Extraspecialphotostravaganza!!!!

I have finally uploaded photos and I'm ready to share them.

Thank you for your patience.

Here are my children at Halloween. You may recall I made their costumes from scratch which really isn't that impressive but when you're sewing under bright lights with polar fleece there's a lot of heat involved. So the skill factor was negligible, but the sweat factor was high.

And sewing with faux fur? Skip it if you can.

So here's my little garden gnome in the school parade. Everyone who saw him correctly identified his costume, except for one little girl. As we were leaving she said "bye-bye little Santa!"

And here's the Ninja Turtle. I should have taken a picture of the back of the shell, that was the cool part!

Here's the Ninja getting ready to Trick-or-Treat. He'd strapped his Monkey leash onto his back and was riding Griffin's pony with his treat bucket on his head. Kids are weird.

Grandma came and handed out candy while my husband and I took the kids around. I dressed Binnie up as a turtle too. I'm not sure from this picture who was less excited to be trick-or-treating, Binnie or Griffin?

And this is funny. Cooper has developed a new picture-taking face. During a recent fishing trip it cropped up for the first time.....

And now I catch him practicing it in the mirror. And all pictures have the same face.

I think he's smirking!

- H

Back in the saddle again...except for one thing

I'm happy to report that Cooper is on the mend and Griffin managed to skate along the edge of H1N1 without taking a full Gaynor. What everyone has said about it being mild and not taking forever to run its course is true.

I had in my mind all the horror stories of the otherwise healthy children here who died of H1N1, so I was armed for battle when it showed up. If that's what it indeed was, because they are no longer actually testing for it.

That sounds kind of stupid, doesn't it? That they aren't really testing for that specific virus anymore. Don't you think the CDC would want to know the exact epidemiology of a viral outbreak? I'm just going to stop thinking about it, otherwise I'll start thinking of other weird things like why the Republican party is against gun control and abortion rights at the same time. Or why the Democratic party....yeah, you get my point.

So the good news is our sassmouth, surly three-year-old is back to being sassy and surly without the added benefit of dark circles under his eyes and a cough that rattled our windows.

I also finally finished some new creations for my Etsy shop that have been rattling around in my head for what feels like months. They can be seen in my sidebar once again.

Tomorrow morning I have to return to my dentist's office whereby I will let them tilt me upside down for an hour while they install a permanent crown. That's right, folks, I am officially old. I never knew what a crown was. It was one of those things old people got, like partials. I still don't know what a partial is, knock on wood. My grandma had two teeth that used to pop out at night. Maybe it's that?

Anyway, I broke a tooth on a soft turkey sandwich a few weeks ago and spent two hours in a chair two weeks ago while they drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled. Since then I've had consistent tooth pain and odd tastes of metal in my mouth.

I just love dental work. Dentists. Sadists. Wish me luck.

- H

Hello, Big Piggie

Cooper crawled into bed with us sometime around midnight last night. I vaguely remember it, I think I looked at the clock and thought it was a little early for him to come looking for us, and then I fell asleep again and didn't think about it unless I thought about it in my dreams.

And then I woke up at 5:00. My husband was gone; Cooper was still hogging the center part of the bed.

I knew it. In a heartbeat, I knew what we were in for.

He was breathing like he'd just run a marathon.

Puff puff puff puff. Instead of the normal sleepy puff......puff.....puff......

I reached out and touched his arm, but it wasn't warm so I convinced myself I was imagining it. He was fitful for the next hour or so while we dozed, and then he wanted to get up at 5:55.

Here's what you don't want to hear at 5:55 a.m.:

"Mommy, my head hurts."

Ah yes. The headache. The fever of 102 when I finally found the thermometer. The runny nose and bad cough.

The swine has arrived.

Our pediatrician called tonight and is concerned about Cooper's history of wheezing, so she called in a prescription for Tamiflu. I told her to wait for my next call because his brother insists on sharing everything. Things like straws and food and cups and stuff. Toothbrushes. You know, the great kind of sharing that helps flu move around freely.

I'd just spent what felt like hours on the internet tracking down the vaccines and had planned on spending Sunday morning in a line at a county fairgrounds in Troy, Missouri, waiting on line for the kids to get their shots. It looks like that won't be necessary now.

Oh, and you know the coolest part?

My throat hurts.

- H

Hey Facebook, read this

I don't do a whole lot of Facebooking. I have to admit, I don't really understand a lot of it. The weird games, the "quizzes" you take that really just direct you in an endless loop of B.S. in an attempt for you to give them your social security number and credit card information.

I like the idea of Facebook. A place where you can keep in touch with your friends. Cool.

The only problem is that most of these people aren't my friends. They're my "friends." Random people I knew twenty years ago. People who went to high school with my brothers and remember my last name. Some people I work with or used to work with.

I got so irritated with Facebook's constant updating me on the updates of my "friends" that I turned off all of my notifications so I wouldn't get their emails. The only problem with that is that all of my friends use Facebook to keep the rest of us posted on their lives. And I miss out. Then I had to inactivate my account altogether in June but that's a whole other story for another day.

So I would like to suggest that Facebook add some sort of user tool that lets me flag people who are really my friends, and then just send me updates when they post something. I know, I know. Someone's going to say "hey check it - that tool already exists." But who can figure it out? That site is confusing to me.

So yeah, if you know of such a tool, help a sister out and let me know.

- H

School pictures

I think they're cute. I realize I'm biased. They sprung from my womb, after all. The older one is going through a Bad Phase which includes much screaming and fit-throwing. I'm having a deja vu.

Later in the week I'll amaze with stunning photos from our Halloween festivities.

- H