Trick-or-treating, here I come!

Well, all my worry was for naught! The testimony actually went ahead of schedule (a small miracle, given the fact that they're usually behind, not ahead!), and I just finished up my portion of it. Now, I can catch my flight home tomorrow and make it in time to get Elizabeth dressed, go to a few friends' houses for trick or treating, then head to our church carnival! Yippee!

Not to mention the wonderful fact that this horrendous project is also FINISHED! Double yippee!

Halloween terror

Last night, Elizabeth, David, and I dressed up in our Halloween costumes and went to Carolyn's house for her annual Halloween party. Elizabeth got a big kick out of seeing herself in her costume, as well as Daddy being Robin Hood and Mommy "wearing a birthday hat"...aka Maid Marion.



(Yes, for those of you who recognize it, that is one of the old dresses inherited from a Bridger aunt.)

Everything was going great. Elizabeth was buzzing around and flapping her wings like an excited little bumblebee.




When we got to Carolyn's house, she practiced for Halloween night by ringing the doorbell, shyly saying "Trick or Treat," getting candy and saying, "Thank you."

Then, disaster struck. Carolyn's nephew, Omar - who Elizabeth was completely infatuated with the night before - came in wearing a pretty frightening Scream mask and grim reaper's costume, complete with pumping blood.



To make matters worse, David pretended to be frightened by him, just to provide excitement to a 7-year-old boy's Halloween. This put Elizabeth into a frenzy of terror. She started screaming frantically and threw herself at me, desperately trying to claw her way to safety. It took several minutes for us to calm her down and try to explain that it was just Omar in a scary costume, but she still didn't want anything to do with him (or even his brother, who was dressed in a not-even-remotely-scary Snowman costume) for the rest of the night. Based on that response, as well as the way she's been talking about how scary it was all day today, we're not so sure she's ready for much trick-or-treating this year. So, the new plan is to take her to her 2 friends' houses in the neighborhood, then head to the carnival they're having at our church. We're thinking the costumes at church may be toned down a little bit more than average, plus she'll be able to play with all her friends.

I'm still pretty bummed about missing the Halloween carnival at church, but am glad I got to experience the dress rehearsal....complete with fingernail marks on my neck!

I'm officially Mrs. "Mr. Mom"

I have to go out of town next week for work to testify in an arbitration. I've known about it for a while, but they never gave me the exact dates - they just told me my testimony would only be one day, but asked me to reserve Oct. 29-Nov. 2 and told me they'd let me know closer to the time which day they'd need me. Then, for a while, they kept telling me the case was probably going to settle, but to just keep the dates open just in case. So, I tried to put the possibility of being out of town on Halloween out of my mind.

Well, my bubble got burst yesterday in our pre-trial prep call when they told me that it's definitely going forward and I will most likely have to testify in the afternoon on Oct. 31, so I will need to be there from Oct. 30-Nov 1.

I'm so bummed about missing Halloween with Elizabeth. It's the first year she's really getting into it. She's been practicing saying "trick or treat" for weeks now and just this morning when I got her out of bed, she asked if today was Halloween because she's ready to wear her costume.

I just keep re-playing the scene from Mr. Mom in my head. The one where she leaves her family all dressed for Halloween to go on a business trip.....



Anyone know a good way to tell your client that you'd really love to complete the project you've been working on for almost a year, and you understand they have $10 million on the line and your testimony is critical, but your little girl is going to be a bumblebee and you can't miss it? :(

More pics from the weekend

We've made it home from our trip to see the Hobbs cousins. We're all exhausted after the weekend of fun, so I can't imagine how Aunt Erin is feeling, after staying up most of the nights with Bridger!

Elizabeth has been whimpering on and off all day because she wants to go back to "Cousin Brooke's house." She and Brooke really had a good time playing together. Their 2 favorite games seemed to be Hide & Seek - which was not very challenging for the adults, but lots of fun for the kids - and running up and down the upstairs hallway with their blankets. When they were together, there was usually a lot of laughing and squealing going on!

Here are the rest of the pics we took:

Visiting the Hobbs family

We're having a great visit with Aunt Erin, Uncle Brad, Brooke, and Bridger this weekend! Just keeping up with the 3 kids has been enough to keep all the adults hopping (and exhausted)! We have, however, had a chance to take some fun outings, including a trip to Monkey Joe's (an indoor playground with lots of inflatable toys to bounce on) and a trip through the local corn maze.

Baby Bridger (or should I say Baby Brooke #2?) is absolutely adorable. He would have to be - he's an absolute clone of his big sister. We pulled out pictures of Brooke as an infant and truly could not tell the difference between the 2 of them! He's still keeping Aunt Erin very sleep-deprived, but unfortunately that's what babies do!

The girls have done a great job "helping" us take care of Bridger. They love to give him hugs, kisses, and pats. And, they both take turns helping feed him whenever he needs a bottle. Overall, they've gotten along pretty well. They've had a few "sharing" incidents, but hey, they're 2 years old - what can you really expect?

Here are a few pictures to keep you going until I have a chance to post more:

Learning to share

Elizabeth finally seems to be getting closer to normal after her icky stomach bug this week. She hasn't thrown up since Monday, but she's been pretty lethargic and inactive for the rest of the week. We were really glad that David stays home with her, so we didn't have to cancel work or scramble around for last-minute childcare for the whole week!

We've really been working on getting Elizabeth to share, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she decided to share her stomach bug with both me and Gran! Poor Gran babysat for us on Sunday afternoon (apparently right after Elizabeth contracted the bug at the church nursery). For her effort, she got the privilege of re-acquainting herself with the intimate details of her toilet and ended up having to take some time off work this week that she really couldn't afford. Sorry, Gran!

I also came down with it, and had one pretty miserable night, but seem to have bounced back quicker than Elizabeth and Gran have.

We hope she'll be completely back to normal before we head down to Atlanta this week to visit Cousins Brooke and Bridger.

Since I figure you don't want to see any more sick kid pictures, here's a video we took last weekend of Elizabeth "reading" from 'The Cat in the Hat.' (Sure it's only memorized, but it's still cute!)

The first sign....

The first sign your active two-year-old has a stomach bug is when you come home from work and find them like this:






The second (and third and fourth and fifth....) sign is even more obvious! Poor Elizabeth has a nasty stomach bug and has been throwing up pretty much non-stop for the last few hours. We hope she feels better soon!

Old Fort Harrod State Park

On Saturday morning, we went to Old Fort Harrod State Park in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. We decided to go after my dad told us about a beautiful large osage orange tree that is located at the park. We had a good time exploring the tree and walking through the fort replica, catching up on a bit of Kentucky history. Turns out Fort Harrod was the "first permanent settlement" in the state of Kentucky (which was actually Virginia at the time). Of course, David had an interesting point....if nobody is living there now, can we truly say it was a "permanent" settlement? Guess that's one for the scholars to debate.

Elizabeth was a good sport while we strolled around. Of course, her favorite parts of the trip were the three goats corralled in the middle of the fort and the playground. Here she is continuing to learn the fine art of horseback riding:

Annual pumpkin farm trip

Last weekend, we made our annual trip to Boyd's Orchard....aka, the pumpkin farm. We actually went to pick apples, but we were a little late in the season for that. But, the fall extravaganza at Boyd's was in full swing, so we took advantage of the rest of the activities they had going on there, including a mini-train ride, a pony ride, and, of course, apple cider and apple fritters smothered in bourbon sauce....YUM!










And, here are some comparison shots from our previous trips:

2006:



2005:



She's definitely not a baby anymore!

Jonathan was in Alabama last weekend, so he missed out on the fun, but here's a picture of him playing in the back yard with Lyra last week: