Early Halloween

So okay, another weird fact about the area I live... they do trick-or-treating early around here. And at a mandated time. And for only for kids 12 and under (in certain towns). It's an interesting rule that we learned about since we moved here. The local towns mandate a specific times for trick or treating. And in our town specifically, if Halloween falls on a weekday, then they mandate that trick-or-treating is moved to the Saturday before Halloween, and during the daylight hours.

So yesterday was our "Halloween" or trick-or-treating day, from 1-4. I just think it's strange, and kinda lame. I mean I know it's all about safety and keeping it not "on a school night", but it still takes a little bit of fun out of Halloween. When we were kids, we waited until dark on Halloween and trick-or-treated until our hearts content... and ON Halloween. It just doesn't seem as fun to do it early. And then mandating the ages? That's lame too.

Oh well. Mr. H2O and I joked that our future children will be lucky to go trick-or-treating twice... once early our town, and then we can go to Grandma and Grandpa's on Halloween. Twice the fun, Twice the candy.

Here are the pumpkins that I took time to carve in time for "early Halloween".

My little pumpkin - it says "boo"



My Big pumpkin - says Happy Halloween, but it dried up a little and the words got messed up


After I took these pictures, I promptly tripped on the front step coming back in. Yep... I am graceful. The camera is fine, my knee and ankle are not.

House Updates

Back in September, Mr. H2O was told by his job to "work from home" for a couple weeks. It's a long story, but basically they needed the lab that he works in for some testing, and for safety reasons he couldn't be there. So he got to "work from home" or basically catch up on his Maury watching and household projects and get paid for it. It was originally for 2 weeks, but 2 weeks turned into 3 weeks and then almost a month. Now I love my husband to death, but having him home all that time threw me off and I was looking forward to when he went back.

In that time though, he did manage to get our front yard projects done, which included finishing the building of the garden wall and the battle for control of the front lawn. So I've decided to post up some pictures of the H2O house lately since I haven't really shown it off in awhile. Not a drastic change but it looks a lot nicer now. And you can see some of my outdoor fall decor too.

Before (June '07)


After (October '07)


Side Garden Area Before


Side Garden Area After


Other side Garden Area Before


Other side Garden Area After


My new Japanese Laceleaf Maple


Front Door in June '07


Front Door with some of my fall decor Oct '07


That's what we have for now. And it is amazing, the front lawn is looking so green right now. It was a battle for Mr. H2O but we managed to grow the new seed and get rid of most of the crabgrass. We are planning on putting in a shade tree in the front lawn at some point.
I would show pictures of the back, but it is pretty embarrassing. It is all weeds and overgrown crabgrass right now and looks absolutely terrible. It is such a big and odd shaped lot and a complete blank canvas. Mr. H2O is insisting that we wait until we have a "master plan" before we do anything back there. I just want it to look... well, just not terrible like it is now.

Horray for Fall!

I cannot beleive that September is here already! Where did the summer go? Though it still feels like summer here. But at least we haven't had to use air conditioning in almost a week.

But one of my favorite times of year is here. I love the fall! I love fall colors, fall smells, fall decorating. And best of all, I am excited for football!

Eight years ago, you would have never heard me say such a thing, but I really do love football. This is all Mr. H2O's doing of course, but I don't mind. I refused to become a "football widow" and decided I was going to learn and enjoy it as much as my husband. And when fall rolls around in the H2O house, we are all abuzz about our Yahoo Sports Football pick-em (I've beaten Mr. H2O 3 years in a row now), we excitedly make our football picks, and Philadelphia Eagles become priority #1.

Mr. H2O has been an Eagle fan since birth practically. I married into it, but I don't mind. Last December 25th, in our house you would have no idea that it was anything other than Eagle's game day... Christmas dinner was put on hold until 9:30pm. The Eagles/Dallas game was way more important of course. I think that was a situation that happened region-wide. This is the first time in my life that have ever lived close to a "football city", and Philadelphia and about a 50 mile radius surrounding it, lives and dies by this football team. I grew up near Seattle, and what did we have? The Seahawks. For the most part they were always terrible, and nobody really gave a crap about them.

So the next several Sundays (and some Mondays) are occupied with great hits, great catches, lots of yelling (not by me of course) some inevitable heart-break, and some trash talking. Game 1 versus Greenbay is this Sunday.

So I highly recommend that other ladies out there to not fight it. Get into it. And if you have a slightly competetive spirit, join an NFL pick 'em pool with your significant other and see how into football you will get. It's a blast. And some of the players aren't bad to look at either.

And while Eagles are #1 I do secretly root for the Cincinnati Bengals(or Bungles as he affectionately calls them). Many OSU Beaver players have ended up there, and Carson Palmer is HOT.

5:20am Wake Up Call

I was woken up from a deep sleep at 5:20am by our lovely smoke/CO detector alarm. Both Mr. H2O and I nearly jumped out of our skin wondering "what the hell was that?" And I'm not talkin' the small-type "the battery needs changing" beep. I'm talkin' the big loud high pitched horn that you can hear down the block. The weird thing is, it only rang once, and then stopped. Then we heard the occasional chirp every couple minutes.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it at all. Mr. H2O searched the house, found no fire, no smoke, no nothing. And apparently that was not the correct alarm sound for carbon monoxide either, so we were way puzzled. We were then subjected to endless chirping every minute from different smoke detectors throught the house for the next two hours. After switching various "good" batteries around and still no answer, I now have 2 of the upstairs smoke detectors (and there are 5) disconnected and sitting on the floor.

We are still completely puzzled.

What a night to decide to stay up until 1:30am. I am paying for it today.

Baby Rabies - "When it's more than a fever"

I recently added to my blog roll of my favorite blogs (I'll continually add more) a blog called Baby Rabies. It is a condition that not only the writer ther suffers, but I'm afraid I suffer from it too. My main symptoms seem to be extreme impatience for starting to TTC (that's try to conceive to folks that are not down with the baby crazy verbaige) and complete loss of all practical and rational thought at the mere site of the baby department at Target. Not to mention the tunnel vision I have when I see nothing but pregnant women everywhere I go.

While having this last weekend to myself, when I wasn't working I found myself lurking about on the Nest (www.thenest.com - a great message board site) checking out messages from other women ttc or pregnant and drooling over thier pictures of their nurseries all set up. Then I found myself bookmarking my favortie baby sites on the net for future use, picking out my favorite bedding. Ugh, this is more than just a fever. Mr H20 has no idea how bad it is.

Anyway, Baby Rabies is an extremely entertaining blog and I found that I am not the only one that suffers this sickness. I can totally relate to everything she says. Now I need to read up on her tips on how to infect your husband.

I can't I can't, I can't stand losing...

Mr. H2O and I went and to the Police concert last night in Philadelphia. It was the kick assiest!

I think this was probably the first time that we had gone to a concert where both of us were into the band. It was a great time! We danced, we grooved, we sang... Mr. H2O rather loudly... Got a couple dirty "I came to hear Sting, not some random dude in the crowd" type looks from surrounding people, but he didn't care. It was so much fun.

It was the present for each other's respective birthdays and we had fabulous 13th row seats. And they better have been good seats because we paid a pretty penny for them. But we were aweful close. Close enough to notice that Sting was wearing very tight pants.

Yes, their first album may have been released a year before I was born, but I am totally into them. It brought back memories of being really little and my uncle and aunt were grooving to them back in the day.

We were surrounded by people my parent's age and that was definitely apparent when people were leaving all around us before the first encore. WTF? This is the freakin POLICE people! They haven't toured in in 20 years! Must have been passed the bedtime of all those oldtimers.

It was kind of refreshing though to go to a concert and not feel like the oldest person there which has happened a lot lately. I'm now at the old age of 28 after all.

Police concert... Loved it.

From the mouths of babes...

I've seen all those clever questionnaire things when they ask children simple questions and get their own versions of how they think the world works. My aunt used to do this with my brother and I when we were little kids. She would ask us about God and who he is, and what kind of house God lived in, and what God did all day. And I know we must have given the craziest answers.

So here's another one of those "kids say the darndest things..." but I thought it was really cute. It made my evening.

Why God made Moms -- BRILLIANT Answers given by 2nd grade school children to the following questions!

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He Just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.
Why did God give you your mother & not some other mom?
1. We're related
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.

What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between moms & dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home & dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller & stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
4. Moms have magic; they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside, she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.