ten to one

Okay so I'm feeling a bit guilty. Since last I blogged, I have been out posted by a woman with six children 10:1. I think she actually did that many posts on purpose just to show me how absolutely lazy I was being about keeping things up to date around here! So here is what has been goin down around the porch.

Halloween: Sadly Nolan had to work on Halloween evening... he was planning on taking Haley out to the church for a party, but had to camp out at the store most of the night. I took Haley over to a friends for a ride to the church and Frank brought her home on the way home from the airport.

We made this cute tootoo with ribbons and tulle that I already had - we added .77 cents for a yard more of tulle to extend it. EASY.

The next day Haley had two good buddies over for a sleepover to celebrate her birthday (a week early) From the looks of things you would have thought it was the middle of summer around here, but they were on their way out to the jacuzzi to eat cake and drink punch. We especially all missed Claire being here.... Haley, Allison and Brynna all mentioned that they wished Claire could have been there and still lived here near us!

On Monday Nolan and I went and picked a couple of 2.5 gallon buckets of olives at a nice home that offered their olives up on freecycle. To date, we have put up 8.5 gallons of olives. Only 7 remain.... hmmmm. We have one more batch in the lye starting tonight that I will be responsible for all week, as Frank is off on a very busy place to place week.

While the girls partied, here is what the boys and I were doing....

What exactly was I doing during this process you may rightly ask yourself.... taking the pictures of course! And asking them to hold it up a bit higher to see if I liked it there. It is now hanging in all of it's glory on an amazingly ingenious hanger that was built into the piece. I simply screwed the separate angled hanger across two studs - and there is clever wiggle room built in there too - and then the boys lifted the piece onto the hanger, it fits like a puzzle. hard to describe without drawings... Man it is really heavy! Thanks Dad - and Todd & Melanie - for this lovely piece.... I love it. (it's a long story) Anyway, it is now hanging with my Christmas Spode china in it.

Christmas you say... Yes the Christmas tree is up and all of the decorations that I plan to do this year are up - except outdoor lights, but that is Frank's domain. I know.. it's not Thanksgiving yet, but in our world we only have about 35 days left at home until Christmas. We are going to be gone 5 days at Thanksgiving and 11 days just before Christmas. If I don't have Christmas 100% bought, paid for, wrapped and up by the time we leave, it won't get done. So that is the other thing that kept me from blogging.

Haley's birthday was on Thursday and when Frank got home from the airport we had ice cream sundays. Friday, Dad and Beth came for a special birthday dinner for Haley - check their link for additional pictures. We enjoyed great fun, food and the jacuzzi! They also came out to the craft fair on Saturday and then took us out to Chevy's before they left town. Nolan missed the dinner at home, and dinner out because of work and traffic school. boo. And shoot.. I was gonna take pictures of the craft fair but forgot.

Haley and I had a great day making over $200. at the Christmas craft fair. It occurred to me late Thursday that it would be a good thing to sell some things from my old business, These Unnecessary Things. That stuff went really well. So, I thank the Lord for good ideas!

I know I am forgetting a bunch of other stuff, but hopefully I can get to anything I left out sometime later this week. ha