Grief, Hard Work, and Celebration

This past week has been extremely difficult for us.

First: Matt's beautiful grandmother Eileen Kranz, passed on yesterday afternoon. Not only has she been more dear to Matt than can be expressed in words, and not only did she share a good deal in raising him to be the person he is, but she also was admired and loved by me, her granddaughter by marriage, and by her great-grandson. I will let Matt write more about this when he sees fit, because I think this is his story to tell, or not tell. But I will say that we will miss her on Earth very much, and we will work hard to replace the sadness in our hearts with loving and lasting memories.

Second: My yarn partner abruptly quit our little venture three days before our craft show, so I had to rush to complete more items, get together all of the marketing stuff like tags and business cards, gather supplies and props, print patterns to sell, and other things in only 3 days. I haven't talked said much about this to our friends, because they know her too and I don't want to act inappropriately, but it's a very odd situation and one that I did not provoke. I'm trying to remain tactful about everything, but I can't help but feel angry, even as I'm trying to let go of the anger. We will have to explain to G that he will no longer be able to play with these friends of his, but what do we say? I just wish that whatever she's going through didn't have to involve the kids. Anyway, facing this craft fair as a sole vendor was one of the scariest things I've done in a long, long time. It was also a heck of a lot of work, but I'm extremely proud that I was able to face the challenge and still keep my wits about me. I would not have been able to do this without the nonstop and unquestioning help of my beautiful husband, my mom being at our beck and call and basically taking care of G for 4 days straight, and the support of my amazing friends. But today, I faced my fear, didn't make a fool of myself, and completed my goal. It feels really good.

This one found a really great home!

Skye needs an adjustment. But check out her new awesome 'do!

Joel is better at flying airplanes than Christophers.

The view from my table. Well, more like from above my table...

After the craft fair, we watched Michigan finally win a game!

This evening, we were invited to a Clue dinner party at our neighbors' house, so we dressed as Mrs. Peacock and Mr. Green. If you look closely, you can see I'm slipping a wrench into my purse. I don't think Mr. Green noticed, do you? Also, check out the question mark baked into our dinner. Fran is a terrific chef!

Not bad for a minister and a widow, eh?

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The scariest thing about Halloween was the voting line!

We're trying small photos today (except for the enormous Ben 10 image - sorry about that), in order to cut down the time it takes your computer to load this page. You can still click on each photo to see a larger version, as usual. We will have a lot of photos today, so we'll see if this helps.

VOTING

We Baracked the vote yesterday, and it turned out to be an all-day affair. It took us about 3 hours, 30 minutes. G was a complete angel the entire time, and we were proud that it seemed that everyone within an hour wait of us complimented us on his behavior. People two barricade lines over were leaning over, and we heard people even farther back talking to each other about him and how they couldn't believe a kid that age would be sitting so calmly. If only he always acted so well, life would be so much easier! Here are some pics from the line. You can see that nearly everyone had something to read or, in my case, crochet. The yellow pages are sample ballots. We did not hear a single cross word; everyone seemed to be happy to be there, and nobody complained about the line even once. We were all probably just happy we wouldn't be in the even longer wait come Tuesday.

HALLOWEEN

Gabriel had a really great time on Halloween. The turn out in the neighborhood seemed to be a good bit smaller than last year, but attendance in our house was much higher. Madeline, Zillah, and Iggy came over with Rebecca and Kirk to trick or treat with us. Along the way we met up with Gabriel's friend Drew from down the block and we had a lot of fun getting our candy. As you can see, Patty dressed up as Ben Tennyson's cousin, Gwen, and Matt was their friend and fellow alien fighter Kevin Levin. We made the first two images larger to compare our pose with that of the real Ben, Gwen, and Kevin.

This is Joe. Gabriel's class weighed, carved, and named him. It was a great class project. We got to bring him home, because we'd donated the pumpkin. We were so excited to bring him home and think he had a fun Halloween with us.

This is Gabriel's jack-o-lantern. Even though he was Ben 10, he still loves his Transformers!

Some houses were scarier than others. This one belongs to a "baby nurse," as she called herself.

Gabriel got a lot of really great candy (most of which he probably won't be allowed to ever eat!), but most of all enjoyed his special Halloween treats of Echo Echo (one of the aliens that Ben Tennyson can change into) from Bunnut, his transforming calculator from Bun, and his spooky Halloween bouncy balls from Mommy and Daddy. After the kids slipped into nice, carbo-crash enduced sleeps, the adults checked out the Checkwood's new Wii purchase: Guitar Hero World Tour, which comes complete with drums and a microphone. We got the band back together again and had a great time until the wii (ha ha) hours of the morning. We love Halloween!

Happy Pre-Halloween!

Gabriel's class celebrated Halloween today! The kids were able to come to school dressed in their costumes and they had a wonderful party, which Patty was responsible for catering, along with another mom. The kids had a wonderful time and all of Patty's (and Cheri's) hard work really showed. Since Patty was there early to set up for the party, she had a chance to observe parts of Gabriel's school day that we had never seen before. Gabriel had a really great pre-Halloween Halloween. Please enjoy the following pictures: Spider web cookies

They are delicious!

Morning prayer

And video!

From Classroom party

Even though Gabriel is Ben Tennyson for Halloween this year, he couldn't miss out on a Transformers opportunity.

Pink Is The New Air Show!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could not be more thrilled right now!!! Check this out: I'm famous

gWitch Spell Phone Cover

Yesterday I got G up half an hour early for school and gave him breakfast in the car, all so we could get to the T-Mobile store before school to get my new G1, the morning of its release. Hey, cut me a break - I've been waiting for this thing for a year! As soon as we turned out of our neighborhood, the flat tire indicator came on. Yep, the left front tire was at 0 psi. Fortunately, we have "drive-flats" and can still go 90 miles on no pressure. So, we headed up to the store and school, since we wouldn't have time to fix the car before school. We chose our new phone, updated our service, chose a new plan, and I went to pay... but no wallet. I'd taken it out of my bag to buy a birthday present (which is stuck in cyberspace and an entirely different story) and left it out at home. Two big screwups, and it wasn't even 9am yet.

I took G to school, met Matthew at Discount Tire, and while we waited for the car, we went back, bought the phone, had a coffee while playing with our new toy, and got the car (that was free! Yeay for Hakeem at the Town Center location) all in perfect timing to pick up G from school. Ugh, what a day.

But it turned out pretty well. I got my new dream phone, and the car is patched up and back on the pavement.

So this phone - it's amazing. It does everything, in fact so much that you should just follow the link above to check it out. T-Mobile has great service, both coverage and customer service, so we stuck with them rather than switch to AT&T for an iPhone, and boy are we glad we did. Our favorite features: the phone is angled so that if you place it on the table face down, the screen doesn't touch the table - keeps the screen safe and also cleaner. Also, we downloaded Shop Savvy, which is a bar code reader that allows you to comparison shop and read reviews while shopping in the store.

Of course, I needed to personalize this phone right away, so I made a wicked witch pouch for it. I named it the gWitch Spell Phone Cover.

In other news, Drew came over today and we had pizza with him and his mommy. We had a great time, and the boys got to stay up late, eat pizza, and play with all kinds of things. Tomorrow, we will meet Christopher and his mommy (that would be Lisa) for lunch and head over to the bounce house for the afternoon. We were going to make a 4-family trip to the Chattahoochee Nature Center for the annual Halloween Hike, but the weather is not going to allow that to happen. Saturday, we have Joshie's birthday party and several options for Halloween fun, including a "trunk or treat" - a family fun day at the school most of G's friends attend. We missed it last year and really wanted to go, so I think we'll make it a priority this year.

Finally, just a couple things worth mentioning about the Chipster: he's been having great behavior lately, he's growing very quickly lately (is already wearing some size 5!), wants to play games all day (favorites are Hullabaloo and Candy Land), and he got his first progress report of his entire life. He got C's on everything, which is actually the best grade (it means "consistent"), and although we were late once, it showed 0 tardies and 0 absences. The comments section says, "Gabriel is such a sweet little boy. We are so happy to have him in class this year. Gabriel is very well mannered and respectful. He is very aware of our daily routine and loves to help me if I forget something! :-) Gabriel is doing great with his letters and numbers."

We love the part about correcting his teacher, because he is really on the ball and we think that's funny. We're super proud of the description "well mannered and respectful." That's the most important thing to us at this stage.