Lucy the mutt

I talk about my dog Lucy but not many people have met her. She is suspected to be a mix of terrier and catahoula leopard dog. The most common adjective from people that have spent more than 10 minutes with her is crazy/insane. My Sister, the Vet, has even apologized for encouraging me to adopt her. ...she is suppose to love all animals by nature! Anyway, I was organizing pictures today and ran across a couple I took this fall. You can see how I was duped into adopting her by the big brown eyes and quirky look.

Time to give Thanks

Ok, I am a little late on this post but things have been distracting me around here. This was the highlight of Thanksgiving. It was funny and cute and not quite right on the flavor enough to be enjoyed as pumpkin pie should. ...but it was cute, remember?

My Christmas Present

Today my favorite Christmas present has been having both parents in places where they are safe, warm and being taken care of better than I could do. If you have been on Facebook over the past couple of weeks, you may have seen a status report on the craziness that hit my family in the last little bit. The craziness has subsided and now my Mom has a new home at Homewood Assisted Living and my Dad is in a rehabilitation center for monitoring and physical therapy for his heart attack. He should be leaving in a few days and is doing great given a triple bypass. For the past two days I have not had to dash around town to 10 different places to take care of things. The calmer days of just being able to visit have been a welcome change.

Architecture Never Tasted So Sweet

If you want to see the full story, head on over to Perspective Architecture's blog.

Oh the places we have been

We have been all over town it seems of late. Here are a few pictures of what we have been up to...

picking up coffee at Javerde and letting John express his Halloween creativity

pumpkin contest at Ivan Allen

dog house dinner (ok so this one was at home and he was in the dog house to get away from the smokey fire pit)

Art Walk

Tonight we went on an art walk at John's school. There were a couple of areas where John's art work popped up so we made a point of seeing those first. There was a whole wall of military themed drawings which made me feel better about John's picture of a tank. It was their project for Veteran's Day. I was a little confused on why he was drawing tanks before...now I know. You may recognize the tank drawing from the post about John's art in my office.

The other art piece he had was really a report about animals and their habitats. His report was longer than the paper allowed for writing so he used one piece of paper for the report and one for the drawing. They had the report side on display with the drawing on the back side. As you can see, the handwriting is REALLY good for a first grader...in my opinion anyway. This is said by a left handed person that received "C"s in handwriting throughout elementary school.

We then checked out some of the other pieces on display from the other classes. We ended the evening with some music in the gym by older kids. I am sure the piece of paper they gave us at the beginning of the tour told me where they were from but I had recycled the paper by then. Anyway, the cookies and punch sugar rush made the music more than bearable. We listened to a few songs and then headed out for dinner.

Halloween

Good googly moogly yesterday was packed with activities. Halloween. John's 7th birthday. Birthday party.

First up was the birthday party and pre-prep. We rented the Community Building at New Harvest Park for the day which was great! I arrived in the morning and got everything set up before the party. Clay (John's Dad) picked up the balloons and ice and helped hang the pinata. We had snacks and activities for everyone. It was fun.

I do want to mention the pinata attack specifically. We first started the kids out blindfolded with 2 swings each but that resulted in no damage. Then we went to 5 swings each. Then 2 swings no blindfold then I think we wound up with 5 swings with no blindfold and it finally broke. No one was hurt, that part was amazing.

After the party it was time to head home for trick or treating. It was John's first trick or treating year in my neighborhood and he thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a couple of Star Wars battles when we ran into Darth Sidius along the way but no lasting damage to either character. John was very disappointed when I stopped his constant candy eating spree around the loop and said he had to eat dinner. After we got home and I got some moderately nutritious food in him, he helped hand out candy to the remaining trick or treaters.

It was a good day but a long day. We even got a nod from the "cool" neighbors for being the best decorated house on the street. That was like the cherry on top. The decorations are all down now and the house is back to normal from the outside. Halloween is fun.