Halloween

Halloween! After coming home that Friday to find a vehicular behemoth in the frontyard and a stove in the garage that we thought was getting installed that day, the candy haul began:

Jake was a bunny and got mistaken for a girl a few of times:

Abby was a pumpkin:

And Annika was Violet Incredible:

The night before we carved pumpkins. The girls were considerably different in their gusto for pumpkin guts. Annika touched them a little bit, but Abby got elbow deep:

The finished products were a cat and a happy face:

We stopped my Grandpa and Grandma Dekker's church to do some trunk-or-treating first, and then hit our neighborhood. The girls toughed it out for a while, but didn't dare go to the "scary house" that was down the street from ours. They each came away with quite a bit of goodies.

Below is the behemoth I mentioned. The main underground power line in our neighborhood is getting replaced, which is a good thing, but we were the lucky ones that got this 20,000 pound lawn ornament:

This thing drilled a horizontal hole for new power line that extended more than 600 feet underground. It left nice ruts in the lawn, too, but those will be fixed eventually. And the next day Dad and I installed the stove, so we're fully functioning in the kitchen again. Unceremoniously, I think broccoli casserole was the first thing cooked in the new oven - oh, but we may have had cinnamon rolls first, to the girls' delight.

Electronic Tattling and Other Things

When we neglect our blog so severely I always feel like our first returning post should be stellar, so I apologize if this isn't.

Lisa's at the CEA convention in South Bend for a couple days, so I'm home with the kids. I didn't have to head to Ferris today (a Thursday), which was convenient enough. Tomorrow will involve more babysitters, though.

The other day I was home with Jake and Annika, and I was upstairs while the two of them were occupied on the main floor, albeit a bit too quiet. I was busy putting together a new bookshelf though, so I didn't go check them out. Later on I came down and Annika immediately reported that Jake had been messing with our computer. He really enjoys getting on the chair and pressing buttons on the keyboard. The worst part is the fact that our keyboard has a button that automatically puts the computer in sleep mode, but it registers each press of that button, so it has to go through the wake-up-go-to-sleep cycle for every button press. Now, Annika didn't bother to come get me while Jake was on the computer, but rather grabbed my cell phone, which was sitting by the computer, and instead documented Jake's activities with the phone. So, I now have shots of Jake playing with a calculator, pushing the sleep button, pushing other buttons, and even shots of the screen showing the results of Jake's button pushes, like a string of typing in a Word file that was open. No great damage was done, but Annika certainly can be a character.

If anyone wants to rake leaves, we have plenty.

We're still without an oven, since our old one was a built-in, and the most basic replacement would be around $800 (which is dumb, considering how cheap a basic freestanding range is). I was going to cut out a spot where our old one was, but enough issues arose that I decided not to go after that myself. So, someone came and checked it out today and will give us an estimate on that tomorrow. We already bought a basic freestanding range from Sears - a discontinued basic model with a ding or two, but it was only $160! Never used! Unfortunately, it's white, which should go awesomely with our black dishwasher and bisque fridge. Oh well - maybe I'll find buried treasure in the backyard soon and we'll redo the whole kitchen.

Well, time to finish my night - nothing but the World Series and probably a fine brew await me.

Raising Them Irish

It figures that after all the blog neglect we would have two posts in one day (so don't miss the one below). Along with all the busy stuff, we went to South Bend last Saturday - it was gameday! We made it on campus, saw the band, the golden dome, the basilica, and our old favorite Americanized Mexican restaurant, Hacienda. We spent the day with our friends Joel and Julie and their daughter Natalie. Julie found some kid-sized ND football jerseys at TJ Maxx, so all of the girls were suitably decked out for gameday. After campus, Jake took a good nap, ND beat Stanford and we drank homebrew. Yay! Here are the girls:

Guilt

So, I'm feeling rather guilty because ever since school started we've done a pretty lousy job of keeping up on our blog. It's not that interesting things haven't happened -- we just haven't had time to write about them!
One of the most life altering items recently has been the demise of our oven. On Sunday it decided that it didn't want to shut off anymore or stop heating up. We've had to keep the circuit breaker off in order to keep it from burning down the house. The repair man came this morning and basically told Mike that it wasn't worth the money it would take to repair it (bye bye $60 for the wonderful news delivered after looking at the oven for a whole 2 minutes). So, now we have to decide what to do since we don't actually like the oven placement on our kitchen and would prefer not to spend ridiculous amounts of money to replace it when we hope to move it someday anyway. We also have to figure out when in the world we have time to go shopping for a new one! I guess for now we keep grilling and having crock pot meals -- I'll be very thankful to have my stovetop and oven back!
In other news....Annika is loving second grade and has an absolutely wonderful teacher. She's reading up a storm and finally starting to actually learn her math facts! Abby is enjoying Pre-K again and is looking forward to a field trip tomorrow and one next week Friday (which I get to go on too!). She's really much more grown up this year in there. It's fun to see! Jake is a busy, busy, busy boy! He's into everything! He's trying to say more and more words and spends lots of time pointing to things and jabbering at us with great expression trying to get us to come/go/move or in someway do what he wants us to do! Mike and I are both very busy with work (too busy!) but we both are thankful for our jobs and the satisfaction we get from them. Overall, life is moving fast, but we are feeling very blessed for our family, friends, jobs, home, and countless other gifts from God!

Things Annika Will Take For Granted Someday...

The End is Near!!!

This past week I have been struggling with the reality that the end of summer is upon us. I have spent the last several days getting my classroom set up and working on school paperwork and scheduling. While it's good to be back and get excited about seeing my students there are also a feelings of panic (I'll never get it all ready in time), regret (I wish we'd spent more days at the beach), excitement (like when Annika got her letter in the mail telling her what class she was in!), acceptance (thus begins another new season in our lives), stress (trying to cope with being a mom, wife, teacher, friend, etc.), and thankfulness (that I have been blessed with so much that I actually have these things to worry about, be excited about, panic about...). Next week brings intense craziness as Mike returns to Ferris to start his pre-semester meetings and I return to Millbrook for in-service days. Then, on September 2nd, we're off!! The new routine can officially begin! I think overall we're ready for some routine, but I sure will miss the nonconformity of summer days!

Vacation Part Two: Columbus

Lisa's off to San Antonio, so I'm doing part two. We spent three days and two nights in Columbus, staying at Nick and Beth's. Here are the highlights:

The girls and Uncle Nick do "a funny one" on the front porch:

A big highlight for the girls (OK, and me too) both here and at Greg and Katelyn's in Lexington was playing Wii. Mostly, they played Mario Kart (I played LEGO Star Wars), and both of them improved their skills considerably over the week.


We spent one day at the Columbus Zoo. Nick came with us. We were very impressed, as the layout of the zoo and the animal exhibits are very well done. It was good fun. Here Jake points at the black rhino and says "Kitty!":

The girls get close to the penguins:

Lisa and Jake on the boat ride through the Pacific Islands loop of the zoo:

Abby and one of the many gorillas:

Other zoo highlights: the manatees, a roaring lion, elephants, Chinese food for lunch (so much nicer than a cruddy old hot dog again), and great weather for the whole day.

We also met the newest member of the Dekker family while we there. Here the girls hold their new cousin:


And here's probably the best picture we could get of the four Dekker grandkids (to be outdated in about two months), taken at the park whose name I can't think of:

Overall, it was a great trip - we hit North Market, and Lisa went to Trader Joe's for the first time too. The ride home was relatively smooth, too - or, as much as it can be with kids this age. The highlight on the way home was stopping at a rest area that was highly populated with cats.

Now Abby's begging for breakfast, so this must end.