#37 - Trick or treat, smell my feet

Tonight, we had about 70 trick-or-treaters come to our house. My wonderful hubby put up great Halloween decorations outside and posted a note on the doorbell to "please knock" since our doorbell bothers our doggies and our little guy (TLG). Last year, TLG was too little to really pay attention to this holiday. But tonight he saw us answering the door and decided he wanted to help. We let TLG help us hand out candy, and 9 times out of 10 he was cuter than the kids who were on the doorstep. Between each handing-out-candy time, TLG was waiting with us in our front room. For a while, we sang lots of songs he knows, including the ABCs, pat-a-cake, A-Ram-Sam-Sam, and I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee. After some time, though, he realized we were waiting for a knock and he got really excited when someone would come to the door. It was adorable and I'll miss having help next year when he's out collecting his own candy.

#36 - Joy of cooking

I'll admit I'm not a very experienced cook. I have a repertoire of about two weeks' worth of dinners I can make without consulting a cookbook. And that's if you count things like grilled-cheese-and-tomato-sandwiches. So tonight when my wonderful hubby put me in charge of baking the potatoes, I had to consult a book for instructions. Yes, I've never successfully baked a potato. Who am I kidding, I've only ever tried once before and it was years ago. Well, despite my best efforts tonight, and following the directions (mostly) I can say I've STILL never successfully baked a potato. Tonight's side dish was semi-warm crunchy potatoes with sour cream and green onions. At least I had the toppings right!

#35 - Album recommendations

I have been about a year behind on my photo albums/scrapbooks for as long as I can remember. Part of my problem is that, for many years, I have used the books with the magnetic pages that require me to cut out scraps of paper on which to write the captions. Not only are some of the older books starting to show their age (the pages yellow and un-stick over time) but I find this process to be exhausting. So today I've started a new album which has the paper and lines for writing comments right on the page. These books have plastic sleeves to slip photos in, making the whole process quite easy. I'm excited to get going and catch up a little more on the photos... I'm finally to my sister's wedding photos from over a year ago. *sigh* Please enjoy this extreme close-up of our younger dog in our backyard, taken this weekend as I tried to show the little guy how to use the camera. (He was fascinated - definitely his father's son!)

#34 - A New Cause

There are an incredible amount of soldiers oversees who could really use some extra books to read during their down time (if there is such as a thing over there). I recently discovered a website called Books for Soldiers, which organizes volunteers with troops who would like to receive books. For years, I've given my books to local organizations - but who knows if they actually get read here. So I've officially thrown my hat in the ring, and today I posted my first seven titles to offer to the troops. I'll certainly be posting again if I get any "bites" but I'm excited at the prospect of helping in a small way.

#33 - Bounce houses are for kids

I'd never been in a bounce house before today. Our family attended a kid's birthday party at one of those places where they have a lot of them in a huge room. At first, the little guy was pretty shy, since there were lots of kids and standing on a giant inflatable thing can be a little intimidating when you're not even 2 years old yet. So the hubby and I were helping him out. After a while of figuring it out, the little guy decided he liked it - but of course he loved the slides best and he's too small to be able to climb up the ladder-thingys to get up the slides. As an adult, I was probably too big and in too many other kids' ways as I helped our guy to the top (over and over and over). But he had a great time, even going down the slide by himself towards the end. I tell you what, though: one hour in the bounce house, and I was exhausted! I think we will all sleep well tonight.

#32 - Happy Nevada Day!

Nevada Day - the anniversary of the state's admission to the union - is celebrated on the last Friday of October each year. Since I had the day off and the little guy's day care was closed, we got to spend the day hanging out. It was wonderful! My favorite part was playing with play-doh together. Someone at our trick-or-treat outing last week gave us some black play-doh instead of candy (what a good idea for a little guy!). It was obvious that he'd already had plenty of experience with the stuff, since he only tried to put it in his mouth once. But I'd never done it with him, and it was fun. The play-doh smelled exactly the way I remembered it from my childhood, too. (The photo was taken just after I took the brand new play-doh out of the the container, and before we got messy.)

#31 - Comments

This afternoon, a family member I admire very much sent me an e-mail with a bunch of comments and suggestions for some previous posts. This is the first time anyone's offered some critiques of what I'm writing here... and it felt great! If you're reading this, please (please!) leave me a comment or write me an e-mail. I would love to talk with anybody about any of this stuff - or just know you're paying attention.

Now, to address the matters in the e-mail:
1) It has been brought to my attention that my previous post mentioning a Clinique GWEP is actually a GWP (gift-with-purchase). This family member has a history in the retail business world and she knows - far better than I do - what this acronym really is. I stand corrected.
2) In the entry where I said I didn't do anything new, she points out that I received an order of new pants in the mail. While the pants were technically new, the process was not. I have ordered online before, I have worn sweats before. Plus I'm trying to really do something interesting to share - because if I tell you about every new item of clothing I buy over the next year, you'll be bored stiff. So as opposed to forcing something new out of a humdrum day, I'll just skip it, I think.

So thanks for the comments and the words of encouragement, too! Now, to everyone else, please let me know that you're reading! Thanks.