::::

So today is the fateful baby due date, but where is the baby? Still cookin' away.
We'll see how long it takes to get this dang baby here. But in the meantime, here are a couple of things just for fun.

1. Kris did his first hospital case out here in NM. We bought all the equipment, got him credentialed at the hospital and actually got a patient who wanted to go in right away. His case went awesome last week--being in the operating room totally intimidated the assistants, but they can't wait to do it again.

Kris's most favorite part though turned out to be the physician's lounge, free lunch and the 25 cent soda machine. There are some perks to being a doctor I guess.

2. We got a babysitter and went out this last weekend. And though we didn't pick a great movie to go to, our dinner was awesome and finished with an ice cream baked potato. If you haven't ever had one then you're definitely missing out. It was fabulous. Cowgirl BBQ anyone?



In the meantime we're just waiting for the baby to come. Our sister in law Lechelle came out with her little guy to help out--we were assuming we would actually HAVE the baby at some point--and so we've been having a good time hanging out. I just keep trying to plan stuff to do and stay busy so that the baby will be encouraged to show up at some inconvenient time. Hasn't worked yet. We'll see!


***Update;
I think I need to explain a bit about what exactly the ice cream baked potato is. It is just so cool. It's vanilla ice cream all rolled in cocoa (I think) So that's what makes it look like a potato to begin with. Then it's got some nice frozen cream on top for the sour cream, then some pecans or maybe pralines or something on top for the chives, and the butter pat I think is frosting (the butter pat was the only thing that wasn't totally delicious.)
So come visit us and have one!!!

::bugs::

A few weeks ago we had some crazy behavior going on with Max at school. He was just getting used to his new class, and he has a friend in there that's a little nutty. This little boy is silly, physically a little out of control and just doesn't know when to stop.
And all my little guy needs is a little encouragement to be too too silly.
At school they have a behavior feedback system that works out pretty well. It's based on colors. If a kid's color card is blue by the end of the day that means that they had an excellent behavior day. If it gets switched to green, it means good. Orange is not so good, yellow the next, and red is NOT good at all.
It is nice to have some sort of feedback from school so I can know what's going on--or at least have a hint of what might be going on.
He was all blue for a long time, then suddenly we started seeing yellows and oranges and not many blues at all. And we knew he could do better.
So we had lots of talks about times when it's ok to be silly and times to be serious. We also talked about not letting other people encourage him to do things that would get him in trouble.
All important lessons for life, I'm sure this is just the beginning of trying to teach these lessons.
Then to top it off we gave him an incentive program. If he could get be blue every day for 5 or 6 days in a row (I can't remember which) he got an awesome prize.
It took a couple of false starts, but he totally earned it and we were proud.
We asked him how he got blue one day and he told us that he just did his best to ignore anybody that tried to distract him by being silly. Good job Max!!

So he got a habitat for his hexbug as his prize. And, lucky for him he got an extra hexbug along with it. Have youguys seen these Hexbugs? We got ours at Target.

They're these cute teeny robots that look a lot like little bugs and speed around the floor super fast. They're really fun to watch but it's really hard not too lose them under the furniture. Unless you have a habitat.

See how blurry they are in the picture? Told you they were fast.

Anyway, he loved the prize and hopefully felt fulfilled for doing such a good job behaving. And generally since then he's been quite good, even though we haven't given him too many more material incentives.

He's so cute with the bugs that I had to take a video the other day when Kris was out of town and Max was supposed to be eating dinner. It's pretty cute. Enjoy if you'd like.

::a twist on tradition::

For the last four years Max & I have made delicious halloween sugar cookies. And then I always blog about it. Of course.
So after making it a tradition, and cooking them in four different kitchens in four different houses, we certainly couldn't miss a year just because we're tired and busy!
I was planning on making the cookies over halloween weekend--in fact I made the dough and refrigerated it on saturday. It was while doing that I realized that we had been infiltrated by a yucky fat mouse (which of course didn't help with the workload of the weekend.)
I was planning on finishing up the cookies sunday afternoon, but one of the families that we're good friends with in the ward invited us over for pumpkin pie. Who would refuse something awesome like that?
Come monday the dough was still in the fridge, and there were no delicious cookies to be seen.

We didn't give up. We modified the tradition. This weekend we got out the fall cookie cutters and made leaves, acorns and pumpkins instead of ghosts, cats & jack-o-lanterns.

Good thing I bought those leaf cookie cutters last year, that's all I can say! (Even though Kris thought one of the shapes was a christmas tree, silly boy.)

And we set to work.

It was a fun sunday afternoon activity for the family. This is the first time that Kris got to be involved, yay!

I was about 1000 degrees when we got finished, and I was exhausted. It was worth it though. They're delicious.
Max was my decorating helper again, of course. And somehow he managed to spill exponentially less sprinkles everywhere than even last time. It's nice that he's getting more coordinated--he doesn't listen much better, but he's at least got more hand dexterity!
It is funny to compare now with the first time we did it though--in 2006 I guess. He was only two and it was quite the undertaking to make the cookies together. He's much more capable now of course, and most of the time much more fun to hang out with.

It's fun to have traditions that let us see how time has passed and how fast little ones grow. And traditions that are tasty too. Yum.

::practicing::

We all feel pretty ready. Now we just need the baby.

::before & after::

Before:

You've seen it--you know how shaggy he was.

During:

(this morning--we finally found someplace to take him and since he had the day off school we got to have a nice peaceful morning appointment.)
After:

He looked pretty happy when we got done with the cut, but then when we went to the office and all the ladies made a fuss over him he got all embarrassed and wore his hood for the rest of the day.
Then tonight he told me he hated the haircut because he looks like somebody else! I think he still looks pretty unmistakably like my Max. He'll ease into it. Besides, I don't really think he hates it.

I mean, look at his face. Could anybody take this face seriously?

::school pictures::

Here we go, fall 2010 pictures.

He's such a cute little goof.
At least we were without the hillbilly smile this time. That's probably a good thing.

::crazy halloween craziness::

Yesterday (saturday) was an insane day of halloween activities.
Having the holiday fall on a sunday is a bit of a pain because instead of just one fun day of festivities, it's basically the whole weekend. But oh well. It's just those of us whose backs get tired, and the little ones who get oversugared and overtired that suffer I guess.
Anyway, we started the day by taking Max to his karate class--a preliminary strike against the later sugar high. I was hoping a little exercise would do him good.
Then Kris and Max came home, got ready, and headed out to the school halloween carnival. I opted out of that activity and stayed home.


(yes, Max looks like he's wearing some of those hillbilly teeth--that would be a great part of his costume--but unfortunately no, that's his real mouth. He keeps making this weird nerdy smile these days.)
Luckily for me I got to find out we had a mouse in the kitchen while they were gone. I was trying to be productive and was hoping to whip up batter for our traditional cookies. I got into the utensil drawer and found that a bunch of them had been chewed up. Ewwwwwww. Then I got to clean everything in the drawer. It was really fun, and a truly lovely addition to the day.

Off they go--it really looks like they're headed off into the savannah for a safari, doesn't it?

Then after they came back from the school party we had the church trunk or treat. Our costumes were really built around this event--We were explorers in an awesome old land rover. We had africanish music playing from the car and a fun fuzzy dog that we caught on our adventures tied in the back of the car.
And the best part? Moustaches. (Except me--all I had was a hat, but it worked.)



"I say, where can I go to shoot some big game??"

Kris won 2nd place in the costume contest. It wasn't too hard, considering that he was one of three men that dressed up. Plus the mustache is awesome.

The explorer and his beast.
I think the following three photos are pretty funny--sorry if it's mustache overkill.



Max looks like he has a little mustache envy.

We bowed out of the ward party early because we had to go buy all sorts of mouse traps and stuff--the thought of a mouse running through my kitchen was not doing a lot for me.
Then we went to our last event--we have a family in our neighborhood whose kid is in Max's class, and they bring all three of their kids into our office. They're awesome people and we really like them, so we couldn't miss their party even though we were SO tired.
So we went for an hour. By the time we were done there Max was in full meltdown mode. He was a floppy, screaming, exhausted disaster. So we went home. And my back was glad to be home too.
It was a crazy day. Crazy halloweeniness. And we didn't even get our cookies made or our pumpkins carved........

::school halloween parade::

At our last school Max wasn't even supposed to wear a costume, much less did they do anything to celebrate halloweeen. Out here in the west, however, it appears entirely kosher to go all out for halloween at school.
In fact, they spent at least the whole week leading up to it making crafts, playing games and learning about halloweeny things. The halls of the school were very festive with cute holiday art.
On friday the school had it's annual halloween parade. As usual with school, nobody told me when or where it would be until the day before, and I had to change some doctor's appts around and stuff, but I made sure to be there.
Max was a jedi for school--Luke I guess.

It was cute to see all the kids in their costumes. Also, I've been able to spend a little time in his classroom, so I'm finally getting to know the kids in his class which is nice too.

They lined up out in the hall and waited for all the big kids to parade past. And wow there were tons of kids that came by. I really didn't realize how dang big the school was until I saw the parade.

They had a hard time waiting their turn.
And though Max looks like he wasn't having that much fun, I have proof that he was:

See? He smiled. I'm not sure who he was smiling at, but he smiled.
They joined up with the end of the parade as it went by and we all marched out to the athletic field. I took up the rear to make sure nobody got lost, and it was a good thing I was there, because there were at least two kids that I had to literally push most of the way so that they would keep up. Classic 6 year old stuff.

There they went onto the field where they all lined up for a while and stood around. I'm not sure why, but oh well.
We took some pictures.
Of Luke Skywalker & Luke Skywalker especially.

I don't have any idea why they look so solemn. They definitely weren't!


Now that's more like it.

I like it when they get into character.

That's Max's teacher there on the right looking pretty groovy. He was so confused on why the teacher on the left would dress up "like a boy!!"

Then we all walked back to the school into the chaos of class halloween parties. I stayed and helped out and by the time it was over I was exhausted. Luckily friday is a short school day, so we got to leave at around noon. I think the kids had a great time. It was quite the kick-off for the entire weekend of halloween activities that we had to look forward too.
As of saturday night when I'm writing this I'm all halloweened out. Fun stuff, but you can only do so much.
But anyway, the parade was so fun. Lucky sugared up kids.

::::

These pictures are from a couple of sundays ago. Those of you that have requested pictures, here you go!

I can't think of a lot to say except that I'm ready. I'm ready to hold a cute baby and I'm really ready to sleep on my stomach (whatever sleep we'll get for a while.)
I'm not exactly looking for a halloween baby--there's enough going on over halloween without having to celebrate a birthday too--might as well spread the sugar indulgence out a bit. But honestly I don't care right now. I'd take a halloween baby if that's when they wanted to come.
Really we've got another week and a half to the official due date. We'll see what happens.
We'll keep you posted, of course!

(don't you love how I'm crossing my fingers in this picture that I won't hate it?)

Now on to a zillion halloween activities. Having the holiday fall on sunday spreads it out over the entire weekend. I'm already tired!!!