Last night we carved pumpkins in the garage.

It was a pretty standard event. Cut top, scoop guts, carve face.

Since Daddy was using a knife, E had to get his “baby knife” and do the same thing.

X had a lot of work to do on the inside of the huge pumpkin.

We actually scraped to0 hard inside E’s pumpkin causing a giant hole to form in the bottom.

We still carved the Jack-O-Lantern’s face. despite the hole. Which E found lots of enjoyment with.

He liked the face so much he insisted I do another face on the  other side.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I noticed he was doing “the potty dance”. I asked him if he needed to go and he kept saying no [he didn't want to go inside].

I was fearful he would pee his pants so I told him we could go in the grass.

Within seconds he ran out of the garage and [stearnly] told me not to come with him.

So  I stood back with my camera.

He literally is 1 step out of the garage here peeing directly at Randy & Prem’s house.

The mixture of amusement and awe [that he was already competent enough to do this on his own] had me in tears. Ryan and I could not stop laughing.

He came back into the garage beaming with pride and confidence.

My friend from forever,  Sam,  emailed one of those survey forwards yesterday.  In lieu of responding directly to her I thought it would be fun to record my answers here (since this is my current journal/scrapbook).

1. What time did you get up this morning? Yesterday afternoon at 4 pm

2. Diamonds or Pearls? Pearls (if they’re silver)

3.  What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Fame

4. What do you usually have for breakfast? Special K Red Berries

5. What is your favorite TV show? So You Think You Can Dance

6. What is your middle name? Marie

7. What food do you dislike? steak

8. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Breaking Benjamin: Dear Agony

9. What kind of car do you drive? Honda Pilot

10. Favorite Sandwich? Chicken Salad

11. Personal characteristic you don’t like? Not looking people in the eye

12. Favorite item of clothing? Possibly this once I buy it.

13. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Italy (September 2010!)

14. Favorite Brand of clothing? Banana Republic

15. Where would you like to retire? Napa, CA

16. What was your most recent memorable birthday? 30 (in NYC)

17. Favorite sport to watch? Dancing (does that count?)

18. Random fact? I just read the People magazine TWILIGHT edition cover to cover (even though I despise pop culture magazines)

19. Are you a morning or night person? Both.

20. What is your shoe size? 9.5

21. Pets you want or have? I Have a male cat named Princess and a male bunny named Bella

22. Exciting news? I’m off work for the next 8 days!

23. What did you want to be when you were little? a Rock Star

24. How are you today? Fabulous! It’s my week off!

25. What is your favorite candy? Starburst jelly beans

26. What is your favorite flower? daisy

27. What day are you most looking forward to on your calendar? Wednesday, 11/4 – E and I are going to spend the day together

28. What are you listening to right now? Bella (the bunny) drinking water and the hum of the wine fridge.

29. What was the last thing you ate? French toast made with Nature’s Own Wheat n’ Fiber bread and egg whites.

30. Do you wish on stars? No.

31. If you were a crayon what color would you be? Lincoln Park after Midnight (my favorite nail polish color)

32. The first person you spoke to on the phone today? It would probably be breaking HIPAA if I was honest; otherwise Ryan was the first non-customer person I talked to today.

33. Favorite soft drink? Diet Mt. Dew

34. Favorite restaurant? Maggiano’s

35. What is your true hair color? whatever you call what it is now….dirty blonde? That’s what X called it the other day.

36. Favorite toy as a child? Scrabble

37. Summer or Winter? In Texas…winter.

38. Hugs or kisses? Both

39. Chocolate or Vanilla? Vanilla

40. Coffee or Tea? (As if everyone doesn’t know this about me)….Coffee!

41. When was the last time you cried? Last night when I was laughing super hard at E peeing (post about that coming later today).

42. What is under your bed? cereal (I don’t know that for a fact but if I had to guess)

43. What did you do last night? Carved pumpkins, watched SYTYCD on TIVO, then went to work.

44. What are you afraid of? my camera breaking or running out of coffee (equally frightening!)

45. Favorite day of the week? FRIDAY!!

46. How many years at your current job? 7.5

47. How many towns have you lived in? Six (Cincinnati, Bright, Lexington, W. Lafayette, Houston, San Antonio)

48. Most annoying thing ever? Desiccant packets in pill bottles

I added that last question because I had to vent a bit. I get sooo angy when pills won’t come out of a bottle because a desiccant paceket is tuck in the opening. So I shake harder and then  the pills fly all over the place when the stupid packet finally comes out. It really makes my blood boil….can you tell?

James and I

This is about the only picture from Saturday night’s Halloween party that I have to post.  The others either didn’t turn out very well (I was forced to use a flash) or they have a few non-PG-rated costumes.

My vampire costume that I ordered on-line turned out pretty nice. I think someone commented that I made the perfect vampire since I was so white. And looking at this picture of James and I only confirms my pastey-ness and need for some sun.

Sunshine which will not, as a matter of fact, make me sparkle.

Go Team Jacob!

of our Pirate….

who people think looks like a Gypsy.

We bought an eye patch to remedy that issue.

Oh my dear E.

Every day he does something that just makes me stand back and take a sobering breath of reality. He’s growing up so fast!

This past weekend he may as well been holding up a sign that read “Will work for candy” because that’s all he wanted to do.

The boy has become obsessed with candy.

He’ll say to me, “I’ll be your helper for a special treat”.

On Sunday afternoon I gave in and asked him to help me with the laundry.

Typically he wants me to be there helping him do the chore but not this time. He did it all by himself.

He took a whole load of towels from the washer put them in the dryer AND put a dryer sheet in there before closing the door and telling me he was ready for his candy.

He picked out a box of NERDS from the candy basket, ate them, then asked to do more laundry for me.

If you had troubles from the link on the last post, I apologize. (I did it at 9am after not sleeping for many many hours!)

Follow these steps:

CLICK HERE for the Casting Call’s main site.

Then type my full name-no spaces- in the “search entries” field:  kellynewcom

That should pull up X’s entry with no problems.

Click on VOTE and it will ask you to Log In or Register in a pop up box.

The web site does run slow sometimes as an FYI.

Any problems with this….let me know!

*Someone asked how some of the kids can have so many thousands of votes….I think they must have every person they know voting with 5 email address each every day.

I’m pretty sure she can’t catch up to them but vote everyday and we’ll try!

If you are so inclined to vote for X on the GAP website here are the details:

We’ll be voting on this entry:

(the reason I’m saying to vote on this picture is because they don’t combine votes on different entries for the same child)

Girl ID: 448552741

CLICK HERE to get to the voting site.

You will have to “register” with the site in order to vote. You can vote once per day per email address.

If you run into any issues, let me know.

Thank you!

A couple weeks back it had rained almost all weekend long. Come Sunday afternoon it stopped enough that Ryan thought he would mow the grass. (He saw others out mowing their grass so he thought he may as well despite the soggy ground and nasty humidity.)

I was in the kitchen either baking or painting the X & E’s nails (I can’t remember which-I just know I did both that day.)

All of a sudden I saw my dear husband running around the backyard screaming and flailing his arms about.

He informed me that he had just been sprayed by a skunk that was hiding under/inside the lawn mower. Apparently, Ryan’s attempt to start the lawn mower was scary enough to the skunk that it came out and sprayed him.

*Important to note that our lawn mower is stored in a “shed” that Ryan built under our deck.

In Ryan’s words, “I just stood there and took it. I should have known what he was doing but instead I just watched him do it.”

Within minutes we could start to smell it in the house. Nasty.

I jumped on-line to find the antidote. We had to borrow some vinegar from our neighbor, Prem (who took quite a bit of enjoyment out of Ryan’s distress) and he  took take a sponge bath with the vinegar/baking soda combination in the driveway.

Luckily, the antidote worked. After a couple wash-downs and a shower he was smelling good.

As for the skunk….a few bug bombs under the deck later, he has found a new home elsewhere.

OH MY GOODNESS, I am so excited to share these photos that this post is trumping all other posts that need to be done.

Last week I saw that GAP was having a “Casting Call” child model contest.  Like many Mothers, I was thinking that my child would be perfect.

So I allowed myself a GAP shopping spree for her in honor of a photo shoot. Nothing gets that girl smiling like new clothes.

I cannot deny that I enjoy shopping for the clothes as much as she enjoys receiving and wearing them.

Tuesday afternoon I told her all about the contest and what prizes were possible. The only 3 words I needed to mention were:

New. York. City.

This was the easiest photo shoot I have ever had with her.  I took 434 photos over the course of 4 wardrobe changes, 4 hairstyle changes, and 1.5 hours.

Here’s the results: (in random order)

I was allowed to submit 5 photos into the contest. Due to their server running uber slow yesterday I only got 4 photos entered (technically 1 got entered twice which took the 5th spot….let’s not talk about it though because I’m not quite over it yet.)

When I get my confirmation email giving me her  Member ID # I will post it here on the blog so everyone can go and vote for her.

Voting only makes it possible for her to win the “Fan Favorite” award. There is a separate panel of judges who actually go through and select the top 20.

It can’t hurt to be a fan favorite though!

There were rain clouds overhead the entire run so I’m not sure how well my GPS signal was. It looks like I went into some people’s back yards around miles 2, 3, 4, & 5.

After looking at this map I’m actually curious if I ran more than 10 miles. My body sure feels like I did.

My average was 12:30 min/mile. I’ll take it.

Isn’t it funny how I ran on just about every single road except the road I live on? [It's that whole "not-wanting-to-be-tempted-to-stop" issue I have.]