Pumpkins and Halloween

This Halloween wasn't very exciting, but we enjoyed it. Grandma and Grandpa took Alec and his friend to the symphony. We carved pumpkins, made cookies, chili, and pumpkin seeds, we lit all the creepy halloween candles and watched baseball and football. We answered the door occasionally, but we don't get many trick-or-treaters at our house. I even bought full-sized candy bars for the kids we knew, but we didn't get many. Emily dressed up a little for her first year as door answerer. We put our candy on our cool "head-waiter" tray, too. It was a fun, relaxing night.

Here are our pumpkin creations this year. Lindsay (our "adopted" daughter--her new title now that she and Dylan are just friends) came over and spent Halloween with us, carving pumpkins and watching the World Series with us. Over the summer, we got her hooked on baseball. We still hope to see her though, now that the season is over.

Lindsay's "Tiki" pumpkin

Matthew's "Electrocuted" pumpkin

Emily's "Farmer Blow" pumpkin

Computers...Its a love/hate relationship

I think everyone can feel my pain when I say my hard drive crashed. And I think you all know what I am talking about when I say that when computers are working great they are wonderful and we love them!!! But when they are not working, we are ready to chuck them out the window. I was not surprised, however, that I pined for my computer every day of that horrible long week. I had to check my emails on Cody's ancient PC that runs as fast as an 80 year old man and it drove me crazy!

Luckily, though, I had applecare and they replaced my hard drive at no expense, except for the fact that I had to re-do my whole computer. And, you know, I was not ready to spring clean my hard drive! And, thanks to Expercom (love them!) I didn't lose anything important. Funny how you think you have everything backed up, until your hard drive crashes and you realize you haven't backed up your family pictures for a whole year! I did lose my Christmas cards though, so I have to redesign them...so much for having them all done in september!

I was not the only one that felt the loss of my computer though. We had to function without a printer for a week, and that was tough for Emily and Alec. In fact, Alec had a paper on my computer that he just needed to make a few revisions on but ended up having to retype it, send it to his email, and then printing it at school.

I needed to take some work home, so I grabbed Heather's laptop and was able to get a few things done. I thought it was hilarious, once I hooked up my wacom to the laptop. The wacom was as big as the laptop, so I had to take a picture of it. I eventually dragged it out in front of the tv, placed the laptop on the tv tray and held the wacom in my lap. It was sweet! I was able to watch the World Series and work. It made me want a laptop!

Desperate times, my friends...

My computer is up and running again, everything is back on my hard drive and life is good again!

Matt's Birthday

Matthew turns 10! For Matt's birthday, Emily and Dylan's girlfriend Lindsay, put together a treasure hunt for him to find the presents they bought him. It was really cute and Matthew was so excited!

Emily got Matt a webkinz bear and Lindsay got Matt some Legos. Emily and Matthew have attached themselves to Lindsay and we love having her around. We all love her and call her our adopted daughter/sister.

Matthew finding the presents

One of the clever clues they put together for the treasure hunt.