Halloween pumpkin carving....

Well, Kelly and I have done this annually for as long as I can remember... or at least as long as we have been married... wait.. that is the same thing. LOL... Anyway, in the Marriage B.C. years (married but before children for those of you who don't know), we used to do about 3-4 pumpkins EACH. In fact, we even hosted a pumpkin carving party one year when Connor was only about 6 months old.

As we get older and the kids get older and they continue their energy-sucking ways out of us, the pumpkin carving has become less and less. Especially now that they want to help so much. We at least get two done every year though. This year they have graduated to marking the pumpkins for us, though we still do most (or all) of the carving. They picked the patterns, and I think they turned out pretty well.

The finished product...

Good Guys Wear Black!

FINALLY! After all these years the good old guys in black are back as World Champs! Now granted, I have come late to the White Sox fan base. Kel and I lived in Chicago for eight years while I went to grad school. I knew all about the Cubs due to WGN Superstation and the fact they were National League. I knew next to nothing about the White Sox. But getting tickets to White Sox games was a WHOLE lot easier, and it wasn't long before we were getting out to a few games per year. I remember sitting in the right field bleachers at Comiskey (I refuse to call it that corporate sponsored crap they have now) for 3 games out of the last 4 games of the season in a 4 game series with the Texas Rangers in a battle for their division. I remember the pain of all the talk of the White Sox being the favorites to win the World Series in 1994 when the strike hit and there was NO playoffs, much less a World Series. Until the day we moved away, that was still a sore point with White Sox fans - we felt robbed!

Now since I have left Chicago my work has kept me too busy to stay in the loop, though caught myself getting back in the loop this season as they tore up the league. But I remember sitting and watching Ozzie, Tim Raines, Joey Cora, Harold Bains PLAY for the White Sox, not COACH. Kinda bizarre to see fiery Ozzie MANAGING, when there were times he needed the MOST managing when playing! LOL... I remember BlackJack McDowell, Jason Bere, Bo Jackson, and even the Michael Jordan debacle/experiment. I remember going to a game on the spur of the moment after work with Kelly and Connor when he was only months old... on a weeknight... and getting to sneak down in the stands behind home plate, watching the game as we held our new, first child. And I remember the brats! Oh, the Comiskey brats! LOL

Now it's the Konerko's, the Uribe's, the Crede's, the Pierzynski's, the Dye's, and so on. And don't even get me started on the pitching! WOW...

Anyway, I just wanted to give props to a true blue-collar, working-guy, regular Joe team that worked AS A TEAM all the way to the World Championship!

Fall Break trip to the mountains

Well, evidently here in Georgia the kids get a Fall Break in addition to Spring Break. So last week they had Thursday, Friday, and Monday of this week off. My family (sisters and their families and my parents) have been wanting to do a big family weekend getaway, so we decided to head to the mountains north in the state. We couldn't find anything available to us in the north Georgia mountains, but did find some chalets at Lake Guntersville State Park in North Alabama. So we headed up Friday morning and had a blast til Sunday when we headed back. Lots of hiking, a bit of fishing, and some just good old sit around and do nothing in the evenings.


The boys had not done any hiking in quite some time. Not since a couple summers ago at Theodore National Park out in western North Dakota. And that is more hiking around buttes and canyons. They had never done any hiking on mountains. Though excited, they quickly tired...LOL (especially Connor). Still they had a wonderful time.

We decided on Saturday afternoon to go on a hike on a trail the smaller kids (Mitch and Katie) could handle. We found one that was supposed to be relatively flat and short. Well, we decided to branch off that one after a while onto another, and it turned out we had to hike down (and back up) a small cliff face! It was fun, and the kids were real troopers! Mitch tired out on the way back though, so I had to hike the last half mile or so with him on my shoulders. Yeah. That was enjoyable!

We didn't get to fish as much as Connor wanted to, so I promised I would take him and Luke out to my parents' house on the lake Monday morning to fish. I ended up having to paddle an old aluminum boat which again was loads of fun, but they had a blast. There seemed to be more playing with minnows than actual fishing, but in typical fashion, Connor always catches at least one!

No time or energy for witty descriptions of things, but I just hadn't updated the place in a while so thought I would throw this up. For more pics of the trip, just click on the Flickr badge thingy in the menu bar on the right over there... I put up some of the better pics there...

Do NOT try this at home!

So my Sunday school class has our monthly social gathering last night. We try to have a different theme each time, and last night's was a home made chili and ice cream "cook off." I am proud to say that Kel's chili came in second place, and her ice cream won first prize!

But never, I mean NEVER, do this all in one night....There were 9 different chili recipe's to sample, and three different home made ice cream flavors. Being the good and dutiful judge, I sample ALL NINE types of chili, two of them twice. I then proceeded to sample only one of the type of ice cream (Kel's... the other two were kinds I knew I did not like)... but I had two full bowls of hers - chocolate ice cream, with like multiple chunks of chocolate and cocoa melted into it, as well as Reese's Fast Break candy bars, with peanut butter cookie dough chunks mixed in...made with eight eggs, whipping cream, and so on... can you say heart-attack-in-a-bowl? I thought you could...

Needless to say, the rest of my evening last night was not pleasant. I have not felt that crappy in I-don't-know-how-long... One of those times where you wish you could just, um, regurgitate the entire contents of your stomach and get rid of the evil that lurks inside your belly... but can't. I mean, doubled over, writhing in pain stomach ache... but doubling over put more pressure on your stomach, hurting more... then you had to stretch out to ease the pain a bit, but then end up doubled over again? Yeah. That kind of stomach ache. Half bottles of Tums and Pepto Bismol later, I am at least able to move this morning...SLOWLY. I have no idea how I am gonna make it through today seeing patients all day. At least I get to sit on my butt all day. But it is like I am moving in slow motion this morning... if I take a step too fast, the nausea comes rushing back! Yuck!

Just say no to chili/ice cream cook off's in the same evening. You'll thank me for it later.