors and crisp fall air together.