Tales from the week 10/10-10/16

As you know, last weekend our family visited Summer's Farm in Frederick, MD. Well, Monday of this week we carved two of the four pumpkins we picked up and even toasted some yummy pumpkin seeds in the oven. This is seriously one of my favorite holiday traditions.. next to picking out an actual living Christmas tree - which Justin won't do, so I have to wait until the boys are old enough for me to force them to help.

 I chose a witch design and Lukas chose dracula. I ended up carving both, but ended up messing up Luke's pumpkin :). Luke was very good at helping me sort through the pumpkin guts for acceptable seeds. By Friday they had all disappeared :D


Lighting the pumpkins when darkness falls has now become our fun thing to do before Lukas goes to bed. Justin isn't here much, so I try to have special things Luke and I do together.

 Justin is doing well in drill team training. They are still working 2pm-2am, but it is more like 1pm-3am as Justin has stuff to do before and after. He gets home and sleeps until around 11am. His hands were very swollen on Saturday and Sunday and he is having some shoulder/hand pain, but he says that he is far better off than alot of the guys. Their class that started at 13 people is now down to 9 and I see Justin getting all the way through training..

I am seriously looking forward to Thanksgiving, December and Christmas because Justin will be done with training and working a super light schedule until the Spring when drill team starts travelling. To me, it is one thing when Justin is out of town and I can do my own thing with the boys and not expect help from Justin, but quite another when Justin physically here, but too tired or hurting to help and yet I still have cook, clean and care for the kids and another adult. Frustrating. He has been doing as much as he can though, and that makes me feel better, as does listening to my pastor and reading this awesome book my awesome sister-in-law Becky sent about controlling emotions.



Other random news: I won a contest on the Paleo Comfort Foods website and received alot of free, funny stationary, wrapping paper and a reusable shopping bag. I was really hoping to win the Le Creuset enameled cast iron dutch oven, but this was a pleasant surprise. The couple that runs the blog are so friendly and their book is full of delicious things. Nom nom nom. I  have been catching up on Season 2 of the Vampire Diaries and was surprised to find after receiving the third disk that they added it to instant streaming. YAYYYY!! No more waiting for the mail. Luke threw up Friday morning and deceived me into thinking he was fine until Saturday afternoon when he vomited about 5 times in the course of a few hours. It was really sad, because we had just taken him to Cold Stone for some ice cream.. since I can no longer have it in the house (..my addiction..). He kept saying sad things to me like "Mommy, I just want to get better." and "I'm so sick mommy." He did not throw up all day Sunday, so good news. :) That's all for now!