Halloween Prep

I am not a huge fan of Halloween. Never have been. Wanna know my reasons? No dissing on the list (yes, I am making another list cuz I'm all about the lists).

• For 364 days a year we teach out children not to beg. Then magically on Oct. 31 we decide to make our kids go out, door to door (or however you do it in your family) and make people give them candy.
• I am not an actress. I don't enjoy dressing up. I don't enjoy pretending to be someone else.
• I don't like the competition of "who has the best costume."
• People hand out the crappy candy. If I want candy I am not going to waste time or money on the crap like smarties. I want the chocolate. GIVE ME THE CHOCOLATE!
• I am the biggest scaredy cat you will ever meet. I don't like horror films, I hate haunted houses, and don't like to have to crap scared out of me.

All of this aside, some of our friends host a Halloween party every year and it is a blast. I could do without the dressing up personally but I love to see what other people dress up as. But, since it was a Halloween party, couples party at that, we needed to get into the spirit. After consulting a number of out of town friends and the internet I had a few ideas. At first I was going to use some of the TOTALLY AWESOME 80's clothes I got when I was visiting my mom in California. But that didn't feel right. So then we thought about going as Father Time and Mother Nature. Pretty easy, right? Just get a whole slew of watches and a big clock on a chain for him and sew leaves and branches all over clothes for me. But, then we stopped at a Halloween Super Store to check out the merchandise. Guess what we found? You'll never guess, so I will tell you. Stuff for FiM to be a pimp. AWESOME! So, we got a hat, cane and nasty accessories for him. Fishnet stockings and a monster nasty wig for me. Put that together with a corsette, my 5 inch hooker heels and thick makeup and I was my pimp's hooker. Now, mind you, this was a party with a ton of friends from church, so if you are thinking that I am gonna look totally immodest, think again. I was a modest hooker. Just ask my bishop, he was there. We both even topped the outfits off with a few fake tattoos (cuz you all know I have a thing for tats).


I have to say, it was probably the most fun I have had in years... especially at a halloween party.

Our Fabulous Host and Hostess, the Grays.

Our Friends, Sick and Tired Lefler...

Bushman Zombies

Love this pair! The Joneses

No, he isn't Obama... he is too dark. He is Buckwheat of course! The Harrisons.

The Burger King with his Dairy Queen... the Macbeans.

So much silver! The Johnsons

The Barretts... my super hero and super star.

A pair of blue jeans (and genes)... The Belkas.

The Thurbers... I mean Cruella and her dalmation.



The kids had a little fun as we were getting ready.

We are attempting...

I'm trying to manage my computer time better so as not to neglect my wifely/motherly/homemakerly duties. We'll see if I can hack it!

This isn't gonna be the most uplifting post ever because I thought that maybe I should tell y'all a little something about me that most of you don't know.

Almost 3 years ago I was pregnant with my little angel/devil MMIT. She is a gem. However, about 3 months into the pregnancy I noticed my heart was doing some really funky things. I would just be laying down and all of a sudden my heart rate would jump like I was running the 100meter dash. I had a lot of light-headedness and dizzy spells. I'd get winded really easily and such, so at one of my regular appointments I asked my midwife about it and she and I decided I needed to just have a check up with a cardiologist.

8 weeks later- the soonest I could get in to the appointment... I found out a list of things:

1. I have a heart murmur
2. my heartbeat was WAY too high
3. my blood pressure was in the normal range

The blood pressure thing is what really threw them off. The EKG didn't really give any enlightenment to the situation so we schedule an echocardiogram. Another month of waiting. This was getting scary/ridiculous.

The echo enlightened us as to the problem, though... but maybe it would have been better for me not to know.

1. Yes, I did have a heart murmur (duh!)
2. I have an enlarged heart (cardiomyopathy)
3. My left ventricle is weak (causing the left side to have to work almost twice as hard, causing the excelerated heart beat.)

So, I was given 2 options...

1. terminate the pregnancy to stop the strain on my heart
2. go forward with the pregnancy but be under a drs care the whole time.

There were a lot of stipulations if I went with #2, which I obviously did.

No more details. Suffice it to say, I survived the delivery, and since then I have had to have yearly checkups with a yearly echocardiogram. I did pretty good until 2 weeks ago. My ejection fraction is not good. I have a leaky valve and my heart is still enlarged (more so than when I was pregnant). So I have had to start on medicine which makes me even more tired. Ugh! Like I wasn't tired already with my heart not working right.

We are surviving... I am surviving. Another appointment to come in 2 more weeks and we'll see how the medicine is doing. We probably won't see a change in my heart for at least 3-6 months, but as long as my blood pressure doesn't dip too low we are hopefully on the right track.

Sorry for the depressing crap. Just thought I'd get it off my chest.

Sometimes

Sometimes in life we are lucky to have a chance to be happy.

Sometimes in life we are lucky to have a family.

Sometimes in life we are blessed to find THE ONE!

Sometimes in life we are happy in our jobs.

Sometimes in life we feel good about ourselves.

Sometimes in life we have the best friends EVER.

Sometimes in life we feel content.

Sometimes in life we have everything we could ever dream of...

and yet we still screw everything up.

This is a fairwell... for the time being. I need to focus on being a wife, mom and friend. Hopefully I will get over to the library to check y'alls blogs, but I can't guarantee how often that will be since I currently have a late fee due there and I am boycotting the outrageous late fees! I'm really gonna miss ya! You probably have no idea how much I'm gonna miss ya. But at least for a little while I am gonna have to take a hiatus. Hopefully I will be forgiven for my absence by you later and you will want to come by and visit again. But for now... so long, farewell, (whatever the heck the next word in the song is), adeiu.

Funny to come home

Snake showed me one of the "creations" made by the Bits while I was gone. It is 2 blocks taped together.

He handed it to me and said, "try to break them apart."

I took it and tried- but the tape was layers thick and I couldn't do it.

Oldest Child looked at Snake and said, "it is too hard, no one can break it apart."

Snake said, "Uh huh, Dad can. He has a table muscle."

Heehee!