Not at all a long or random post!

9/10/10

A few things.

It's already cold here. Well, it gets to the 70-80's by mid afternoon, but last night the low was 37° . I am so not a fan of the huge temperature swings. I normally enjoy this time of year and get excited about fall, but now all I have is a looming sense of dread for this:

Madelyn and the snow in January

It's been less than four months since our last snowfall (May 24th!). Last winter was extremely long, extremely cold, windy and dark. I wish I had a skylight in my front room. We had just too many dreary days being cooped up in the house. Plus, I have spray painting projects I still need to do! I need it to be warm and dry at least till November!! Sigh.

However, the looming dread was mitigated somewhat by the arrival of this:

I've already sat down to look through it about three times since yesterday. I have to do it while Madelyn's not home because otherwise she hogs it. Even if I don't order anything, I can't help but smile at all the jack-o-lanterns, candy corn, glow-in-the-dark stuff, Halloween pencils, erasers and party supplies. Madelyn's school is doing a Halloween carnival this year. Now THAT I am excited for! She thinks that Halloween must be this weekend, since the catalog arrived. It's going to be a long six weeks for her.

Wednesday, I went to a local shop called Harmony Home and they had fall and Halloween decorations everywhere. I thought it best to browse there when I had no money whatsoever to spend, because here's what caught my eye:

An open bat pit????? Well, that was kind of bizarre...

DROOL....

If I bought everything in those pictures (I want two of those couches), I'd have to spend $4,500. *choke* OK, moving on....

Harmony Home is connected to Mountain West Books, which carries LDS art. I always get warm fuzzies when I see "my" painting. I was a model for Del Parson's "Christ and Young Women" painting when I was 15.

In the meantime, Madelyn was taking her first ballet lesson! (I window shop during the 45 minutes I have to kill.) :D The class she had during the summer was a ballet/jazz/creative movement/tumbling combo. She signed up for that again as well as regular ballet. She LOVES it and I am thrilled!! She is very talented!

Back at home:

This lovely creature was on our porch when Mark came home from a meeting yesterday. I think it's a Jerusalem cricket or something like that. It was almost four inches long. I was grossed out but let it be---then when I opened the door to let Madelyn in after school, this thing had moseyed up ON my threshold and IN my house! BLECH!!!! I made Mark get it the heck out of here. Brrrr.

Now check out these jeans. See what's embroidered onto the strawberries? "KKK!" (Mark, who is from the South, said we might as well burn these in the front yard with a white cross...) These were sent to us by Mark's sister in NC. She works at a Chinese restaurant and shop and regularly sends Madelyn outfits. Apparently the Chinese lady she works with had some girl clothes she was giving away, so these got sent to us along with some other things.

Um....do you think DI would object to me dumping these off on them? Hahahaha.....it's just so weird! What are those Chinese people thinking? KKK on girl's jeans. Psh.

And now for another

Mess of the Day

by Luke

I have a backlog piling up of "Mess of the day" pictures. He's making them more often than I do posts. Thanks for always supplying me with blogging material, Luke!

**Remember how we just spent our medical conference hotel money on a TV last week? Well, Mark just called to inform me that now he has mandatory training at his office (they're switching to electronic records) during the time we were supposed to be going to Newport Beach and Disneyland. Dang. I guess it's good we hadn't booked the hotel yet, but boy is Madelyn going to be angry.........