That didn't work out as planned

The World Series ended very sadly.  That's all I'm saying about that.

Yesterday was Halloween, trick or treating was postponed in our town because of a ridiculous amount of snow.  Yes, snow.  Quite a bit of it.  In October.  Is this a foreshadowing of the winter to come?  This has got me really reconsidering my life choices. 

Not all my life choices are poorly thought out, however.  Yesterday I made a very wise purchase.  Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, Kenny and Margaret:

You can't see it in the picture, but their heads are on springs and they bob around!  They're an awesome addition to my other living room decor.  I have Johan, the turquoise giraffe, Judy, the flower girl zombie doll who's riding on the back of Angus, the metal rooster and, of course, the rainbow unicorn head mounted on the wall.  I realized today that the unicorn doesn't have a name.  Then I realized that it's Heidi.  I don't name these objects, they name themselves, people.  Missing from the menagerie is Ben, the margarita drinking flamingo.  He's still down in Houston at the girl's house.  I think they've claimed him as their own and he won't be coming back home to me.  Spread your wings and fly little guy, see the world!  I left him in good hands.

Yesterday, after I got them home, I noticed that somewhere between me picking her up from the shelf in the thrift store and getting her home, Margaret lost her left eye.  I think it happened when her head bounced off while I was in the check-out line.  I'm debating whether or not I should find a replacement, or just let it be.  It kind of gives her that rogue, devil-may-care alley cat look that you just can't fake, it's gotta come naturally. 

Take it back, baby!!

Okay, it's time to confess.  I'm a baseball junkie.  I love me some Astros and they're doing awesome right now.  They're ahead 3-2 in the World Series and hopefully tomorrow night they get all trophied up. 

Ok, now that I've got that off my chest we can go on to other things. 

This morning my darling 3rd child was horribly traumatized by my husband.  It started with a simple text:  Dad, how much do I owe you?  The response?  "You owe me your life.  You're lucky I was horny that day and your mom's so hot."  To which, the horrified child replied:  Ew ew ew  I MEANT how much money do I owe you for the plane tickets to Houston and to make sure I never have to hear you say that ever again?

He's probably broken for life now.

At work today we were making up little candy bags as gifts/bribes for instructors to lure the into the bookstore and tell us what books they're requiring for the winter & spring terms so we can order them before the students start filing in looking for them.  We needed 37 bags and were supposed to put about a dozen pieces of candy in each bag.  Once we realized that we had WAY more candy than we were going to need, we got a little more selective in filling the bags, strategically keeping back the good candy for ourselves and placing the icky candy, like the Nerds and the dark chocolate, into the goody bags.  We're obviously not idiots.

⚾  GO 'STROS!!!! ⚾

RIP Eddie

I think I mentioned a while ago that hubs brought  home a gecko in his luggage last time he came home from Hawaii.  We named him Eddie and let him wander around the house to his heart's content.  He was all over the place, we'd see him in the kitchen, bedroom closet, bathroom, everywhere.  Then we'd not see him for a day or two and he'd show up again someplace completely different.  Well, the other day he chose a bad spot to sit and chill and hubs accidentally stepped on him on his way out the door.  I found his lifeless body about an hour later.  So, there went our brief foray into having a roommate living with us.

In other exciting news, the Astros are doing pretty good in the playoffs.  GO 'STROS!!!  Hubs doesn't get my fascination with baseball, but will sit and watch the games with me like a trooper.  What a great guy.  He even puts up with me yelling at the screen in the vain attempt to make them hear me and accept my sage baseball advice or to change a really stupid call.  My grandma used to do that with the Green Bay Packers so I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  My other grandparents used to turn the Brewer game on the radio and sit out on their screen porch in the dark and quietly listen to the game, those are some of my greatest memories of them.  So between the Packers hollering grandma and the nightly Brewers games in the dark on the other side of the family, I am truly a product of my environment.  Last month I went to the Brewers home game when they were playing the Astros.  I wore my Astros jersey and had a great time.  Fortunately Wisconsin baseball fans aren't nasty to opposing teams fans, I've heard stories otherwise at other stadiums and other sports.  But here things were great and at the end of the game I even got high-fives from the Brewers fans sitting in front of us at the end of the game (the Astros won it in extra innings).  It was a great experience I was both proud to be an Astros fan, but also to be a Wisconsinite where people are so stinking nice.

Can I still call her my baby?

My baby, my youngest angel, my final attempt at creating the perfect child turned 21 years old today. That's pretty freaking crazy if you ask me.  All my kids are full fledged, alcohol drinking able adults now.  And if that's not enough to make me feel my mortality, another one of the kiddos got engaged this weekend.  Yep, Angel #1 proposed to the woman of his dreams on Saturday and they're getting married next year.  I wonder if this is how it's going to be, a wedding every year until they're all married off, then the grand babies will start coming.  That's what happens when you have your kids all in a row like I did.  So I've got plans to be in Miami in December of next year.  :)  The cool thing is that it was my idea to tour Villa Vizcaya last weekend, the kids liked it so much they went back this weekend and that's where he popped the question.  So that's my contribution to the engagement, besides birthing the groom-to-be.

This weekend we went up to visit WE and his wife.  We went out to dinner with our friends/daughter-in-laws parents on Friday and Saturday night both, which is always a good time.  They're such great friends and I'm so glad that we're sort of shirt-tail related to each other through our kids.  I feel so fortunate that not only do I love my son's choice for a wife, but I love her family as well.  I don't know Angel #1's prospective mother-in-law real well yet, we've only met her a couple of times and her English is limited, but from what I DO know of her, she's an incredible women.  #1's fiance and her twin sister were only 2 months old when their father was killed. Her mother raised those two little girls along with their 2 older brothers by herself, after moving to the US.  Can you imagine moving to a foreign country, not knowing the language, with 4 little kids all by yourself?  Not only that, she did an incredibly awesome job in the raising of those kids and they're all college educated adults with successful careers and good lives.  How can you not admire someone like that.  Plus, she already considers my little boy her son and it makes me feel good that even though he lives so far away, he's got family nearby who care about him.  Everybody wins!

Florida survived me

We had a wonderful weekend in Miami with my little boy and his girlfriend.  On Friday we went out for Honduran food, she's originally from Honduras, so we had her order for us and it was delicious! We went for a loooong walk on Saturday.  The kids live about a mile from the ocean, so we walked there, through Little Havana, the downtown area and then down to Brickell Key and walked around there, looking at the big yachts going by. 

On Sunday we went and toured Villa Vizcaya, a beautiful mansion built about 100 years ago.  It was falling into disrepair when the owners donated it to the county and it's slowly being repaired.  The inside of the house is pretty much done and is beautiful.  The gardens are huge and so much fun to wander around it.  My favorite thing was the barge though.  It's a big cement breakwater made to look like a ship.  Back in the day it had palm trees and gazebos on it and it looked very elegant, today it looks more like a shipwreck, so still cool, but in a different way.  If you're ever in Miami, I highly recommend taking a look.

So, now we're back home and settling back into life, until we head out again this weekend, this time to see WE and his wife.  We haven't seen them since August, which is pretty sad since they're the kids we actually live closest to.

Off we go again

After a fairly uneventful week, we're on the road again.  This time it's Miami to see Angel #1.  I haven't been down there in about 2 years, so it'll be nice to see him in his native habitat.  Though with my traveling track record, Florida will probably be hit with a hurricane.  I've managed to get Harvey, Sandy and tropical storm Imelda already, so it's just a matter of time before I decimate the Sunshine State as well.   In my defense, the volcanoes didn't blow until a month after I left Hawaii, so I can hardly be responsible for that.  I'm only a hurricane magnet, other natural disasters are on their own.

We had one of our typical Saturdays today.  First we went to Franks Diner, a very old diner with great greasy food, a sassy staff and always a line and a crowd.  It's a fun place to go, apparently it's the oldest continuously run dining car in America, though I'm not sure who exactly was keeping track.  There's always a line to get in, so it's not one of those grab and go quickly stops, but the waiting in line if half the fun.  We all celebrated Saturday with a diner-wide free tequila shot, which is I think rather unique in itself.  I don't know of any other diner that does something like that, though I'm no diner expert by any means.

After Franks we walked to the Farmer's Market.  We've got a pretty good sized farmers market and it's got so much good stuff, we love making it a regular stop.  Things are starting to look a little scare there though, since the weather is starting to get chilly and vendors and shoppers alike are not quite so apt to sit around in the cold.  There's only 2 more weeks of the outdoor market, then it moves inside.  We stopped at the fudge place and they had $5 flop bags available.  Those are bags of misshapen and corner pieces of fudge.  You don't know what you're going to get, you just grab a bag and hope for the best.  One of our offerings today was root beer fudge.  It sounds wrong, and after tasting it, I assured myself that it IS wrong.  gross, just gross.  That's hard to believe of any kind of fudge, I know, but it's true.  Take my word for it, don't try and see for yourself.  There's my life advice for the day.