I Love Fall!

Fall is my favorite time of the year. Not only are we gearing up for all the holidays but it's when the weather usually starts to cool off. You notice how I said usually. If you live in Phoenix it hasn't been very cool lately. Last week it was in the upper 80's. I think we had a few record breaking days. Now, normally I wouldn't complain about the 80's - I would take them any day over the 100's but, come on, it's November! I'm ready for it to be cold.

Well, I realized yesterday that I shouldn't complain about our 80 degree weather. Larry had a long layover in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He doesn't usually fly this far back east so I thought it would be a nice break from sunny California which is where he usually is. Well, yesterday the high in Harrisburg was 46 degrees. I think he was just a little cold. You have to realize that when he has a layover someplace he doesn't have any transportation. They have to walk everywhere they go. Sometimes they do a lot of walking but yesterday Larry opted to stay in his hotel room and only go out when his stomach demanded it.

He called me while he was at breakfast. There was an interesting item on the menu that he had never heard of. With his breakfast he had the choice of bacon, sausage or scrapple. The waitresses description of scrapple was "left over pork products that are deep fried" YUM! Needless to say he passed on the scrapple and went with the bacon. When I googled this interesting sounding food one of the definitions I found was "Pork Mush - The Pennsylvania Treat". I think he should have tried it. What is it we're always telling our kids "You can't say you don't like it until you've at least tasted it". I think the deciding factor was when the waitress said "it's worse than hotdogs". I probably wouldn't have tried it either after hearing that.

Larry will be home tonight and I think he's grateful for the warmer weather we have here. He has the next 8 days off to enjoy the beautiful Arizona Fall weather. I love it!

The Big Day Is Finally Here!

The countdown is almost at an end. Finally! The girls in this family have been anxiously awaiting the release of Twilight. It's all Haley has been able to talk about this week. She has been reading non-stop trying to get the book read one more time before she sees the movie. Yes she is going to the midnight showing tonight with my sisters. NO I'm not going. I have read the books and am definitely a fan but I'm not a crazy fan. I will be seeing it on Saturday morning after all the fanatics have had their turn. This is Haley before school today. She is all decked out in her new t-shirt - which she paid $22 for (I don't think I've ever paid that much for a t-shirt).

She is taking a camera so I'm sure we'll have lots of fun pictures to document this awesome event!

To all of you who are going tonight - Have a great time and I'll be thinking of you as I close my eyes and drift off to sleep!

Postcards for Petr

I am asking for help on a very special project that a good friend of mine is working on. Iveta (my friend) lives in New York but she was born and raised in Czech Republic. This project is for a young boy named Petr. He is 12 years old and lives in Czech. She has started a postcard collection for him. Her goal is to have a postcard sent to him in Czech from each of the 50 states. The hardest part is that they have to be sent from each individual state so that they show that states postmark. As of today they have collected 29 of the states. She is asking for help from anyone who might live in one of the uncollected states or knows someone who lives there that might help.

All you need to do is buy a postcard, write a short hello to Petr, add .94 cents postage and mail it to the following address:

Petr Gutweil
Oldrichova 42
128 00 Praha 2
CZECH REPUBLIC

If you put your e-mail address on the card he will send you a thank-you with a picture of himself holding your postcard. (this part is optional)

The states in white are the ones they still need. They're also listed below.

Alabama (AL)
California (CA)
Connecticut (CT)
Delaware (DE)
Hawaii (HI)
Idaho (ID)
Kansas (KA)
Kentucky (KY)
Louisiana (LA)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Mississippi (MS)
New Mexico (NM)
North Dakota(ND)
Oklahoma (OK)
Oregon (OR)
Rhode Island (RI)
South Dakota (SD)
Tennessee (TN)
Wyoming (WY)

Thank you to anyone who is willing to help with this wonderful project! Below is the link to Petr's blog if you want to read more about it and watch the progress.

http://postcardsforpetr.blogspot.com/

Birthday Fun!

What do you get when you take seven 9 year olds to the bowling alley? Craziness and a whole lot of embarrassment! This is what Nate chose to do for his birthday this year and I'm sooooo glad it's over. These boys were so excited to be there they could hardly contain themselves. I couldn't get them to sit down - they all hovered around the ball return, they kept bowling prematurely which resulted in stuck balls that needed to be rescued by the employees, they spilt soda all over the floor and they were extremely loud. But ... they had a great time and that's all that matters!

Great Action Shots

Trying to get these boys to smile for a serious shot was impossible.

Halloween

Wheew! What a night. Halloween is deinitely a much more exciting holiday (is it really a holiday?) when it falls on the weekend. My neighborhood was crazy last night. Party's everywhere - the streets lined with cars - and hundreds of trick-or-treaters.

Here's the Hanna gang costume line-up.

Cowgirl Haley

Ninja Nate

Indiana Jones
Jake

You can't be Indiana Jones without that sexy chest hair - could of done without the red kool-aid mustache

Young Indiana Jones
Jaxson
My kids surprised me this year. They pooped out after just a few streets. We had to take a 5 minute break and sit on the curb to rest their feet. Jaxson did much better this year. He only walked into 2 houses as opposed to almost every house last year, he didn't try to take the entire candy bowl and he said "Oh, Thank You" every time. He had a small candy bucket so I brought a bag to empty it into when it filled up. Well, the first time I did this he got really mad at me - guess he thought he wasn't going to get it back.

I should of known not to try it again but he was losing candy all over the place because it was too full. So I took it by force and dumped it in my bag. He refused to do anymore trick-or-treating after that. We walked home where he said to my mom "I don't like trick-or-treating. I don't want to go no more". I guess I ruined it for him - I'm such a mean mom.

Afterwards Haley took off and went to a party with her friends and the boys and I went over to our friends the Woolf's to have soup and hang out. They live in a cul-de-sac where the kids played and the adults sat around the fire pit and visited. Yes I know, it was a bit warm for a fire but believe it or not by the end of the evening we were inching closer to the warmth. It was a great night and we had a lot of fun. The only thing that would have made it better was if Larry could have been here with us. He was sitting in a Hotel room somewhere in California (Fresno I think). We miss you dad.