and a Merry Christmas to all!

I've had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. We've had some drama going on in our lives. (Thankfully, not between Joey and me - we are rock solid now!) The drama - aside from the homeowners insurance dilemma, has put us in a financial bind which put a damper on our holiday spirit. We have to come up with money to drive to Mississippi and pick up Devin, bring him down here and do it all again a week later. we also have to pay a down payment on our new homeowners insurance, buy presents and pay all of our bills - which always happen to be due the last week of December and the first week of January. Excuse me while I wallow in my self pity.

We have tried to get ourselves in the spirit despite the circumstances. We have a great family here in town that sells firewood and Christmas trees. We firmly believe in supporting local businesses and these are good people. We were able to get a 6'ft tree for $25.

We are lucky enough to have a fireplace to decorate which makes it so fun to decorate!

All this has been a blessing in disguise though. Joey and I have realized that we really do have everything that we need and we were already incredibly blessed this year. We bought our home, we have jobs, and most importantly we have each other! Really - what more can we ask for?

Florida Peninsula can kiss my...

Yes, I know my blog and I disappeared for awhile there. Joey and I got a letter a few weeks from our homeowners insurance letting us know that they were dropping our policy. So for the past three weeks we have been busting our butts making fixes to the house. We repaired stucco, repainted, put in a new washer box, raked all the leaves out of the front yard and are supposed to be getting a wind mitigation inspection on our roof today. Except its raining, as in tornado like conditions. I doubt Mr Roof Inspector Guy will be climbing up there in those conditions. Grrr. I promise a real post tomorrow!

Five Question Friday

1. Favorite gift you are GIVING this year?

The digital camera my sister and I are getting my parents. Their camera is ancient and they really do deserve a new one!

2. How many parties are you attending between now and Christmas?

None, that I know of. I'm doing Girl's Night Out with church next Friday if that counts...

3. What is your favorite Christmas song?

Feliz Navidad - puts me in the spirit instantaneously!

4. Who was your favorite elementary school teacher and why?

I don't have a hands down favorite. I loved my kindergarten teacher because she was probably the kindest person I had ever met. I also loved my fourth grade teacher as she really challenged me and was from NY also. I had just moved to Florida then so having a little bit of home was just what I needed.

5. If you had a choice to live in any other period of time (other than now) what era would you choose and why?

I think I would have been happy in the early 1900's, just in a cabin somewhere, raising kids, cooking that whole shebang. Shoot - I'd do that now if I could afford not to work!

Emerging from my black hole...

Knock. Knock.
Hello? Diana?
Hrmph
Just wondering if you were ever coming back to the blogging world. You’ve been gone a week now!
Mmm. Mmm hmmm.

It’s been a week here in our household!

I will sum up Thanksgiving as stressful, exhausting and highly successful.

I tallied two fullout blowouts – one with Joey (complete with tears, yelling, and a slammed door or two) and one with someone else right after Joey and I had wrapped up our disagreement. The 2nd argument was completely unnecessary as Joey had just explained to this person what we had just fought about and that neither one of us was in a good mood but I guess they missed the hint and took something I said the wrong way. Oh well, you live and learn and it all ended up working out in the end.

I was up at 5:30 on Turkey Day to start the bird and the ham and Joey got up as soon as the house warmed up enough for him. He tackled cleaning up the yard since that was where we were eating. I’m warning you now I don’t have any pictures since I was too busy going crazy to snap any. Luckily Joey’s aunt and uncle took a few so I will post those whenever I get copies. My mom and dad showed up around 10am to help me (search for my sanity) and everyone else arrived throughout the afternoon. We ended up with 15 adults, 7 kids, 3 dogs and amazingly 0 arguments! There was enough food to have fed three more families and plenty of joking, ribbing and stories shared. I finished doing dishes around 11pm and passed out.

Friday was a lazy day for me. Joey went to work with my brother-in-law on a project and I read a book, ate leftovers, took a bath and vegetated. It was divine.

Saturday I spent the day at my sister’s we had Starbuck’s, got pedicures, lounged, read and set up her tree. Sunday brought my niece’s Regional cheerleading competition – they did AMAZING!!! – and we are Nationals bound. She competes at Disney Monday at 3pm. I took the day off work to cheer her on and am so proud of how hard she has worked this year. The rest of the week has been cleaning, relaxing and just getting back to normal.

The last tidbit is unfortunately we didn’t see a BFP this cycle. We are taking a break from the TTC for a bit though – we have a few bigger things going on that really need to get dealt with first and Joey and I have a feeling once those are sorted out we will see everything else fall into place. We reached this decision together and both feel happy about it.

27

That is the number of people we are expecting to have at our house and feed for Thanksgiving. That’s right.. I said 27 – did I stutter?

I don’t want to think about how much $$ I have spent on groceries already. Last night I made over 8 pounds of sweet potatoes for sweet potato casserole and potato soup. I bought a 21 lb turkey to go with the ham already in my fridge.  I still have mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, corn bread, corn, and a million other things to make. I need to figure out how I am going to fit that many people in my house. I need to clean, bag up all the leaves we raked.

I'm waiting on the results of my progesterone draw to make sure all my meds did their thing. I'm fighting with Joey. I'm tired and cranky.

Somewhere in there I also need to just breathe!

Turn to me and be saved...

I'm really not a preachy kind of person. I believe what I believe and I don't force it on to others. I love God with all my heart but my relationship with him is very personal. I also am not a zealot or one who quotes scripture all the time. That being said I am often in wonder of the wonderful ways God works in us.

As I had mentioned before, I finally got Joey to agree to go to church with me again. I had planned on getting up early this morning and just going to church by myself but for some reason God put it upon me to ask (clears throat...force) Joey to come with me. After some arguing, a threat or two and maybe one or two tears we were on our way. (At least I looked cute though!)

We got to church and Joey sat there looking mad at the world through all the singing, hand clapping, and good feelings. Then the first reading came up - from Isaiah 22 -

“Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other.
“I have sworn by Myself, The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.
“They will say of Me, ‘Only in the LORD are righteousness and strength.’ Men will come to Him, And all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.
“In the LORD all the offspring of Israel Will be justified and will glory.”

Following the reading he spoke of how maybe hell isn't the awful place we think of due to the flames and the eternity but because is that moment right before being eternally separated from the Lord we are given the chance to look into his eyes and see his love for us. He spoke of how much God loves us with our flaws, foolish pride and desire to control things ourselves. How our shame is our own and not the Lord's viewing of us as God will never be ashamed of his children. It just went on and on. At that moment I knew exactly why the Lord had put it upon me to get Joey into that church today - we were both drying our eyes after that message and we still had a solid hour to go.

My hope is that next time - it won't be such a battle to get Joey through those doors and that God will continue to do his work in both of us. That was the main message of the sermon today - that the holy spirit is within us. How blessed are we to have that! For those of you that are the praying sort - can I ask you to pray for us? I'll be returning the favor here in my neck of the woods, too!

The Working Housewife

Since Joey and I are trying to start our family I occasionally fall into the day dream of getting to be a stay at home mom once God does bless us with a child of our own. I mean what could be better than getting to stay home all day and take care of your child, right?

Then I remember there is another name for stay at home mom – housewife.



And most days there is no doubt whatsoever that I am already one of those. Most days after work I am more than ready to just come home, plop on the couch and read a good book or veg out to HGTV. (Curse you House Hunters, Property Virgins, My First Place, Income Property and For Rent! You sucked me in when we were looking to buy a house and now I can’t break free!) Instead I come home and am faced with this –





Dishes to wash...

Dishes to put away

Joey's lunch to pack


Laundry to do


Laundry to put away







Somehow I manage to tackle it all with a smile most days. Other times it really does catch up to me though. That would be why I made this for dinner the other night.

I know, I know. A good housewife would whip a dinner up from scratch with all sorts of nutritional goodies followed by a fresh baked pie. Well some of us have to work to pay off all this –

I have now realized that any grandiose dreams I have of ever being a stay at home mom/housewife will only occur if I happen to win the lottery or smack into a money tree. The mortgage, car payments, dental bills, student loans, credit cards, etc all seem to take precedence. But a girl can dream, right?

Excuse me, Dr. Jekyll? Mr Hyde is looking for you...

The photo above is a representation of all the medication I have been on this cycle.

You have your Clomid, Ovidrel, Prenatal vitamins, Mucinex, and another vitamin supplement just for good measure.

Now under the best of circumstances I am not what you would call an easy person to get along with. I’m stubborn, opinionated, basically any trait that can be associated with a Scorpio – that’s me.  Luckily the good ones regarding loyalty and passion also apply to me. So anyhow, needless to say – I’m a slightly difficult person (cough, cough) even when things are going along swimmingly.

The fun really kicks into overdrive when you pump me full of hormones though. I’ll just go over a few of the medications here and why I’m on them and what they do to me.

Let’s start with Clomid. I only took 25mg, half a pill of these for 5 days. Easy peasy – right? Let’s start with what Clomid is - clomiphene citrate. It’s meant to control ovulation at the level of the hypothalamus by getting your body to produce more estrogen. In me, we just wanted to shorten up my cycle which luckily it did. I was already ovulating just with long cycles.

All this sounds great right? Oh sure, until we mention the side effects that is. It can cause hot flashes, breast tenderness, mood swings, nausea and it dries you up like the sahara.

Let’s go with the Ovidrel next, ok? Ovidrel is just HCG in a syringe. Pure pregnancy hormones injected right into you. You take the shot and bam – 24-36 hours later you ovulate – no waiting around for your body to decide when to do it. Ovidrel can cause abdominal pain, bloating, headaches, blah blah blah, oh and irritability. So yes – HCG just coursing through and all the fun emotional side effects that go with it.

At this point I have to show my sincere gratitude to my husband for putting up with me through all of this. Especially when I started sobbing the other night when I got in bed for no reason at all – other than the fact that my hormones are on overdrive and I can’t do anything about it. I also cannot fault him for choosing to fall asleep on the couch at 6pm last night – I kept him up late with my cryfest. I’m a little worried now though – what happens if all this works and I actually end up with baby? How in the world will we deal with my hormones then if I’m already this wacky now? I go from high to low in the span of a millisecond. I could be loving on you and biting your head off all at once. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm relaxing, I'm anxious. I'm telling you the fun just doesn't stop. Who needs Universal?- I have my own personal roller coaster right here.

The two week wait is in effect now. Luckily I can’t drive myself crazy by testing since the trigger shot will cause false positives. I also won’t be posting here if we do get a positive since we decided we would wait until Christmas to share the news with our family. To the 27 people that will be at my house for Thanksgiving - I apologize in advance if I am slightly psychotic through it all - just keep me in check! Keep your fingers crossed for us and pray hard!

Boundaries

Last night Joey and I started to talk about the boundaries we needed to set up in our home regarding establishing “our family” in “our home” with “our rules”. We were both extremely tired so the discussion will have to continue through this week before we set anything into stone. I’m starting to feel better about it all though now that we have started to talk it out. After blowing my top over the weekend and just being livid and sick of all the interference in our lives – I took the time yesterday to do some research and figure out what the best course for us was. I found some great articles here and here about “leaving and cleaving” and establishing boundaries that I printed out and shared with Joey. We will be using these as our baseline for what goes on in our home. I’m going to quote the articles as I go along here with what we are trying to do.

First off the issues arose because there hasn’t been leaving and cleaving going on. My dear hubby thought you could just keep tacking people on without changing anything and life would be dandy. That didn’t work and this situation has been festering for quite some time.



“1. Leave – This indicates that in a family there are two types of relationships. The parent-child relationship is the temporary one…there will be a “leaving.” The husband-wife relationship is the permanent one (”let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). Problems occur in family life when these two roles are reversed and the parent-child relationship is treated as the primary relationship. When an adult child has married and this parent-child relationship remains primary, the newly-formed union is seriously threatened.”

Joey initially took great offense at my insistence that when you get married you start your own family that has to be your priority and take precedence over any other relationship. You simply cannot establish a strong marriage without making it your first priority above all else. That means you have to unify as one and have your parents understand that you are still their child but you have your own family now which will come first. Easier said than done. He's starting to come around to the idea now and even put his wedding band back on yesterday. (He hadn't been wearing it since it can be a hazard for him at work which I completely understood since my dad never wore his for the same reason)




“2. Cleave – the Hebrew word translated “cleave” refers to 1) the pursuing hard after someone else and 2) being glued or stuck to something/someone. So a man is to pursue hard after his wife after the marriage has occurred (the courtship should not end with the wedding vows!) and is to be “stuck to her like glue.” This cleaving indicates such closeness that there should be no closer relationship than that between the two spouses, not with any former friend or with any parent.”

We’ve also had trouble here – sticking by each other and not letting any one else interfere. Its difficult in our relationship as I will try to involve Joey in the decision making and run things by him and I always get – “Yea, Ok. That’s fine.” Joey just agrees to everything and later on accuses me of railroading him. We are working on getting him to be an active participant though.

So this week we will be working on these steps -
• There can be no divided loyalties. When you married your spouse and spoke your wedding vows, you promised to put your husband or wife as the first and primary person in your life, and that’s where your loyalty rightly belongs. If your wife has a problem with her mother-in-law, it’s the husband who needs to step in and work on fixing it. The same applies if a husband has a problem with his in-laws, his wife must speak up on behalf of her husband.
• Good fences make good neighbors. Clear boundaries, as in really good fences, need to be established and set in place about when in-laws are and are not invited into your lives. Negotiate the boundaries with your spouse regarding the role you want your in-laws to have in your life, being as specific as you feel is necessary. Write it all down on paper if that would work well for you during discussion and negotiations.
• Your parents and in-laws only know what you tell them. Set boundaries so you and your spouse know what specific information will or will not be shared with your family. If you go to your parents or family members every time you’re angry, frustrated, or having problems in your marriage, they hear that but they don’t hear when you’ve resolved the issues. If you’re having a problem in your marriage, you need to resolve it in the marriage, privately.
• Set time boundaries so that you both will know how much time will be spent at the in-laws’ house and how often they will be in your home. Sometimes husbands and wives argue because the in-laws are always at your house and you don’t seem to have a moment to yourselves. Or, the wife is almost always at her parents’ home and not taking care of responsibilities at home, or constant phone calls by the in-law to find out personal details that impose upon the time and privacy of your marriage.
• Set decision-making boundaries so that both husband and wife understand that they will make the decisions in their marriage without having to consult the in-laws first. Once a decision is made you should not allow your mind to be changed because one of the in-laws voices disapproval. You have a backbone, so use it.
• Set boundaries about the care and discipline of your children, so the standards and rules established in your home are not contradicted by your in-laws. If boundaries are not set, clearly communicated amongst the family, problems and conflicts will arise. Problems and conflicts also persist when the husband or wife fails to correct their unruly parent or family member when boundaries have been breeched.
• Once the boundaries are decided upon, you must now keep to them. If one of the marriage partners violates the agreement then the whole process breaks down and sends a double message to the in-laws. In addition, failing to keep an agreement with your spouse is a violation of your word and his or her trust. You must realize that if you violate your mate’s trust you have betrayed your vows to honor your spouse above all others.
• Talk to your parents (or the in-law that is driving you crazy) about the boundaries you’ve decided upon together. Make it perfectly clear that the boundaries set have been decided upon and mutually agreed to by both husband and wife. Believe it or not, some mother-in-laws may not even realize how their intrusion and criticisms hurt or belittle you, so you must learn how to be assertive, using assertive techniques to express how you feel when she says or does x,y,z.

We know that this isn’t going to be easy for everyone to swallow and that these boundaries will change along the way as we figure them out but they are a necessary evil. We shouldn’t expect to accommodate guests every weekend. I mean we are trying to start a family here and it’s a little difficult to get in the mood when you have family in the next room. We can give each family their time every month and also have time to ourselves – that way we can give our marriage legs to stand on.

The other boundary we are also really going to work on is establishing the fact that our home is our responsibility. Unless we have asked someone for help with a particular task we don’t want someone coming in and taking over the running of our household and its chores. Joey and I both take pride in our home and taking care of it. We are both adults and will see to our home in the time and function that fits our lives – we don’t need someone else to do it for us. That takes all the pride right out of you, it makes you feel like why bother doing anything to “my house” anyway when someone else is just going to come in and change everything or take over. That hurts. So – no more. We love our home and want to make it our own – together.

It’s going to be a big week, with lots of changes and adjustments but I think once we get it all sorted out everyone will be much happier overall.

"Not Me" Monday

Not Me Monday was created by MckMama -- It's an opportunity to get a little therapy for all those things you would never do, but did :) Click here for all the rules.

I did not go psycho b**tch on my husband and his in-laws this past weekend after not having a weekend alone in our house for over a month now. This has not led to me now printing out articles about “leaving and cleaving” and arranging a discussion with my hubby tonight to set boundaries so that we can reclaim our home as ours and keep our marriage intact with both of us happy.

Joey and I did not rent “Monsters vs. Aliens” last night despite not having children at home and watch it as our date night movie.

I did not make a huge production out of Joey giving me my trigger shot last night with icing, biting and the whole nine yards only to discover….it didn’t hurt at all.

Fairytales and Evil Dragons

Sometimes I wish that life really could be fairy tales and happy endings all the time. That it didn’t get hard and cause stress, heartache, and strife at times. After I posted my blog on Sunday things went downhill fast. Something’s just don’t need to be shared online though so I won’t go into details. This fairytale has just bumped into the protagonist of the story though - that evil dragon!




We’ve hit a huge pothole in our journey through life – it’s one of those that the front of your car falls in and you don’t know whether to back up, go forward, or try to go around. Sometimes – it feels like this:



It’s rougher when you truly love each other deeply but know that in this situation you are just helpless to get the other person through what ails them. We are working hard on getting through this together but I won’t lie – it’s hard. There are some tense moments at our house and it will probably cycle through this roller coaster for another month or so until we figure out our new “normal” We still have our good and happy moments but the white elephant is always in the room there with us – just waiting to creep up. I’ve used this to dig down deep in my faith and put my trust in God. I’ve fired back up on my bible reading at night and my devotionals. I truly believe that sometimes only God can guide you and that’s where I am now.

If I don’t post as often in the next few weeks just bear with me – I run out of energy earlier right now. My emotions are shot and I just need some time to process and adjust. I’ll be back – that’s a promise!

My Birthday Weekend

This blog will be short on words. My mom and dad bought me a card with the most beautiful poem and I think it sums this birthday up best of all.

How to Make a Beautiful Life

Love yourself.
Make peace with who you are and where you are at this moment in time.

Listen to your heart.
If you can't hear what it's saying in this noisy world, MAKE TIME for yourself.
Enjoy your own company.
Let your mind wander among the stars.

Try. Take chances.
Make mistakes. Life can be messy and confusing at times, but it's also full of surprises.
The next rock in your path might be a stepping-stone.

Be happy.
When you don't have what you want, want what you have.
MAKE DO.
That's a well kept secret of contentment.

There aren't any shortcuts to tomorrow.
You have to make your own way.
To know where you're going is only part of it.
You need to know where you've been, too. And if you ever get lost, don't worry.
The people you love will find you.
Count on it.

Life isn't days and years. It's about what you do with time.
And all the goodness and grace that's inside you.

Make a beautiful life....
The kind of life you deserve.


and now for the slideshow of mine and Joey's magical celebration -

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Wednesday evening

This is a Wednesday night at my home...









Yes, Blue is laying on Joey's face...




There are times where I find maturity to be highly overrated...


As does my hubby...


We find that sometimes its okay to just get a little goofy. (We won't mention the major disagreement that came on after this photoshoot either...


Looks alot like Sunday night, doesn't it?



I happened to walk away for a minute and came back to see this -


My immediate words were - you know this is going on my blog - right?


I just couldn't help myself...

Still Trying to Conceive

So I haven’t posted too much about our trying to conceive journey on here lately. With everything else going on it just didn’t seem to be the time to talk about it. Last month was our first medicated cycle and I was very excited about it. I felt like we finally had a plan in place and it was going to solve everything. I was going to take this magic pill, my body would do exactly what it was supposed to and at Thanksgiving we would be sharing the great news. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened at all.

Complication # 1 – Moving.

The timing for the first medicated cycle could not be worse.

DEATH, DIVORCE AND MOVING HOUSE ARE SAID TO BE THE THREE MOST STRESSFUL SITUATIONS IN LIFE.

Guess when I started my meds – three days into our move. No joke – I had no clue where my toilet paper, clothes, or clean sheets were but I sure as heck knew where my Femara was. I am not a low key person in the first place. During the moving process I flipped my lid 873654876458746 times. Real conducive to baby making Diana, real conducive.

Complication # 2 – My body working with the medication

So the whole idea behind me taking this little pill was that it would shorten my cycles up and make things work quicker as that was all we found that was not optimal for the babymaking. So for most people you pop the pill and by CD 14 or so you should ovulate and all is on track. Well my body does not work like most people’s. I took this pill and ended up with my longest cycle EVER! 45 days – I didn’t ovulate until CD 30. I also experienced every side effect possible – hormones up and down, headaches, hot flashes. Yeah, it was a fun ride. God bless Joey for putting up with me.

So that brought us to the NEW PLAN. A new cycle has come and on Friday I will go in for an ovary check. As long as Mr. Cyst has not shown back up we will start on medication again. Since I am paying for all this out of pocket I will be switching to Clomid this cycle rather than the Femara. The difference in price is pretty substantial and we have to keep in mind our normal expenses too. We will also add a trigger shot (Ovidrel) this cycle which will make sure I ovulate. They will do a follicle scan around CD 10 or so and from there I get stuck when the follies look big enough and we have a guaranteed shot at getting a sticky bean.

Is it a lot to take in? Yes.

Are there any guarantees? Unfortunately – no. I’m just starting this crazy adventure and I truly think we are on the right path here. We have to figure out what works best for my crazy body and that doesn’t happen overnight.

In the meantime I am going to take joy in celebrating my 27th birthday on Saturday with my lovely hubby at the Magic Kingdom and taking it day by day. That’s all you can do right now. That’s all you can do.

Stronger Together

One of my main objectives when I started this blog was to have a chronicle of what married life is really like. The ups, downs, ins and outs of it. Marriage isn’t always glamorous – it has its pitfalls at times and there are moments that make you want to scream. (I usually do when those hit. I’m not what you would call subdued.)

The thing is though every marriage experiences a certain amount of conflict. You learn to pick and choose your battles – Joey hasn’t washed dishes once since we bought our house. I threaten him with the job on occasion but I would never fight about it in reality. I’m more interested in making sure he finishes painting the bathroom before everyone invades for Thanksgiving. He is not going to fight with me over sweet tea not being made but asking him to go to the grocery store when he doesn’t feel like it has caused small wars on occasions. These conflicts I am okay with – they are just the normal, everyday part of joining two independent lives together.

What I do take issue with though is when outside people expressly try to create conflict in your marriage. I am old enough to understand that this mainly occurs when those individuals are unhappy with their own lives and relationships and are jealous of what you have but that doesn’t make it easier at the time. One of the main reasons it bothers me is because these arguments pop up out of nowhere. It’s like stepping on a landmine. You are going along swimmingly acting all lovey dovey and suddenly someone gets a phone call where they are fed a line of cow manure and its time to cue “Eye of the Tiger” and put your gloves on.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Round One is on!

These arguments are usually more intense because they are packed full of lies and misinformation caused by the outside force. We yell, I cry and finally one of us has the sense to go – “Wait! Are we going to let someone else tear us apart like this?” That’s usually all we need – we refocus, get upset with the drama queen or king that goaded us into an argument and reassess. We are stronger together and should feel honored that someone is that jealous of our relationship that they feel the need to create discord between us. We are on to those naysayers now though – try us again. We are not going to let someone else bring conflict into our marriage – we are committed to our marriage and each other and that is why people get married because they are confident enough in their love to make that ultimate commitment under God’s eyes. Anyone who takes issue with that will have to goad someone else next time – we’ve written you off already on our book as someone who doesn’t understand the power of marriage.

The Battle of the Bunny

I received this little fellow in an amazing Easter basket Joey made for me a few years back. He was pretty special since that was our first Easter together and Joey went all out on this basket. Somehow during our move the bunny got loose and guess who found him?


Needless to say - the bunny now belongs to Blue.

Unfortunately for Blue one of Joey's favorite things to do is to antagonize him so as I was trying to make dinner this was going on around me.































The UFC has nothing on the battle in my house between Blue, Joey and THE BUNNY!

Now I need to go polish off the Ben and Jerry's Joey just picked up for me...

Why it's the Great Pumpkin!

This post is overdue but with the drama of Thursday night I just didn't have it in me to post.

So my plan on Thursday night was to come home sit on my couch and not move...at all. I was exhausted and just not feeling it. There was a change of plans though when I walked through the front door and saw Joey on the couch with this...

Yep, the pumpkin we picked up the night before. Sigh. There went my plan for doing NOTHING.

You see, pumpkin carving is like winning the lottery for Joey. He loves trying to draw up the most terrifying jack o lantern he possibly can.


Then he brought home a special "pumpkin carving" tool from work and insisted that he needed a special box to keep this amazing tool in. (I offered him a very lovely shoe box that I would write "Pumpkin Carving Box" on. He declined.) So he got to carving



- due to my lack of precision I am banned from partaking in the carving. So Blue and I watched.


Finally, he was done carving. Can you tell he was proud of himself?


I do however get to be a part of the gutting!


Mmmm... yummy!

This was one of the ants that decided to bite me during the gutting process. Fire ants are clearly the higher species in Florida!

Then Joey needed to rinse it...and drop it in the sink while he was rinsing. :)


Finally - our Great Pumpkin was complete!





Yea, yea, Joey did a great job..blah blah blah..

For me it's all about - THE SEEDS!!! We started with this -



and ended up with -


Garlic and Herb seeds and Cajun seeds

Now I'm sitting here hoping that our pumpkin isn't so frightening that kids don't happen to show up at our front door. If that happened I would be forced to eat all this -

by myself.

We wouldn't want that to happen now would we?


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!