Decorating the Tree

This Christmas will definitely be an interesting one. We have been living in our little 2 bedroom basement apartment for about a month now and there just isn't room for a tree, so we are improvising by using some small little fake trees that sit near the fireplace. The kids had fun decorating them tonight. Isaac was more interested in just shoving the ornaments into the tree and didn't get the whole "hanging" concept, but oh well. We had our first snow of the year yesterday and the kids love the snow. They're even more excited that the owners of the home upstairs have set up one of those air filled snowmen in the front yart that have a light inside. Although we won't be in our new home this Christmas, we've realized that it's not where you live or your living circumstances, but the Spirit of Christmas that makes it all worth while.

Black Friday!

So, is it crazy that I got up at 3:45 am Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping? Heck no. I live for the most popular shopping day of the year mainly for the good deals on electronics, but also for the experience. I did pretty well this year. I had my battle plan all laid out the night before. I was on the road by 4:10 and made it to CompUSA at 4:30. They had been open since midnight, so it was pretty mellow. Kind of weird being at CompUSA at 4:30 in the morning. Then it was off to Best Buy. I was probably #400 and something in line. They opened at 5 am and boy was it a mad house. I picked out what I wanted but decided to try something new this year . . . I hid what I was going to buy in a very clever place and left the store. I arrived at Circuit City at 5:15 and found what I needed and again hid it. I got to Target at about 5:30 and stood in line and waited in 25 degree breezy weather for the opening at 6am. When the doors opened, it was a mad rush! People were cheering and running like wild animals to the back of the store. People were losing their shoes and I even saw a 10 year old boy go down amidst the stampeed. I knew exactly what I wanted and was in the checkout line and out of the store by 6:10, a new record! I then circled back around to Big 5 Sporting Goods and then back to Best Buy at about 6:50. I found my stash and stood in a much shorter line than I would have been in otherwise. Then it was back to Circuit City to find my second stash. I was pretty proud of my newly found technique. I got to Staples at 7:30 and the item I wanted was long gone, but luckily I had actually hid my stash Wednesday night in the back of a desk drawer on display. K-mart was the last stop, but everything had been picked over. I pulled into work at about 8:15. It was definitely a fun morning. 7 stores in 3 1/2 hours!

Lilo & Stitch

Last year we purchased a Stitch costume for Isaac taking advantage of the after Halloween costume sales. However neither Brooklyn or Isaac had ever seen Lilo and Stitch. Of course that has changed over the year and it is now one of their favorite movies. When we pulled out the costume this year, Isaac was very excited and of course Brooklyn was pretty jealous, but after we tried to explain to her that Stitch was a boy and Lilo was a girl, she was OK with that. It really was too bad that everyone that saw Isaac mistook him for Eeyore, but Brooklyn was very defensive of her little brother and wouldn't hesitate to correct.


Every year at Novell, the kids are invited to walk around to the offices and go Trick-or-Treating. It sure beats going around at night in the cold and they get tons of candy. We did take them to a few homes in the evening though. Little did we know that Lilo and Stitch would have more fun handing out the candy to those that came to the door than actually going door to door getting candy. Each time the doorbell rang, they would drop whatever they were doing, sprint to the door and get the candy ready to hand out. It was fun to watch them.


Our little girl is almost 4 years old and is already addicted to talking on the phone. I think she's talking to Kaley in this picture. All in all it was a very fun Halloween. Monitoring the post Halloween candy intake is another story, but it sure makes for a good bribe.

Pumpkin Carving 101

I love Halloween, especially the pumpkin carving part. Several years back I bought one of those pumpkin carving kits and have had a ball trying to make some pretty intricate pumpkins faces. The process involves taking the pattern, taping it to the pumpkin surface, using a little poker and transferring the pattern to the pumpkin face with a series of dots. Once the dots have been transferred, you remove the paper and rub white flour into the dots so that they are easier to see. Then with a little tiny saw, you just start cutting out the pieces connecting the dots as you go. Certain pumpkins took longer to do, but it takes roughly a couple hours to do each pumpkin. Below you'll see the pumkins I've done over the last 4 years.

This was the first one I did Halloween 2002. I actually repeated this pumkin pattern in 2003 and entered it into the Ward pumkin carving contest and won. Go Cougars!

Halloween 2003 was all about Elmo. This one was harder than it looks trying to make the fur look good.


How can we forget Halloween 2004. This pair of pumkins was by far the most difficult, but we got a lot of comments as people came to the door that year.


And finally we have Halloween 2005. With the move, we really didn't have any trick-or-treaters come to our home, so I carved this one very quickly and displayed it on the inlaws porch. This one only took me about an hour to carve, but thought it was cool.


I'm sure that our next neighborhood will enjoy my future pumkins. Who knows . . . maybe 10 years down the road I'll be cutting my pumkins with lasers.