Halloween and Power Tools

Well, today was Halloween. Nate was Spider-man (The Spider-Man from this summer, where he revealed his secret identity due to the Superhuman Registration Act, since he didn't have a mask and revealed his face to everybody).



Lynn and Nate carved their pumpkins this afternoon. I got home and didn't have much time to do mine, so I got out the jig saw that my inlaws had given me and whipped me up a pretty good one in about 15 minutes. I say it doesn't look half bad...


If you look at the above picture, starting from the left, it is Nate's pumpkin, Lynn's pumpkin and my pumpkin. I only have one candle in mine so it isn't lighted up as well as the others.... Here's a lighted pic (I didn't clean out all the seeds..):


My sister showed up about 6:30 and we went around to some of the houses. Nate was a lot better then I thought, it would take 2 or 3 pieces of candy and then say "thanks", as he was walking away. Everybody thought he was cute.

Here's a close up of Nate's Pumpkin:


Later,

End of the weekend.

Well, My sister had to change up her costume last night again. She didn't like the mask so decided to become another type of witch. Kind of scary. I tried to concoct for her a corn starch/corn syrup mix, and it didn't quite work, so she used the 99 cent stuff from Wal*Mart. The stuff kind of irritated her skin though..

Here's the new costume:

Nate didn't think much of her to start with by finally warmed up to the fact that her skin was green and that she had a big nose, and that she didn't look to have had combed her hair forever.

Nate also got to ride the combine on Saturday;

Dad said it is one of his best years with soybeans. That is good to hear.

Lastly, Nate was taken to the Truman Homecoming parade on Saturday morning. He loved it. We went to see my nephew, Matthew, play the drum and march. He's the one playing the bass drum. Apparently he plays another type of drum, but someone renigged on the bass so he had to do it...



That is our weekend in the nutshell. Lynn was happy to see us back, she apparently had a very busy weekend so I will have to let her tell you about it.

another thing of note, my sister and dad were on the local tv station, KTVO, with the haunted house. Seems it is unique to have a haunted Blacksmith's shop out there or something. Oh well. Heard lots of stories about the people that were helping. Seems they were ne'er-do-wells, ran their own house in Lancaster for the longest time but were helping out with this one. Interesting. It will go again on Halloween.

Later,

Scary Fairy

Well, today I drove up with Nate to my parent's farm with Nate. Giving Lynn a much needed break to allow her to do what she wants.

Tonight and tomorrow night, my family is participating in a haunted house up at Queen City. Actually it is a Haunted Blacksmith's shop (the event is being held to raise money for the actual blacksmith shop). The blacksmith shop, Lauer Blacksmith shop, was opened in the 1880's and was in operation up into the 1950's. My parent's are part of an organization, the QC Pioneers, which holds the annual fair and raises money and awareness of QC heritage. The blacksmith shop is one of their pride and joys....

So I mention all this to say, that my sister participated as a "ghoul" in the haunted Blacksmith shop. She's a scary fairy. I've included a picture below. If the dress looks familiar, it's the bridesmaid dress that she wore to our wedding. At least she's getting some use out of it.....



Nate didn't think much of seeing her in costume. Oh well....

In other news, Nate got his Overalls finally. I put him in them and let him wear them the rest of the night. He looks pretty cute in them if I can say so....



Well, I am just going to relax back at the parent's house till they get back.

One thing I am doing is watching my last ebay auction for the week. It's a Garfield the Cat and Odie Soap Dispenser and ToothBrush holder. I thought I would just throw it on there for 99 cents to get rid of it, but it has been bid up to $10.75 right now.. Thing is, It is used (for 4 years) and it's not in that great of condition. I'll never understand collectors I guess (But I guess I was not much better back in the day either).

Gotta go relax...

Later,

Bowled Over, Again!

Well, yesterday was our "TEam day away" at work. I bowled two games, got a 115 and 127. One of my better scores.

Nate and I are heading out tomorrow to my parents. We'll be going up to Kirksville and seeing Gma and Gpa. should be fun.

I finished up 5 auctions today on ebay and netted about $120. Pretty good. It was a bunch of my old Star Wars toys that were clogging up the store room. Nice to see the place getting a little more open.

Nothing much else to say. Nate will probably get to ride the combine this weekend, should be fun for him.

Later,

Back to work!

Well, I'm officially back to work now. Not much going on though. Kind of bored. HOpefully next week it will be better. Tomorrow we have our "Team Day Away". Not much is planned with it just yet. We'll go bowling though. Should be fun. Also will get off early tomorrow because of it. We'll see.

Nate and I went to Kohl's to get me some pants. I don't have any none business pants that are nice looking. I have two Eddie Bauer jeans that I've had for two years, getting holes and such. Got some cargo pants tonight that will last me a while.

Not much else new. Changed out the water intake valve in the dishwasher again last night. Looks like some black gunk in it. don't know where it came from? I will have to keep an eye out for that. Probably need to get a plumber in to change out the shut off valve to the dishwasher. It didn't seem to want to work either. Maybe they could install Lynn's new faucet also.......

Well, I need to be going. It's Nate's bedtime...
Later,

It's Over!

My vacation is over as of tomorrow. It's been good. Nice to stay home and not run all over the country side. It was good to be with Nate all that time also.

Today, we just stayed around home. I got to go to Schnucks with the fam to do the week's shopping. All went well. Nate didn't get a cookie though since he didn't listen to us and ran straight to the cookie place. Lynn says the cookies are bad on Sunday's anyways. They are cooked fresh tomorrow. That is better.

Don't have too busy of a week planned for work. Wednesday we have our "Team Day Away". I think we are going bowling, so I hope I do a little bit better then I did last night.

Gotta Go!
later,

Bowled Over!

Well, today was the last grand day of Yard Saleing. At least that is what my sister said. We all left the house at 8 to check it out and got a few things. One of the things we got Nate was a bowling set. The "Silly 6 pins". We got them home and Nate loved taking the ball and knocking them down. Mr. Dave suggested to try to take Nate over to the real bowling alley and bowl. So we did.

I never knew that kids can bowl with a bowling ramp.... Nate and Lynn shared a player and bowled together. They got around 78 points in the 10 frames. Lynn bowled one frame herself and I let Nate bowl a couple of mine also. About the 3rd frame, they started cosmic bowling (black lights and disco balls). My orange ball turned a weird pink hue. I had to switch it out for a blue marbelized one.

MY sister got the following pics on her camera phone. Sorry for the quality, those things aren't meant to really take pics in the dark of fast moving objects, but it gives you an idea of how Nate bowled tonight....





Later,

Museum for Dogs, Not 2 year olds

Today, not having much of any other option, My sister and I took Nate over to the Dog Museum in Queeny Park. It is actually the The American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog. Not a good place for a 2 year old, but it was good for him to run around in. He didn't exactly treat it as a reverent place that it was. also, we were disappointed to not see many references to Golden Retrievers there, since we have one ourselves. I thought it would be more kid friendly, but it was mostly art work that featured dogs, paintings, sculptures and such.


Nate tries to go in a door he isn't supposed to go in...


Dog Statues.


Dogs on a couch. This was a smaller sculpture, about 18 inches across. Kind of different. You can spot Nate in the background.

Afterwards, we went to the 29.99 shoe store. Didn't find much there either.

Last night we went out shopping for a new Dishwasher, but didn't really come up with anything. I need to have someone check to see how difficult it is to get the current one out with the laminate floor in there, so I will know exactly what we are looking at to put a new one back in. Secondarily, that night, we went to Sport's Authority and I picked up some slip-on shoes for wearing at the Y in the locker room. The latest staph infection scare has me a little worried about what kind of bugs I may be picking up.

Well, Nate is up so I better go check on him,

later,

Staying at Home.

We all just hung out at home today. Around 11 we started to rearrange the back room. It seems to have a lot more room now, and we'll be able to get to the storage areas a little better also.

I took Nate outside this afternoon, but it started to sprinkle so I brought him back in. Nothing too big with that.

Nothing much else to say. No new pictures of Nate either... Oh well.

Later,

(T)rainy day

Nate and I headed down the the Museum of Transportation. We actually spent 45 minutes in Wal-Mart trying to catch Mr. Dave, but he was in a "Wal-mart" meeting. I don't know if any of you have ever seen one of these, but there kind of different. They do cheers and clap and yell (Give me a W, an A, an L ...., Who's walmart is it.. It's our walmart). And I thought when I worked for the book company doing stretches in the morning was asinine....

Well, here's the pictures.


Here's Nate in front of an engine. Never quite figure out how small he is and how BIG those things are until you get him into perspective...


He actually posed for me.. I can't believe it...


Here he is walking down a tanker. It was pretty cool how they had some things set up. We got to go up into the cab of another engine and he sat in the conductors chair...


Again, another picture of Nate just walking into the sunset.


The museum had a children's area that Nate got to play in. They had huge boxes of toy Thomas and Brio trains. He had a blast pushing them around the track.

The lady in the "Creation Station" as it was called, was quite talkative to me. Insisted that I read this book on being a parent. Didn't catch the name of it though. Our friend Sally was there coincidentally. I will have to thank her for leaving me alone with this gal...

Later,

My dreams are missing me....

I can't sleep.... I was woke up at 2:30 by Jackson milling around in the kitchen. We caught him a couple of weeks ago getting into some chicken bones that were left on the counter and I thought that he might be into the brats that were left out (Lynn assured me they were put back into the fridge). Otherwise, can't sleep.. I think I am anticipating getting up at 5 to go to the Y too much. Could happen.

I took Nate to the Zoo yesterday. He had a blast. We only got to see about 7 animals up close. I let him control the day and he decided to walk up near the entrance where there were not any animals. He got to ride on the train, also. That made his day. got yelled at by the grumpy conductor though cause he wouldn't sit down when the train wanted to start. guess I can't blame them, they work with rowdy kids all day long. We only stayed about 2 hours and then left. Came back home for lunch and then I took him to the Mills Mall and let him play with the Thomas Table in the toy store.

My sister came by that Night and we got to meet Wilson, her new pot belly pig. It's a squealy thing. Nate didn't think much of it. I think he warmed up a little bit to it near the end, but I'm not putting down any money yet. It's going to take a lot of work for that pig to calm down and I don't know if we'll feel comfortable with Nate being around it for quite some time....

In other news, some nights, Lynn will put leggings on Nate instead of pajama pants to keep him warm. Sunday night, I was put in charge of bedtime and I put his leggings on him. Don't think I did it right, because as you can see in the picture. Looks like he is wearing ankle warmers.... Oh well.

Don't know why can't sleep. I did go to the eye doctor today and got exam for new prescription. Got dilated which gave me a headache and blurred the vision big time. Also got the air puff glaucoma test. My eyes have taken quite the abuse today. Chose new frames that have the memory metal feature. Thought that would be good for an over active 2 year old in the house. The other day, Nate took my older glasses, one ear piece in each hand, and bent them out to a straight line. They don't quite fit the same as they used to, but they are my old glasses, so isn't too big a deal.

Going to the Transportation Museum today, hope to get more pictures to share with you all then what I got for the Zoo. It's hard to get pictures of a 2 year old....

Later,

Got the following done today:

• Breakfast at IHOP
  
  


• Got the coil spring and heating element recalls fixed on
  the Dodge.
  
  


• Posted book on half.com.
  


• Raked the yard on Tuesday for Wednesday pickup. Need to
  bundle the limbs also. Also, cut some limbs off the offending branch. .
  
  


• went to Schnucks for weekly grocery shopping tomorrow.
  
  

Also got my haircut today. did the Y and haircut all in 1 and a 1/2 hours. Looking to going to zoo tomorrow, if it don't rain too much in the morning....

Later,

Stuck in the Gutter

Today, not much really happened to stupendous. I cooked some Chicken Masala for lunch to surprise Lynn when she came back from church. She posted a recipe last week, so I thought I would post this one also:

CHICKEN CURRY (MURGH MASALA)

8 pieces chicken, skinless
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 c. yogurt
1 tsp. coriander powder
2 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. cumin powder
2 finely cut tomatoes
Salt and green pepper to taste
Parsley to garnish

Puree onions, garlic and ginger together. In a large skillet add 1 spoon oil and brown the pureed onion paste. Stir for 8 to 10 minutes on medium fire. Now add the chicken and cover it with tomatoes, yogurt, salt, pepper and the spices. Cover the skillet and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Stir the chicken for all the spices to blend in. Cover and let it simmer on low fire for further 10 minutes. Now serve hot and garnish with parsley (fresh). Serve with white rice and garden salad.

Serves 6-8.

It really didn't turn out so well, so I wouldn't try it if I was you. Sorry to waste the bandwidth. I like the Curry Beef recipe I cooked once and had found in a Taste of Home, but I have no idea where that recipe went. Guess wouldn't be too hard to Google it...

After lunch, Nate went down for the afternoon and I went over to the Y. Again, nothing too eventful.

Got home and Lynn was reading a book so I decided to putter around in the backyard. We have a big white ash tree that is growing all over the place, so I trimmed a couple of limbs and then cleaned out the gutter on the garage. Lynn came out at that time and we decided to tackle the house gutters.

I realize, we probably need new gutters. Not fun. Oh well. We got one quarter of the house done.

Lynn made a delicious Pork Roast dinner and Nate and I ate it right up. She had to leave because of a friend's family emergency (gal needs girl time), so Nate and I were left alone. We took a walk and passed by our friend the Urbans'. They had come back from a camping trip and they had caught a frog. Nate would have nothing to do with it.

I guess now is a time to comment again about the neighboring street. There is like 7 houses in a row that have yappy, barking dogs. I feel bad walking down there with Jackson cause all those dogs come to the windows/fences and just bark at us and you can hear all the owners yelling at the dogs. Also feel the daggers in my back from the stares. sheesh. Control you dog....

After we got back, Nate and I just relaxed. I caught the end of Extreme Home Makeover and just have to make a comment at the teen girl's reaction to the "new house". Is it really necessary to scream at the top of your lungs and fall down at every instance? Not really sure what was up with that, maybe a culture thing.

Agenda for the week? I have the next week off so I am hoping that we as a family or just Nate and I can get some of the following accomplished:

• Go to the Zoo, and ride the train.
  
• Nate and I will be going to the Museum of Transportation They have lots of Trains.
  
• On Thursday, I have the possibility of riding a semi with my Father in Law.
  
• Bike ride over in St. Charles along the Katy Trail OR drive out to Augusta area or Washington and see leaves/ride trail out there. Depends on how Nate reacts to riding in the trailer, it's been about 2 months since I got him in there last.
  
• Breakfast at IHOP
  
• Lynn and I need to get eye examinations/new glasses, possibly contacts for me.
  
• Get the coil spring and heating element recalls fixed on the Dodge.
  
• Clean up and organize the rest of the downstairs "rec room".
  
• Get some eBay auctions ready to go. I found a box of Star Wars figures that are still on the card which I need to get rid of. I got them all organized yesterday and will start posting them for $10 apiece. Think they may easily go for $20. maybe. I have some loose ones I need to organize and post also.
  
• One the above note, I need to take some of our abundance of books and post them on half.com. It's free to post, you just pay a final value fee. I posted 17 books last week, but only sold 6 today. Not too bad, they totaled over $15 in all in sales. Just thought I would be better to post them all on Half so they would all eventually get boughten up.
  
• Rake the yard on Tuesday for Wednesday pickup. Need to bundle the limbs also.
  
• Take Nate too see my sister's new Pot Bellied Pig. He's named Wilson, after my grandfather.
  
• Going to Schnucks for weekly grocery shopping tomorrow.
  
• Take whole family to Y and go swimming in the indoor pool. Nate is kind of afraid of the water, but in August, he seemed to warm up to it a little bit more, so I'm hoping that we can all go again and keep him exposed. Other option is I need to sign him up for lessons on Saturday morning and Give Lynn a break.
  
• Need a Pizza Out night, or even better, we need to check out that Great American Pizza place for lunch or something. But then again, Nate and I had Cici's on Thursday (cost me $2.99 for a buffet, he was free).
  
• Transformers: the movie comes out on Tuesday. Thought I would try to get it out of the RedBox at McDonald's and watch it for once. Haven't seen any really good "new" movies or Summer blockbusters this summer (except the Bourne movie and I really didn't appreciate it as much).
  

Well, I will stop boring you with my plans, but I will keep you all updated as the week progresses.....

Later,

Pumpkin Hunting

This morning we all headed out to Theiss Farms to get our pumpkins. It was fun. they have a big play area made of lots of hay they kids can play in, but you have to pay. We didn't go though. Maybe sometime this week I can take Nate back. WE got our pumpkins so I thought I would share. I've uploaded the pictures to Flickr! which used to be Yahoo! Photo, but they switched it over, so I hope they all load okay for you all...

We also stopped off at the MH Fire District headquarters for an Open House. They had hot dogs and chili so we had Lunch taken care of. Pretty cool. I took a picture of Nate in an old time fire truck. Pretty cool.

We've mostly just be vegging out today now. Maybe later things may pick up again.

I just realized today that my camera had been set to "Indoors" for the quality. You'll notice that a couple of pictures below are kind of bluish in color. That is why. I turned it back to the "auto" feature on the camera and it looks like the other two pictures came out a LOT better. I hope to get lots of pictures this weekend. Lynn was hoping for a family pic today, but Nate didn't really want to cooperate. Two year olds can't sit still, I guess....









Later,

Start of the Vey-K

Well, I am officially on Vacation for a week. Won't be going anywhere. I will be staying around home. Will be taking care of Nate a lot though. I have him exclusively on Wednesday, so I will have an extra special day planned for him. Not much else going on. Taking the Dodge to get it's recalls taken care of Monday morning.

Tomorrow we are going to the pumpkin patch with Nate and then going to our local fire district's fire house. they are having an open house so it will be cool to show Nate some of the stuff there. Maybe he'll get to sit in a fire truck!

Well, I need to get to Bed. Gotta get up early for the Y.

Life with a little Grace

Tonight, I tried out a new Bible Study that is being offered at a church nearby our house, Grace church of St. Louis. The study is for Men only and is called Dinner & the Word. Turned out there was no dinner, because of a logistical mistake, but I had had a snack before hand.

I was a good group. Everybody is older then me, mostly in their 40s and 60s. Good group of men though. They personify the Christian Brotherhood. I told Lynn that I am quite excited to get into this group. It just seemed with other groups I got in with, it was kind of sterile and the people in the group just seemed a little too perfect. These guys shared real issues. Couple of them are divorced, but are seeking God's will in their life. I was humbled by them. I hope that by attending study with them, I can be challenged in my Christian walk.

This is every other week also, so it isn't a HUGE time commitment, but I will need to arrange with Lynn cause I think it may conflict with her girl's night out in the future.

IN other news, I'm starting vacation tomorrow, for one day, and I have the whole next week off. Lynn has already made a list of things to get done (suprisingly, it isn't a honey do list), it's things she wants to get done herself, so I seem myself as entertaining Nate for most of the days. I have a few ideas we can do, Zoo, Transportation Museum and such. He'll love it.

One of our items is rearranging the basement to be more kid friendly for Nate, come Winter he'll need a more open play area, which the basement can easily accomodate (blogger said I misspelled that... strange).

I've got my own thoughts. I need to clean the gutter on the garage and check out the ones on the back of the house. May take off the protective coverings, their a pain and I don't think they work that great anyways. At least in the front, easier to hang the Christmas lists. Heck, maybe I'll just hang the Christmas lights now. It's still 60 degrees. Lynn won't go for that though. Guy in the entrance to the subdivision has lights up already, and turned on. Thought they may be Halloween lights, but they aren't orange......

Well, need to start getting ready for tomorrow. I need to head to the Dodge Dealership and talk to them about a couple of recalls on the van. Today, the airbag light is staying on and also the heater elements in the seats can cause a fire. We've gotten notices on both in the past, just never bothered to get them fixed. Thinking now just need to stick it to them while we can, since they provided us with such a quality product... kidding....

Later,

Uneventful week

Not much happened this week. I got paid a bonus from work on Wednesday, so that was good. That night I went with a couple of guys to eat out at Sweet Tomatoes and went to watch the movie The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx.

Sweet Tomatoes was an interesting restaurant. Pretty much a salad Bar Buffet type place. Lots of soups and all. Mark liked the Green Tea Mouse. It was slightly green. I tried two or three different soups, found a hair in my Cheesey Ham though. Kind of grossed me out. Altogether it was a good place. Bit pricey for what it is, but health nuts would go for that kind of stuff, so they can afford to charge.

The movie was pretty good too. Hit a little too close to home with the reality and the violence though. Basically it is about a terrorist attack in Saudia Arabia. Some scenes were a little disturbing with parrallels to real life events, but it showed that there is evil out there and what they will want to do to us. Frightning.

Well, Nate wants me to read to him.

Later,

Stubburn as a Mule

Well, we went up to my parents this weekend for my grandfather's Auction. It was a little disappointing. A lot of stuff went in big lots for a $1. Not what we really wanted, but given the circumstances, it was what we had to live with. I got the following:

1. An Oliver Toy Tractor for Nate
   
2. Several other smaller toy tractors.
   
3. A junky Massey Fergusson tractor for Nate.
   
4. A plow still in the box (made by Ertl).
   
5. Some Hatchets and a meat tendorizor.
   
6. pictures of the "Dogs Playing Poker" by Coolidge
   
7. A bird toy hand made by Grandpa.

It was a good day to get to see the relatives, even the ones I wasn't supposed to be talking to, I tried being cordial.

One of the biggest news items was that my parent's got back the Kawasaki Mule. Nate just loves that thing. We rode around on it a lot on Sunday, and he couldn't get his fill. He was happy though. I tried to ride the 4 wheeler with him, but it died unexpectedly and I had to push it back to barn. Ugh.

On the way up, we stopped off at Hannibal. I took the following picture of Nate and Mr. Dave in the Tom Sawyer picture thing:


Not much else to say. Hope everybody is haveing a good day.

Later,