My take on Halloween

I in no way enjoy Halloween. I dispise taking my kids shopping and seeing all of the ugly decorations and posters on display. Every year they seem to get more disgusting and scary. All you have to do is walk past one of the evil-glorifying statues and you inevitable hear a scream of terror, groan of death or can see it's red eyes light up. What a horrible holiday that rakes in sooooo much money for the stores. We generally avoid the halloween area of the store around this time of year and truely enjoy when the stores start replacing them with Christmas decorations even before October is over (though, the marketing push to the next season is really pathetic). I've actually seen moms laughingly take their 3 or 4-year-olds and make them stand in front of those scary talking decorations while their kids BEG their moms to leave because they're terrified. The moms just keep laughing and get a kick out of giving their kids nightmares. Shame on them!!

I've discovered that one of the benefits of living in the country is that Halloween passes us by with not so much as a rustle at the front door. No candy to buy for kids that insist you give it to them or you'll get a trick played on you. No scary masks coming to the door, and (worse yet) not having to walk our kids through yards that are decorated with those disgusting statues and makeshift horror film cemetaries. We just cook up some popcorn, plug in a movie and enjoy the night. So, if you are looking for a way to escape the horrors of Halloween, you are welcome to come to our house during trick-or-treat hours... Just don't come knocking for candy.

On a lighter note, as much as I am disgusted by the holiday, I thought this cartoon was so funny!

Fall Fest

On Sunday, we had some families over for a "Fall Fest". It was a ton of fun! The kids and I planned the fun fall themed games like pin the nose on the pumpkin, pumpkin buckets, bean bag toss, toss the hat on the scarecrow, pick a lollypop, paint a pumpkin and more. We had somewhere around 8 families come over and since their families are alot like our family, that meant there were ALOT of kids (somewhere around 50, I think).

The kids got to earn tickets by playing the games and then were able so "spend" their tickets to get their face painted, paint a pumpkin, buy a glowstick, or save them to spend at the prize table.

Noah and Ellie painting pumpkins.

The neighboring fields harvested their beans earlier than usual this year, so Paul was able to give the kids hayrides around and through them.

The bigger boys (Caleb and Seth are now considered bigger boys, I guess), spent much of the time playing football. They loved having enough friends over to actually form teams!

After it got dark, we headed over to the bonfire. It was windy and had been looking like rain all day up until our party. All morning, we were praying for the weather to change, and as soon as the party started, the sun came out periodically, the wind died down and the temperature was perfect. Not long after we started the bonfire, we could hear thunder, and after about 30 minutes of a perfect fire (good job, Paul), the rain started. It would've been nice to get in a few songs and s'mores, but all-in-all, it was a great day!

Well number 2

Fool me once, shame on you... Fool me twice, shame on me.

I know what it's like to be without water, so as a precautionary backup, we are transforming our old well (which still worked... limited water, but still worked) in to a well that we can pump by hand. It's part of the whole self-sufficient mindset... We can still have access to clean water if our electricty goes out (which hasn't happened in a while, but it has been known to do).

My dad came over Saturday and helped Paul piece the pipes and pump rod together (and figure out how to get it to work).

The pumping mechanism still needs to be tweeked and worked on a bit, but we can get water to flow. Yay!

Soccer's over

Well, soccer's officially over. Their last game (this past Saturday) got rained out, so they recieved their awards in the gym. This year, we had all three boys on the same team along with their friend Xander. The team age spread is supposed to be 8-10. We had to bump Noah up (he's only 7) and squeeze Caleb in (he turned 11 during the season), but worked out fine since the atmosphere of the Christian Youth Center is not quite as competitive as most other leagues. It was great having only one practice and one game everyweek (and having daddy as the coach)!!

Seth

Caleb

Noah

This year's soccer team

Socialism?

Ok, I am completely aware that this post is going to come off as a wierdo type of blog, but here it is none-the-less.

I recently read a book on Hitler before he rose to power. I was dumb-founded. I thought he would've been raised in a well-educated, well-to-do family, but just the opposite is true. He was born in Austria (not Germany), and he lost his father (who he wasn't very fond of anyhow) at age 12. He hated school and wanted to be an artist. After finishing school at 16, he spent 2 years reading, painting, drawing and going to the opera while his mom and sister cooked and cleaned for him. He tried to get into art school a couple times, but was rejected and told he should look into becoming an architect. He didn't work. While his good friend found odd jobs, he didn't do anything to earn money and didn't seem to care to. His mom died when he was 18, and he recieved a small inheritance and an orphan pension from the government and that is what he lived on. (Around this time, he started learning about a far-fetched idea of a "master race" in a cheap, trashy magazine sold at a nearby kiosk.) At age 20, he had so little money, he lived on the streets of Vienna with drunkards scavenging for food from trash cans. He eventually ended up in a soup-kitchen type of hostel where he had his first bath in months and spent his days painting. His friend offered to sell the paintings in local bars to make some money for them both.

On he goes to Germany in hopes of an art career... He was turned down and ends up fighting in WWI for Germany and the greater good of mankind (to make Germany a World Power). He got angry at the Jews who seemed to be taking all the "good" jobs instead of fighting. After losing the war, and feeling betrayed by both communists and Jews who were said to be behind the revolution toward peace, he was discovered as a great orator. His speaking ability took him to higher and higher levels of politics (along with some time and manipulation). Mind you, the guy never worked a real job, yet he was put in charge of a nation!!

Ok, all that to say two things:

1. All this time, I thought Hitler was a Communist, but there were two groups of people that he distained more than others... Communists and Jews. Hitler was a Socialist. (Which makes complete sense when you discover that he didn't work. Instead he lived off society and the government.)

2. He rose to power, not because he was well-accomplished or had been established as a great political leader, but because he was a great speaker. Certain groups needed his smooth talking to get them ahead politically.

Can you draw some similarities to certain persons here in the US? Hmmm, something to chew on...

It's pumpkin carving day again

October 15 rolled around again, so we dug out our pumpkin carving tools (and bought new ones to replace the ones broken while playing with playdoe throughout the year). Each year on this day, we carve our pumpkins in memory of the day Paul proposed to me. 13 years ago to the day, we bought pumpkins and went to his house to carve them, but before we did, Paul got on his knees and sang his proposal to me. We didn't get to carve pumpkins that night because I had to get right home and tell everyone... so in honor of that night, we make October 15th our Pumpkin Carving Night.

We all look forward to carving the pumpkins, although some of the kids still take some coaxing to get their hands into the stringy, gooey pumpkin insides. This year we bought the pumpkins from a local farm, but next year, I think we'll designate an area to the viney squash (for the life of me, I can't figure out if it's a fruit or a veggie). It gets expensive at $4.00 per family member (and that's for the cheaper ones we've found), only to chop them up and have them rot on the front steps.


Ellie surprised me this year. All of the boys still had me carve their faces out when they were five, but she cleaned out her pumpkin and started carving away. She actually did a good job. I was impressed. She likes to draw, so maybe it's her artistic side coming out.

I have to admit, all of our pumpkin carving abilities have improved over the last 13 years. With the help of some free tracing patterns that we printed off the computer, we were able to make some nice renditions of Snow White, Blues Clues, Thomas the Train and Mickey Mouse. I believe I can see our pumpkin "works of art" becoming quite competitive as the kids get older...

Grace with Snow White...

...and Caleb's nice job on Blues Clues

... And here you have the Whole Pumpkin Family

Paul's Birthday

Paul's birthday was October 4th. He turned 39 this year with the big 4-0 looming in the near future...

Grandma and Grandpa came over to babysit for a couple hours and we headed to one of Paul's favorite steakhouses.... Lonestar. We tend to go there every time his birthday rolls around. Although he's great to cook for because he's not a picky eater at all, he's a steak and potatoes kind of guy at heart, so Lonestar suits him perfectly. (That, or a Brazillian steakhouse, his first choice, but considering the nearest one is not around us, he chose the next runner up).

When we got home, we had pumpkin pie (another favorite) with the kids and Grandma Connie and Grandpa Les. Caleb and Seth decorated it with real whipped cream. Yum!

The next day, we went to my parents and had a delicious lasagna dinner, and on Friday of the same week, the weather was gorgeous when we picked up Chinese and met daddy at the park for lunch... I'm thinkin' I like his birthday almost as much as mine. Hooray for NO COOKING!! (And Happy Bday, Honey!)

Oh, and by the way, yes, we have water!! Lot and lots of clean, non-smelly water! Praise the Lord! He heard my cry and He answered me!!

We've struck gold!!

Alright, so it's not gold, it's just water, but for us, it's as close to gold in our yard as we're gonna get. We've been battling the lack of water vs. "Should we spend an awful lot of money to dig a new well?" problem for about 2 years now. The biggest obstacle was that most of the time, our water (or lack of it) only had trouble a few times a year then would be fairly "normal" the rest of the time. It seemed like twice a year, our water would go dry for about a week and then magically return to "normal". Ahhh, but normal for us meant that if we all took showers on Sunday morning, we had to make them really quick ones and do combo ones with the youngest kids, or if we had a lot of laundry to do, our well needed a rest between loads to "refill"... and for our family, it doesn't take long for the laundry to pile up.

On Friday morning, we had the well guys officially start drilling!! Yay! By about 5 pm, and after digging down 270 feet (we were getting nervous since every foot adds more money onto the bill), they hit water! Not just water, but lots of it. Something like 30 to 40 gallons a minute! Compared to the 1 gallon per minute that we had, it was like striking gold! They are going to hook up our pump on Monday and the anticipation is killing us. Paul and I keep dreaming about how it'll be so nice to do dishes and laundry at the same time, or for the kids to play on the slip-and-slide for more than 10 minutes at a time next summer. Whoo-hoo! The only unknown factor is whether or not it's stinky sulfur water. We won't know until it's hooked up and the only thing the well guys guarantee is that "it'll be wet".