Fall 2011 - Part IV Pumpkin Carving

 

31 Reasons I Love My Husband

1. He's really good at catching things

2. He loves motown and soul music and James Brown

3. He's 50% responsible for the two most beautiful human beings on earth

4. Everyday he calls or texts or google chats me to ask how my day is going

5. He wears ridiculous shoes

6. He secretly likes watching Sister Wives with me

7. He only rolls his eyes when I'm blaring christmas music and watching christmas movies in September

8. He has also watched Father of the Bride with me at least 900 times

9. Sometimes I think we share the same brain because we're always thinking and saying the exact same things at the exact same time

10. He fixes leaks, kills spiders and scrapes the snow off my car

11. He's been known to bring me home a surprise peanut butter sundae on more than one occasion

12. I'm pretty sure he loves my family just as much as I do

13. He once went with me to the bathroom because I was too scared to go in alone after watching a scary movie (It was the Mothman Prophecies and I'm a total wuss)

14. He keeps copies of my business card in his wallet along with my senior picture I gave him eons ago

15. He gives the best back rubs of anyone ever. period.

16. He's the most honest person I know. Once when we were living in one city but his permanent address was still listed for another city, he called just to let them know he owed taxes...

17. His favorite thing to do on Saturday morning is lounge around in our pjs in bed with the boys

18. Whenever we're bored and can't think of anything to do he tells me to call Abby and see if she wants to come over

19. He's unabashedly sentimental. He couldn't give away a pair of 15 year old socks covered in holes if his grandmother gave them to him

20. He's always bringing Wes home little presents like matchbox cars or resse's cups

21. He makes himself laugh harder than anyone else

22. He lets me pick the paint colors and the furniture

23. He takes the boys to go visit his grandfather every Friday

24. He's openminded and kind

25. Even if he doesn't always agree, he usually lets me have my way

26. He's not afraid to change diapers, make a meal, or rock a baby to sleep

27. He has an uncanny sense of direction and mad navigation skills

28. He always cleans the litter box

29. He has my name TATTOOED on his body

30. He tells me I'm beautiful every single day

31. He was born 31 years ago today and has chosen to spend the last decade with me

Happy Birthday, Josh

I love you
(Em)me

Halloween Preview

Homemade costumes care of Marisa. She's the best mom ever.
(I helped a little)

Wes asked to be a wizard this year

and Oren will be the cutest little trick or treating owl you've ever seen

Is it Friday yet?!

A Little Bit of Shameless Self Promotion

As you may or may not have noticed, there have been a couple of new badges added to my blog that show that I am now a part of a cool little blog community called Top Baby Blogs 

This is just a collective of blogs where moms and dads from all over can come together in one place. The blogs are ranked by popularity and that is done by calculating the number of votes each blog gets per day.
I've had a couple questions by a few of my readers (ahem...family members) as to how you can vote, so here's how it works...

The voting is tabulated every 24 hours, so essentially if you like my blog and you'd like to help me out by voting, you would click on the Top Baby Blogs badge found on the right hand side of my blog every time you visit my blog. Each person can vote once per day. The point is to get as many votes per day as possible, moving me up in the ranks and hopefully gaining my blog a bit more visibilty and hopefully a few new readers.

Once you click on the badge it will take you to a voting gateway page where you click through to cast your vote. There are two options on the gateway page... to vote or not! So you click on the "Click Here To Vote" graphic on the left to cast a "vote" (which is just a fancy word for a unique referral).

Unfortunately you can't really tell if you've voted or not. There is no confirmation, but rest assured you have and thank you so very much for doing so!
 
And remember, you can vote 1 time per 24 hour period, per account.

And I promise, this will be the last and only time you hear about this (as I'm sure no one comes to this blog to read about voting and self promotion!) But thank you so much for your interest and I hope this little explanation helped clarify any confusion out there about how this whole thing works.

thanks again,

Emily
xoxoxo

Concert Week Wrap Up - The Slackers

So, we spent Friday night having a pre-Josh's-birthday celebration of sorts with dinner and a show in Cleveland, accompanied by some of our lovely family and friends.

Josh picked dinner at Michael Symon's B Spot. The chocolate/banana/marshmallow milkshake and the Fat Doug burger (pastrami, coleslaw, mustard, swiss = heaven!) were both FANTASTIC...the two hour wait, however, was SO not. Happily, the good folks at the B Spot totally redeemed themselves with loads of (complimentary) delicious appetizers and excellent service. I would definitely go back again, just maybe not on a Friday night with eight people...

Then we headed over to the Grog Shop to see the Slackers for the 82937578324569th time (seriously) and they were completely amazing as always. The crowd, however, was not. It's always the same thing, people dancing, shoving, crowd surfing when you just really want to enjoy the show but instead you're spending all your time trying to avoid being knocked down or kicked in the head. But hey, I only got beer spilled in my hair once the whole night, so that's gotta count for something, right?

Slacker's chick was there (aka: groupie/drunkard who has been at every single show for the last 10 years). She managed to get up on stage and sexually harass Glen Pine for at least one song, so that was entertaining as usual.

Then there was the (extremely drunk) guy who decided he was pretty much in love with Josh and spent a good portion of the night hanging all over him. Hilarious.

(note Josh's discomfort)

But the best, best, BEST part of the whole show was watching this guy dance and flail around in his giant poncho, lost in his own little world stage right. (the picture was taken on my phone in the dark and is, of course, awful. But, this guy was worth the price of admission alone).

All in all, the Slackers were fabulous and I think everyone had a good time in the end. Looking forward to doing it all over again next year.

Concert Week Round 2 - Cities & Years

Cities & Years is my brother and his friend Shane's band

This is them...

They had the show here...

This is the coffee shop where my sister in law, Jessica, works (she's one of the sassy baristas)

Josh and I spent the majority of the show shuffeling between the main seating area and a partitioned off vestibule at the entrance of the shop where we kept the boys while they played (too loud for sensitive baby ears and three year olds who refuse to wear earplugs). It felt just like being back in the crying room at church, except the noise was on the other side of the window and this time I was the adult. (Whoa.)

Alot of our friends and family showed up to support them and it was a really good time

But my favorite part was catching Wes in the act of rocking out on air drums just like his uncle Ben...

side note (round 2) - concert #3 of the week is tonight! The Slackers play live at the Grog Shop at 8pm. Join us, won't you?

Jeff Gillian Welch

Jeff Gill - Gillian Welch, you see what I did there? (been planning that post title for months)

Anyway, it's concert week over here! To kick it off Josh, Abby, Jeff and I saw Gillian Welch live Tuesday night at the Kent Stage.

Another amazing show and another amazing artist I would not have known about if it weren't for this guy

That's right - Jeff Gill, my brother in law. (Technically, he's not, but he might as well be and if I just start calling him that maybe he and Abby will forget they're not actually married yet and just go ahead and have some cute babies already. Who's with me?!)

Anyway, the show was great. Gillian's voice was pure and perfect and girlfriend plays a mean banjo. And of course, Dave Rawlings played guitar like a BOSS. It was pretty spectacular.

The audience however, was not.

It was seriously the most awkward crowd I think I've ever been in. There was a guy a two rows from the back, drunk (hopefully, otherwise...wow) trying to make small talk with Dave and Gillian about the weather in between songs.

What?

Forrealtho he actually hollered out that "The weather has been mild around here the last few days."

Thanks for the update there, buddy

Then there was the lady sitting a couple seats down from us that was either laughing hysterically, yelling for everyone to start clapping along or sobbing uncontrollably the whole evening - depending on the song they played.

Then there were the probably 10 or so people who just.kept.shouting.out.requests.for.the.same.song.over.and.over.and.over.
...even after Dave and Gillian made it clear that this was not, contrary to popular belief, an all-request show.

Ugh, it was so embarassing. I probably blushed about 10 times on behalf of my fellow concert goers and Kent, Ohio to which I'm sure they will never be returning. Good thing I made it to this show.

And it was a good show despite it all. They played my favorite Gillian song, and Dave's "Sweet Tooth" and "I'll Fly Away" from this soundtrack (awesome movie, even better soundtrack) and all the best songs from the new album.

I was a happy girl.

And now, cue the shitty photos taken on my phone in the dark!!!

side note - concert #2 of the week is tonight. Come see Cities & Years perform live here at the Steels Corners location at 7:30pm!

Six Months Old

six months old means sitting up all by ourselves

six months old means eating cereal and avocados and bananas

six months old means holding our own bottle

six months old means army crawling, pivoting and rolling everywhere

six months old means bumping our head and getting stuck alot too

six months of twice daily pumping/cleaning a million little pump pieces parts/pumping again at work

six months of spit up, diaper blowouts and endless laundry

six months of night nursing every two hours

six months of 6am wake up calls (even on the weekend, how rude!)

six months old means reaching out for mama and daddy now

six months old means the most infectious smile you've ever seen

six months of busy days and nights

six blessed months with a baby in my arms or on my hip

six months with oren henry

....best six months of my life



Fall 2011 - Part III Pumpkin Patch and Hayride