Pumpkins everywhere

The other night we had a knock at the door. When Isabella went to look, no one was there. There was, however, a pumpkin full of candy and stickers and stuff. It also had a sign that said "Boo" and instructions to post the sign on the door, then make up 2 more baskets with signs and deliver them to two other neighbors. The goal was to see how far it would go before Halloween. So, we made up to baskets and went looking for houses to leave them with. It was harder than I thought! There were boo signs everywhere. We are enjoying the community in this new neighborhood!
Monday night we got a pumpkin and Isabella and I carved it. We had a great time.


Isabella helped carry it outside and was very excited to see it on the front porch.

What's this taste like?

A couple of nights ago Isabella wanted to play with play dough, so we let Zach try it too. When we started, he decided to taste it. He wrinkled his nose and said "yuck." After that, he would be fine until we made something new. Then, he'd look at it and taste again. Same result. He must have tried 10 different times, but it never got any better. :-)

Babysitting

Last weekend, we babysat for our friend's little girl. The kids had a great time with her.
Isabella enjoyed feeding time.


Zach wanted desperately to hold the "baby baby baby!" after his bath.

Then Isabella got a turn...
Then Zach decided that she should hold him!

Hoosier and the Playscape

When we put the play scape in, I thought Hoosier would like it if he could get up to the second level and be able to look around. At first he couldn't do it without help, but now he goes up and down with no encouragement at all. Here's a little movie of him going up when he was still figuring out how to do it.

Haircut Movie

I was having trouble getting this to upload last night, so I'm doing it today. She was very cute... but that goes without saying. :-)

Isabella's Haircut

For the last couple of months Isabella has been saying she wanted a haircut. We kind of hoped she'd forget about it or change her mind, but she didn't. So, today we went to get it cut. She had 10 inches cut off, so she was able to donate it to locks of love. Here are a few pictures.

Indiana Trip

Last weekend, Liza and Zach went to Indiana for Liza's friend Andrea's wedding. Here are some pictures from their time there.

Zach with his newest little cousin, Melayna.

Zach just loves babies. He likes to give kisses.

Mommy was finally able to wrestle her away...

Zach loves kitties too. This one is Jack.

Here Zach and Marissa have lunch in Grammie's kitchen. Once the got past the pushing, they got along pretty well.

Liza and Andrea at the reception.

Zach and his cousin Lucas.

Zach and Marissa try out a duet.

Zach likes spending time with Papaw.


Zach and Grammie at the airport before heading back home.

Adventures in plumbing

Today when Isabella went down for her nap (after we went to Chuck E Cheese's with Katie and Andy) I decided that I would put the shelves up in the garage. I've been meaning to get that done for a long time I thought, "what better time to do it then when Liza is gone and I can surprise her when she gets back in town?"

So, I got on the ladder and put the top piece where I thought it would be good and drove my pilot nail. I hit a stud on the first try. I went over two holes and hit another stud. Turns out that the smart people who designed the shelves knew the normal spacing of studs in a typical wall. How handy. I got it all level and screwed in to place, and then I started putting in the vertical supports that hold the shelving brackets. There were four pieces with 4 screws down the wall for each. They all went in to the stud, so all was well.

I got them all put up and started putting on the shelves. When I put on the bottom shelf, the 3rd rung pulled out from the wall and I could tell that the screw had not hit the stud. Strange. I pulled it out and tried a longer screw. It hit air as well. That was weird. So, it took the longer screw and tried it in the bottom hole on that one. It hit a stud and I screwed it in.

Then I went to work putting the stuff that had been all over one side of the garage up on the shelves. All was well until I saw water coming out the bottom of the sheet rock below the last screw I had put in. I got the drill and backed it out and then I really heard the spray of water. I put it right back in and had to contain the desire to curse. A lot. I called my mom and she said to go turn off the water to the house. Good idea. I did that after a mad scramble to figure out where one might do that and then had to call a plumber.

I found that Rotorooter is the one and only plumber that does not charge extra on Saturday (before 7pm) and they got someone over within a half hour. I pulled out the sheet rock around where I had put the screw in and saw that if I had been a 1/2 inch in any direction I would have missed it completely. It did a nice gentle 's' curve right though that space. I decided then it must just be an "character building" event gift from God because the chances of hitting it were so slim.

I then took Isabella out to show her what happened. She said, "Why did you break the wall?" "I had to cut it out to get to the place where I put the screw through the water pipe."
She replied, "Why would you put a screw through a water pipe?" I had no response to that.

The plumber showed up and said "no problem" and started to work. She cut the part out that I hit and then started roughing up the copper on the top part, then the bottom part of the pipe. As soon as she touched the bottom part, it came off in her hand. She came and got me and said, "I know why you hit that pipe." "Really?" I replied. "Yes, if you had not hit it, then this would have burst on its own. Who knows if you would have been home or at work or what. It would have caused a lot of damage."

It was nice to see that, though it was a character building event, it was also a blessing in disguise and I got to genuinely practice "being thankful in all things."

Don't stand so, don't stand so, don't stand so close to me

You may be thinking "the police" with that title, but I'm thinking of (surprise) Isabella. Yesterday she went to stay with Ashley and Katie all day while I (Chris) was a work. Ashley told me that Katie was so excited to have her there, that she followed her around all day and tried to be as close to her as possible. While watching TV, she sat next to Isabella with her arm around her. Then, when Isabella had to go to the potty, she came in and stood next to her and put her arm around Isabella again. This time, Isabella thought it had gone too far. She said, "Katie, would you please not put your arm around me while I'm going poop-stink?" Katie relented. All in all Isabella enjoyed the attention, but sometimes a good thing can be too much. :-)

Playscape

For Zach & Isabella's birthdays, their Nonny & Papasito (Chris' Mom & step-dad) decided to build a play scape for them. Since we were moving in to a new house with a big back yard, they wanted the kids to have something play on in the back yard.

They worked on plans for one to build, but the fact that the ground is filled with large limestone rocks was offputting. When mom was here earlier in the fall, we went in to Sams and she saw the playscape on display there. That was it. That was what she had been imagining.

So, a couple of weeks ago we went to Sams to buy the playscape, but it turned out that they had sold them all but the display. So, we bought that one and had it delivered by a guy that builds them here in Austin. You would think that having one pre-built instead of a huge box with 98 (no joke) steps and a 16 hours minimum to assemble would be great, but it presented it's own challenges.

Here you can see the playscape in 4 pieces as it arrived at our house at 8am on Saturday morning.


We had to take down a section of fence to get it in to the back yard.

The delivery guy helped Vince and I get it in to the back yard, but we had to wait for more help to move it to its final place.
The kids were so excited. They wanted to play on it even before it was put together.

Here is Zach in the tunnel that goes across the top of the swings.

At 11 we had several friends come over to help carry it to the back of the yard and then level it. We had to pick it up from one side to the other as we got the ground leveled out beneath it.

Here it is after we had the major parts put together, but if you look at the slats on the front and bottom, you can see that whoever built it for the store was unfamiliar with a level. :-) They slapped it together pretty quickly with out a high regard for the instructions. So, we ended up taking a lot of it apart, including the top play house section, and putting it back together straight and level.

Here are Zach and I up in the play house.

Here are Zach and Isabella having a great time swinging.

Hoosier has discovered that he can see a lot more of the neighborhood from the top. We put up a baby gate to make sure that Zach won't fall off the end. There is a climbing wall that goes up to it that they'll be able to use when they are older.

Zach and Hoosier were hanging out. He really loves the slide... Zach that is, not Hoosier so much. You can see that we straighted up the slats in this picture. It is all pretty much plum now.
The kids have already had so much fun on the new playscape. Thanks to Nonny and Papasito SO MUCH for buying it and putting it together!