Happy Halloweenies to you

How'dya like the new look? I liked so many of Lena's designs I had trouble choosing one. Check her out!

Happy Halloween! I promised earlier in the week to get back with you on the results of my informal random study of which presidential candidate had more signs in yards that were decorated for Halloween*....and the winner is....Obama! By a massive margin of 4 to 1! Does this mean his supporters are more festive than McCain's? Or perhaps, McCain's supporters are more religious and opposed to this holiday? I dunno! The real question is, are people who decorate for Halloween more likely to vote than people who do not? If so, my little study could be indicative of next week's election results.

I neglected to mention last time that baby Juju is now 10 pounds 8 ounces and 22 inches long!

Oooh! I also found the day after I posted my last post that the local paper did a write up on that same house I featured in Modern Day Mayberry! Check it out here! Speaking of our little town, John McCain must think we're pretty important to this election as he's coming to visit today. He's speaking at the baseball field in our lovely Tuscora Park.


*see last post for more details regarding my study.

Over the weekend we had two big fun events. Saturday, we got together at our pastor's house with a great deal of the rest of our starter church and played crazy games, sang songs and had fun. Sunday, we had a birthday party in Mansfield with Ben's siblings and had yet more fun. We ended the day by taking our kids trick or treating. I had brought my amazing bargain costume I found for Z at a "Once Upon a Child" store. Half price and was an awesome race car, just needed new straps to hold it up. At work Ben found two seat belts from an airplane and sewed them in, it was a custom made bargain! Of course, he wouldn't wear it! Thankfully, Aunt Missy had a bin full of costumes and he had lots to choose from. Aunt Biz got him to wear the dinosaur outfit, so we called it good. Here's Aunt Biz and our picky dinosaur before his first time out begging for candy:

And our scary nephew and nieces:

We have three more events that Z could potentially dress up for, perhaps we'll try the car again, but we were sent home with the dino just in case. Thanks Aunt Missy!

Modern Day Mayberry

This is a house in our town that I gawk at every time I drive by. Once, I went by at night and the little house in the back had five ghosts on top of it all blown up and glowing. There were lights on lots of the lawn decorations too. This house is not representative of our town by far, but I must say, our little Modern Day Mayberry decorates for Halloween more than any town that I've ever lived in, and I've lived in a lot of towns.

Guess what? Next week is the election, I know, you're surprised! Well, I got thinking...how many of the people that decorate for Halloween are voting for Obama and how many are voting for McCain? So, I did an informal random study. I drove around my town to places I was going anyways and if a house had BOTH a presidential campaign sign AND Halloween decorations, I took a tally. I did not count benign Fall decorations, just Halloween, which excluded nice looking scare crows and pumpkins without faces. Surprisingly, I didn't find that many houses that had BOTH a campaign sign AND Halloween decorations, though I saw many of each separately. I'm just dying to tell you my findings, but I think I'm going to wait, just to keep you in suspense. On Halloween, I'll share the results of my study. I'd love to hear any guesses you might have as to which candidate had more Halloween festivities shared on voter's lawns. Yes, I know it's silly, but why not?

which is which?

Here's a couple of photo comparisons of our kids at the same age. Z's on the left, Juju on the right for both.


On Monday I had my first day all by myself. My mom left for Iowa to be with her parents for a while. It went better than I expected. It's a good thing I've recuperated like speedy lightning as it is quite a transition to go from one to two kids.

I've created a schedule to keep us organized. I've heard that pregnancy brain can last up to six months after the birth. Studies have shown that the grey matter in the brain actually shrinks in pregnancy by a certain percentage...that I can't remember, so it's not my imagination. I put my glass in the fridge yesterday instead of the milk and have twice tried to put Z's diapers on Juju. Note, he wears the largest diaper (size 6) and Juju is in was in the smallest when I did this.

Speaking of diapers, I transitioned Juju to cloth diapers yesterday. They need changed more frequently which makes it QUITE often as I was already changing her every other hour. But they're SO much more fun with snaps and colors though they're mostly boyish colors as Z wore them first.

Juju is nearly sleeping through the night already which feels like a miracle after all the trouble we had with getting Z to do that. He was a year and a half the first time he slept through the night and two before he did so regularly. He still has bad nights about 25 % of the time. Juju takes a while to get to sleep, 11:30pm is late for me, but then she has a five hour stretch of sleep before she wakes herself up pootin'. Then I feed her and she goes another two hours before she poots again. She's so noisy when she's tooting and eating that I have to take her to the other room for that second half of the night. She also grunts in her sleep, a lot. She's getting a reputation at our church as the grunty baby. She loves to sleep, more than she loves to eat, she loves to sleep.

Here's a pic my mom took of Z before she left

I love it when babies lips do this!

My silly cheese ball.