Gosh, I guess it really must be Halloween!

So we go out trick or treating, and it's great. Just like in the movies. Perfect temperature, cloudy full(ish) moon, tons of people of all ages, blocks of decorated and jack-o-lanterned houses giving out great candy. Neither penny nor Molasses based candy in sight! Then when we get back to the house and just to put the icing on the pumpkin we spied these two creepy spiders! Check 'em out!

Actual, honest to goodness black brown widows!

What a night!

18 Weeks Pregnant

My actual belly!

Big Spider

She lives between the glass and the screen. She has been around for months now, growing bigger and getting stronger.

We are pretty sure that she's a Hunstman spider. They don't usually build webs, they just run em down! Legspan is about the size of my palm, which is quite large if you ask me.

Machines at Work

Yes, you can tell from that awesome box of gears, I share my work space with some serious machines. Big ones. Some of them can chop off your arm if you are not careful, others might confuse you if you are not careful. All of them are totally awesome. Here are pictures of the ones I see every day.

Machines need maintenance. Some of them need to be opened up and fiddled with on a regular basis, like this one. Want to know what this one does? Let me zoom out so it will be more clear.

That should clear up the mystery. This machine's main purpose is to train repairmen! Or stuff envelopes.

Then there's this beast, the folder.

This one's a driller.

Here we have the cutter. (The one that can chop off arms.)

And what could this be? (The one that might confuse.)

Don't feel bad, it's a purposefully misleading close up.

Hint: it's in the men's bathroom.

Here it is again, all zoomed out.

I know, it's a urinal!

Oh, it's a sink? I found that one out the hard way :(

Ah yes, the jewel of our pointy, greasy machine crown.

Our latest, quite fancy, printer.

The printed pages end up here and when it's done the blast shield lowers and you can take however many cubic feet of printed paper you ordered out and start printing some more.

And as a bonus, check out our oldest printer:

Yeah it's a linotype machine. Probably the coolest analog device in the whole building. It molds lead alloys to form lines of text that are imprinted onto page then recycled after the printing is done or the line gets beat up too much. It is really cool and not used anymore at least not while I have been here, but we used to use one and if we had to we have the knowhow to use it again, at least someone here does. I heard the inventor went crazy from all the lead! Pretty cool! By the way, I couldn't get a good picture of the whole thing because it is in a storage area.

The Cole Brothers' Circus is in town!

Ta daaaaaaa!

Please allow me to be your virtual RINGMASTER for this amazing display of skill (and to a lesser extent, price gouging)!

First up?

The worlds smallest MotoCross!

Yes, those blurs inside the steel cage sphere are the two or three dudes racing as fast as possible around a tiny, albeit three dimensional track!

Next up?

A cute wild west show with dogs and eventually a pony. A real life dog and pony show!

Then?

A very daring man who walks in a human hamster wheel attached to a bunch of metal that spins around like a human powered fair ride! It was cooler than it looks in this pic and the dude either almost fell or hammed it up really well so KUDOS to you brave sir!

Then there was some of this stuff.

And then a feature element of the show!

The seven man balacing pyramid... (dramatic pause) ...OF DOOM!

Some dude in that pyramid actually did fall but caught himself on the wire with his leg, but got back up and tried again. What a trooper! Good show!

Of course, juggling was next.

----Intermission----

Balancing. Nice.

What circus would be complete without the demonstration of superior hair power? Shock and Awe!

And makeup!

Then a little belly dancing number, complete with camels.

She's not really on fire, it just looks awesome for some reason. Oh yeah, becasue it was awesome!

This girl though, was totally on fire(figuratively).

Boom! Of course there are Elephants at a circus!

Elephants really give a circus authenticity, IMHO.

Then the special, signature event!

Laser guided human munitions! Seriously, that cannon had a laser sight which was probably also a rangefinder too. That vehicle had more technology that the rest of the show combined. Every other thing in the show had probably been unchanged for like 100 years or so but that cannon truck had a green laser sight/rangefinder and very precise hydraulic roll control and an in-barrel cctv monitor. It was my favorite part. All of a sudden the future rolled up and took my breath away. I am not sure if you can tell from the picture but I think it was hovering a few inches off the ground and on the other side I am pretty sure I saw a Mr. Fusion.

17 Weeks

Can you believe how big my belly is already? I feel the baby kicking every day now. Today, Baby gave me quite a thump and I think that if a hand had been there someone could have felt the kick from the outside.

Butterfly Garden in July

Elliot, William, my mother, and I went to the butterfly garden in Gainesville, Florida this past July. I just found the pictures that we took while we were there and I realized that we'd never posted any of them. Here are a few of the best ones:

16 Weeks Pregnant

I'm so glad that maternity-style clothing is popular this season. It saves me money. This shirt/dress thing only cost $6. Woohoo!

14.5 Weeks Pregnant

Let the belly pics begin! I'm starting to get "poochie," as one of my coworkers pointed out. The baby is still down low in my belly, but it's pushed everything up and out, so I'm beginning to look pregnant. And FEEL pregnant. None of my pants fit me anymore, despite the fact that I weigh the same amount that I did before I got pregnant.

That About Sums It Up

Elliot: William, please stop... William, stop that right now... If you don't stop, you'll get a time out.

William: Time out AGAIN?!?!

And that about sums up our weekend.

Introducing Mocha

My sister, Sara, and her husband, Bret, adopted a dog in June. Mocha is a sweet and lovable mixed-breed. William loves her and she's great with kids. Not so great with cats and other small animals-- apparently she used to live on a farm and they got rid of her because she kept going after the chickens.

Isn't she cute?

Scribblenauts: Sweet Hat, Sweeter Game!

I pre-ordered this game called Scribblenauts and as a reward received this neat hat.

The main character in the game wears the same sort of hat. The game is about a character who creates things by writing words in order to solve puzzles. There are over 22,000 words that the game will recognize and render, with varying levels of interactivity. It is incredibly fun and interesting to me. I have already derived enough fun from this game to justify the asking price and I am only 1/5th done with it.

Here are some examples of things that can be done:

-Shock a cadaver and watch it come to life as a Zombie/Frankenstein style monster!

-Make a Pegasus-creature and glue a steel spike on its head so you have a super, flying, unicorn! (You could always spawn a normal unicorn but then it wouldn't fly.)

-You can make a seed then use some fertilizer on it and then water it to grow a flower!

-You can feed donuts to cops until they go to sleep so you can sneak past them, or distract people with money.

The game's not perfect by any stretch but it is great and much more fun than frustrating. It is for the Nintendo DS or DSi. And I would recommend it to anyone who can have a fun time by exploring the relationships that this game has programmed in.

Here is a link to the Scribblenauts section of a site that aggregates reviews: metacritic.

Elliot's Family

Elliot's Mom's side of the family, minus Elliot, his sister, and a cousin.

That's Elliot's Mema sitting in the center of the couch. Soon to be GREAT-Mema! :)

Baby In My Belly

Elliot and I are going to have a baby! I'm 11 1/2 weeks along right now.

Elliot and I are very excited. William is, too, and in his excitement he has declared himself "pregnant." We tried to explain to him that only girls can have babies, but he doesn't want to hear it. He tells us when his baby is sleeping and sometimes that it's drinking a bottle (inside of his belly).

William's pregnancy is going remarkably smoothly, but I've had some pretty bad morning sickness. I think it's beginning to get better, though.

As soon as I start to get a belly I'll post some pictures!

Firemen Do Not Put Fire On People

The other day a fire truck went racing by our car. William loves fire trucks, so Elliot and I pointed it out to him.

"They gonna go put fire on the bad guys?"

"What? No! Firemen don't put fire ON people. They put fires out. They bring water to fires and spray the water and put the fires out."

"They put fires out?"

"Yes."

"Then they put the fire on the bad guys?"

"No. They just put the fires out with water. They only put water on things."

"Only water?"

"Yes."

"WATER on the bad guys?..."

I still don't think he gets it. We'll have to work on that one.

Waina from Nigeria

I never did make a post last May when Elliot and I made Waina from Nigeria. It was the last World Peas recipe we were able to make before we became foster parents. We really need to get back to that project, but it's harder to do now that we have small children around. You know how picky kids can be about eating.

Waina is basically an omelet. Really easy to make. You're supposed to serve it with bread, and so we bought some fresh baked bread from the bakery at the grocery store. Yum.

Squirrel Momma Drama

Elliot and I went home for lunch yesterday. When we walked outside to leave, we noticed a little commotion on top of the hood of my car. On closer inspection, we saw that a baby squirrel had wedged its head underneath one of my windshield wiper blades.

I've never even seen a baby squirrel in real life before! It was tiny and the poor thing was so scared. It had a very high pitched cry.

Elliot and I saw the momma squirrel running away. We decided to just leave the baby alone. But after a few minutes, we could see it was in a lot of distress and couldn't free itself. Elliot went back and lifted the wiper blade.

The little squirrel was too tiny to hop off of the car. I'm not even sure it could walk well on its own. The momma squirrel was in a tree nearby, watching her baby, but she wouldn't come back for it. We waited 20 minutes and then called the vet. The vet's office said that we need to wait a few hours before we can be sure that the mother won't return.

Elliot and I decided to go back to work. We put a big rock next to the wiper blade that was proped up, to make sure it didn't snap back down and hurt the baby squirrel. We never touched the baby, so we were hopeful that the mommy would return.

After a couple of hours at work, I was beside myself, worrying about the squirrel. I was afraid that the momma wasn't coming back, that a bird got the baby, that it was too hot on top of my car and the squirrel was roasting. I asked Elliot if we could go check on it.

We drove back home, preparing ourselves for the worst. But when we got there, the baby was gone. There was no blood or anything to indicate something bad had happened. I'm very hopeful that the momma came back for her baby. Good thing we were home to get the baby's head loose!

AirZooka

This is one of Elliot's favorite toys. The AirZooka. It shoots a big puff of air out of the barrel. It doesn't hurt-- mostly it surprises people. Elliot was playing with Aimee and William the day this picture was taken. They were blowing bubbles and Elliot was shooting the bubbles (and the kids) with the AirZooka. The kids loved it. Elliot loved it. Good times.

Bye, Aimee

Aimee went back home today. It's strange how much quieter our house is now!

I'm kind of afraid that we'll never see her again. Her new family seems extremely uninterested in maintaining ties with people from her past. Personally, I think that's a very bad decision, given the fact that there are a lot of good, positive people that have helped her along the way. I hope they change their mind.

Congrats to Laura & Thomas!

My baby sister got engaged today! No date has been set yet, but as of right now, they're talking early next year.