Merry Christmas!!!

I thought I'd just jump on the bandwagon of all the stores around here, skip Halloween Day & Thanksgiving in its entirety and start up my Christmas music, decorate the blog & house, and start wishing all of you a very merry Christmas now!

OK, I admit that I am one of those people who are excited to see that stores are putting out their Christmas decor and merchandise weeks before Halloween. Yes, I complain just like you do that they seem to do this earlier every year (soon they'll just have Christmas year-round.) But only having those beautiful decorations out for a little over a month is depressing--especially with the amount of work it takes to drag out all the boxes, hang lights and decorate the tree! I told Bryan that we should put the tree up at the beginning of October and decorate it with webs and spiderlings--I know a lot of stores that decorate trees year-round with seasonal things. Why should Christmas have all the fun?

Oink, oink!

Our household has just been hit by swine flu (we eat enough pork to provide our ration of funding to the pork industry, so I don't feel the need to call this type of flu by any other name.)
Two of the kids have it so far, and Bryan & I are debating giving them a big fat kiss just to go ahead and get it over with quickly--it's inevitable that it will sweep through everyone in the house. The crappy thing is that we feel bad not going to work today, when in reality we are doing everyone a favor by not bringing the virus to the ship. If Bryan's co-workers get this virus, they could single-handedly cause a delay to the ship's delivery schedule because they already have a shortage of qualified people to do that job. But that's not how those idiots see it...

Trick or Treat!

Dennis, I'm sorry...I just had to post this!

Halloween 2009, Unveiled!

And here we are this year--a bunch of superheroes! Look out, world!

The Demon & The Spaceman

We really aren't huge KISS fans, but we know an opportunity to have a great time when we see it--and we pounce on those opportunities when we can! Especially when it involves loud rock 'n' roll and no kids! (Well, not our kids, anyway!)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we scored pretty good tickets for the KISS concert, and I promised pictures of our painted faces. At first, Bryan didn't want to do it due to potential run-ins with drunk, pumped up KISS Army people (we've had some bad run-ins with extreme drunks at big concerts like this in the past.) But after my Facebook friends hounded me, I just had to do it--how many opportunities would we have to do something like this?

So here we are, after much frustration and cussing:


We were worried that we might be the only people painted up for the night--turns out we were actually one of many, and it was obvious that we took more time on our faces that most everyone else. A few people actually had us pose for pictures, even though we weren't in full costume regalia like several other couples!

We did learn a few things about painting our faces like this:
1. It took 3 times longer than I thought it would.
2. White cream makeup is much better than non-smudge makeup, even though after having a few beers, one itch will result in scratching it off.
3. The white makeup highlights my yellow coffee teeth. YUCK.

So, about the show itself--IT.WAS.AWESOME!!!!! I was not a huge fan of their music, but they really know how to entertain--flying and swinging over the crowd, and of course, tons of pyrotechnics! It was the loudest concert I've ever been to--and we forgot our earplugs (my ears are still ringing.) We were surprised that a bunch of people brought their younger kids. This is NOT a concert to take your kids to--many expletives and lots of sexual talking. But for those of us who are going to hell anyway, it was a great time!

Soccer, Soccer, and More Soccer

Fall weather brings one of my favorite seasons: football. And for the kids, "European" football. The two oldest are playing soccer for the county--this means each of them have two practices weekly, plus games on Saturday.

Our kids aren't the most athletic--I'd say they are average. Does it really matter at this age? Still, Brandon has finally become competetive enough to start truly going after the ball and actually playing his assigned positions--and it makes us so proud! (#12 below) Especially since he's kind of the aggravating, silly kid who won't stop horsing around and picking dandelions during T-ball season... He gets bored easily, so soccer is a good sport for him.

Tyler is very happy to know that his "girlfriend" is playing soccer too:

Tyler's team is funny to watch--the kids all crowd around and chase the ball in a little blob. Even at kickoff they all crowd together--here's Tyler at kickoff: