Eleven years ago today, my beautiful boy entered the world.
Thank You, God, for such an amazing son!
Happy Birthday Sweet Boy!
Love,
Mom
*hugs and kisses*
A very special thanks to my dear friend Steve, for the awesome post he put up for the birthday boy!
Image courtesy of: Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly: "A Look To The Heavens"
The world’s handsomest, most beautiful boy got glasses over the weekend. The glasses, when we first saw them, were mixed in with the other glasses in the store. When they’re on his face, they’re the most stylin’ glasses around. 
He makes those glasses look good. All the other glasses were so jealous.
Seriously, my boy has a very intellectual look to him when he wears his new glasses. The frames he picked out suit him wonderfully. He was so wowed that he could see so many things much clearer. Of course, his baby sister had to get in on the act too. When we asked him if he could read the sign across the street, he asked, “Which one?” The MiniNess had to pop off with, “The one that says blah-blah-blah.” Oh, that kid! LOL
So now the handsome prince can actually see how handsome he is!
*****
I also discovered over the weekend that our computers came already loaded with speech recognition software. A year and a half and I had no idea! Here I was reading the comments on some Dragon Naturally Speaking software, and one of the commenters mentioned the stuff that came bundled with his Windows 7 computer. That made my eyebrows shoot up! Bundled? Windows 7? Seriously? I did a search and sure enough, there it was! So naturally I had to play with that for a while, but I didn’t spend any money buying software I didn’t know I already had! How sweet is that?
*****
We had a bit of excitement last week. Seems someone in the central part of the building thought it would be funny to pull the fire alarm. Oh yeah, that was a real thigh slapper. Apparently, all the units that are in a single building have a fire alarm in them, in addition to the smoke detectors that are in each unit. But when my smoke detector goes off, only mine does, not anyone else’s. For the fire alarm however, they are all connected and everyone’s in the building went off. I went outside to see what I could see when the flashing lights appeared and some some poor little old lady looking helpless, so I tried to help her out of the way and reassure her that nothing was actually on fire. I felt bad for the poor firemen who had to suit up and come out on a hot muggy night. All for nothing! The worst part is realizing that it must have been someone who lives here, or knows someone who lives here, because the only way to get into the building is with a key.
*****
On the homefront, Darc did some outlining, which is always fun for us. Now the first 2 books in the (formerly known as) GhostHunters series are outlined and ready to be written. Yes, that means JD and Dillon will be back! Seriously exciting! I’ve missed those characters!
So now Darc has a plethora of stories he can plug into and get going on at his whim. Yay!
*****
And that was my weekend. How was yours?
The other night I heard my son humming a little tune under his breath that was pretty familiar. At first I figured it must be my imagination, then he started singing the words.
“I see a red door and I want to paint it black … .”
“Excuse me?! How do you know that song?” I asked him.
“Let me guess, it’s one you already know.”
“Uh, yeah, it must have come out when I was about 2, so yes, you could say I already know it, Mr Smartypants. Let me show you.”
So I did a quick YouTube search and then played the found video for him, complete in all its black and white glory.
My son watched it with me. “He dances pretty weird, it’s kinda funny,” was pretty much all he found to say about it.
“Yeah, that’s what drugs will do to you,” said I. “You should see him do his chicken dance, maybe I’ll find a video of that and show it to you one of these days. Drugs are bad.” As a parent, you have to take the teachable moments where you find them. 
“So tell me,” I asked, “How did you come across that song? It shouldn’t be on your radar at all.”
He pointed me to the video where he heard it. Sonic. A silly Sonic the Hedgehog video. Who knew?
I actually found these over at iOwnTheWorld. I love the “little bit of everything” aspect. Sort of like a buffet, like Thanksgiving coming up. 
These are mostly fun shoes, but they’re clever, and slightly wacky and appeal to my sense of humor. I think my favorite are the chocolate sauce pair. Although, the chewing gum ones are pretty neat too, lol.
Speaking of chocolate, I found this interesting post: Benefits Of Chocolate Milk After Your Workout. Loving chocolate milk as much as I do, I was intrigued, to say the least. However, I did give it up a few years ago so I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back in. But it sure is fun to think about!
I posted a picture of my son’s solar system birthday cake over on my recipes blog, ( Birthday Cake ) if you wanted to see how it turned out.
Now it’s back to the grind for us! But the day off sure was fun and sugar filled! And had cake and ice cream too. 
How was your day?
I played God this weekend. Yes I did too!
I created my own solar system. I stuck it in the cold vacuum of space. And when I was done, I rested.
See? I told you!
My planets, however, were made from fondant, and the cold vacuum of space is my freezer. My solar system is not quite to scale of the one we live in, and mine will ultimately rest, not hanging in space on the power of my word, but on top of my son’s birthday cake.
When he told me what he wanted a couple of months ago, I admit I was kind of intimidated. I’ve never worked with fondant before. Where could I get it? Could I make it? I found a recipe and discovered that making fondant, even by hand without a stand mixer, is easy-peasy. Whew! It’s like Play-doh! Except it’s yummy and tastes like buttercream and you can actually eat it. Hopefully, it’ll look okay once it’s all assembled. I’ll post pics, of course. 
I wonder if God got blue under His nails too? Hmmm.
And how was your weekend?
I had to go through a few years of old checkbook entries before I finally found the place I’d bought some stuff at a few years ago. I couldn’t remember the name. My search paid off though, and I was able to pick up a few decorations for the kids room. They came today and the kids are thrilled. 
That makes mom happy.
My son is into space now. It’s his latest passion. Tomorrow I’ll hang the planets from the ceiling on his half.
My daughter is into green. She finally decided to go with the jungle thing, and some bugs and flowers.
I’ve had a fish thing going in the kids bathroom for a few years now, but I thought I’d spruce that up a bit, so I added an extra touch to surprise them. Heheheheh. 
They thought that was hysterical.
So if you want some cheap decorations, I can highly recommend PartyCheap. For a few dollars and some Scotch tape, you can do some big things.
We took the kids out yesterday for trick or treating. Things are different here, and from when I was a kid. Back then we could stay out as long as neighbors had their lights on. Now-a-days, they want trick or treating done on the weekend so it doesn’t interfere with school or something, and during the day so it doesn’t interfere with … night, or something. I don’t know. All I do know is that the city ordinances around in many of the local little townships have hours that trick or treating is permitted. So that’s when we go.
This year the munchkins decided to be Mario and Batgirl. 
We took them to the same neighborhood we’ve taken them to for the past few years, since there’s no trick or treating around the complex here. It’s a nice neighborhood and many of the people put up some great decorations. A few times, when the folks at the door saw me waiting on the sidewalk for my kids, would hand the kids some extra candy and say, “give this to your mom!” How nice is that? That’s the kind of neighborhood it is. Some of them even dress up to pass out candy. The best costume I saw was on a man wearing a t-shirt that had “COSTUME” printed on it. I thought of WIGSF when I saw that one.
All in all it was a decent Halloween. The kids got about half a “bucket” each of candy – good stuff too. We did run into one dentist – he was funny. Instead of handing out toothbrushes like the one last year, this one put in fake rotted teeth and reminded kids to brush and floss so they wouldn’t have a smile like his. I liked his approach. 
Here are my little heroes.
Have a safe and happy Halloween!
The "Ness" in DarcNess ;) 
What did you say?