Happy Halloween!

We wish you all out there in blogger land a very happy Halloween today!

My Kids

This week has been fairly uneventful.  John is working insane hours again and I've been lacking in sleep, so we've been staying home a lot since I'm low on energy.  But this has offered the opportunity to spend a lot of time interacting with Aiden and Nathan with no one else around.

We've been having long in-depth conversations, spending lots of time pretending to be goodness knows what, learning new games, creating art, and having lots of laughs.  While I may be around my kids a lot, I think it had been a little while since we'd spend lots of time really interacting with each other with no distractions.  And throughout all this, I realized something.  My kids truly complete me.  I would be honestly lost without them.  Life would be so boring!  Since becoming a mother I have been able to experience more laughter, joy, excitement, worry, tears, pain, and fear than I ever thought possible.  And it's amazing.  Life before kids was ok.  Sure, maybe I had more freedom go do what I pleased, but did I really appreciate it?  Not at all.  Date nights with John are so much more important and we cherish that time together so much more than we did before kids.

I love John, but the extreme unconditional love that I felt the moment each baby was put into my arms was something new.  I would always stand up for myself, but the purposeful Mama Bear I turn into when one of my children needs me is like nothing I've ever experienced.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that no matter how much they stress me out (and boy, do they know how to do that!), I will never EVER think that life might have been better if I hadn't had kids.  I might be flying by the seat of my pants some days and I'm not sure if I'll ever know how to do things perfectly, but I do know that I'm more than happy to try.

Remembrance

My grandfather's service is today over in Idaho.  I can't be there, but it's definitely on my mind today.  I felt like I'd been doing ok most of last week, but things seem to be a little more difficult today, so there's obviously more grieving to be done.  But do we ever really stop grieving the loss of a loved one?  While the initial feelings are definitely the most raw, I would think that when you care about someone, you'll always miss them and feel sad that they're gone.

The past week has brought up lots of memories about my grandpa and I've enjoyed thinking about each and every one.  I loved visiting my grandpa when I was younger (before I ended up with so many siblings that the entire family couldn't fit in one car and make our way over there to see him).  You see, he had an arcade game of Donkey Kong.  Yes, the full coin operated machine that you'd find in an arcade.  He had it so that the coin area was unlocked and filled with quarters, so you could just reach in and pop another quarter in to keep the game going as long as you wanted.  Having that game around made him a super cool grandpa in my mind.

He and grandma Darleen (my dad's step mom) would always take me shopping for clothes.  And they'd make sure to pick out the little girl clothes that were in style.  Stuff my parents would never buy.  Are your grandparents usually the ones to make you feel trendy?  It was always so much fun.

My grandpa loved food and while the memories here are a little fuzzy, I keep going back to him taking me out for burgers and fries when we visited.  Maybe that's where my love of a good charbroiled burger was developed.  When we head over there in November, my dad plans on taking us out to Cook's for a Cook Burger.  It's been a long time since I've had a Cook Burger.

Another memory of visiting my grandparents is of Darleen watching soap operas and attempting to tell me the backstories to everything that was happening.  My family never watched soap operas and I thought it was just fascinating.  I can laugh now because I think they're completely silly, but I vividly remember sitting there wide-eyed watching "forbidden" soap operas with her, as my grandpa would shake his head and laugh.  I remember trying to watch soap operas by myself after we got back home, but it just wasn't the same.

But in all the memories I have of him, I remember his smile.  His laugh.  He was a happy, joyful person who loved his family very much.  It really hurts that I wasn't able to see him again before he passed away, but I am thankful that I have such wonderful memories of him.

Fall Goodness

On October 9th, we took our annual trip to Baggenstos for our pumpkins.  While we didn't have the warm sunshine that we've always had for the trip, the temperature was actually quite perfect and fall-like.  And it didn't rain!  The cooler weather kept the crowds down a little bit, so we didn't have to wait very long to hop on the hay ride down to the patch.

 I have no explanation for the face he's making.

 The perfect pumpkin!

 Our haul.  Three carving pumpkins and two Cinderellas to puree.  I love having pumpkin available in my freezer all year long!

 Brotherly love!

 The boys just couldn't wait to carve their pumpkins, even though we explained that the pumpkins wouldn't last until Halloween.  But because we attend John's company pumpkin carving party each year just before Halloween and get more pumpkins there, we decided it would be ok to go ahead and have some fun.  So Aiden got to work on his pumpkin!

 Even Nathan worked on using a little carving knife, but he's just not quite strong enough to get through the tough pumpkin!

The results!  Nathan's pumpkin was a Kitty Bat and Aiden's was Dracula.  And yes, they have both rotted out already.  We kept the biggest carving pumpkin whole, so we still have one pumpkin on the doorstep waiting to be carved.  And we'll be able to get as many pumpkins as our hearts desire at the carving party this coming Sunday.  I've already pureed one of the Cinderellas and did some fun fall baking, but that's another post.