The Great Pumpkin....slaughter.

Poor Pumpkins…much like the Turkeys in the month to come, October’s pumpkins never stood a chance. Oh the sacrifice they make so that their blazing crooked smiles can light our walks and spook our children.


This year my guys took their pumpkin design very seriously, pre-planning was not only necessary...

but also quite taxing.

We soon discovered – not everyone enjoys the art of squash disemboweling


Lucky for him Daddy’s shirt was handy for gut clean up

When everyone was happy with their creation

We introduced them to the neighborhood

And Mom handled the Crime Scene

Oh Saturday, how I love thee...

Do you know what happens at the New Braunfels H.E.B. at 6:30 on Saturday mornings?  Elderly men from all around do their shopping.  Now that in and of itself is not a spectacular event, cute, but not spectacular.  The really interesting part of that is apparently it is necessary for them to start out their shopping experience with an H.E.B. donut and believe me - pity the fool who stands in their way.  Saturday was my day to bring snacks and drinks for the boys after their football game and since I had a ridiculously busy week and the game was at 8 AM I decided on donuts and OJ. After the 4th cute as a button older gentleman pushed his cart darn near up my backside and gave me a "get the heck out of my way you whippersnapper, don't you know the rules of the Saturday morning H.E.B. donut shop??" - I gave up hopes of a wide assortment of donuts and picked up 3 dozen glazed to make it out of the bake shop with my ankles intact.
The game was a success - a million points to zero as far as our guys were concerned!  Which means that we will be heading to the playoffs!!  4 more weeks of 3 nights a week practices and Sunday games - yes, it is a double edged sword.  We treated Grampa to breakfast at Garcia's in San Marcos - if you ever get out that way try their Carne Guisada - good times.  And then we headed home.
But not for long...because sometime, yes sometimes my husband says things that make me realize I am indeed the luckiest wife in the world.

him  -  "Do you want to go check out the nursery they were talking about in class last week?"
me  -  "ugh, gr, I, uh, YES, yes of course, sure, yeah, let's do it."

Oh my man loves plants and that is a-okay with me!!

Welcome to Fannick's!  Oh the plants that were laid out before us!

Berries, berries and berries...

Beautiful flowers...

Strange trees...

Fungus Amongus...

The ever present Nursery cat...

And the boys creating chaos...

Butterflies enjoying the flowers...

All topped off by one of the cutest old ladies I have seen in years!  Oh how I wish you could see her from the front.  I don't know where she was going, but she was going in style, dressed to the nines!  I wanted so desperately to have tea at her house - just precious!

Who needs all that Hoopla?

Zero dollars, the leaf blower tube and 2 hours in the backyard...


How did it become a bazooka???

Even the dog enjoyed herself...

It didn't cost us a dime and it was still one great night to be together...

One of those days...

It seems more often than not these days I have a million and 1 things on my plate. Most of those things are business related and should stay at the office, but when you run your own business you never really leave your office. At home, at the grocery store, at Jared's football games - at least part of my mind is still "at the office".

I love what I do, though I haven't always. When I was in High School and aspiring to get enough money to put gas in the uber cool sports car my parents bought during an obvious lapse of sanity - working with my dad on the weekends was simply a means to a speeding down the interstate end. When I was in college aspiring to a career in Criminal Justice (and breaking a ridiculous number of laws) - working with my dad during the summers was a means to a Tastes Great, Less Filling end. When I had given up on my crime fighting career and aspired to find myself, working with my dad was simply to put a roof over my head and food (too much apparently) in my belly. Sometime after that, I can't put a finger on exactly when, I realized this is what I am going to do, forever and I'm okay with that. Heck I am more than okay with that - I really dig what I do!

That said - there is always too much to do.

I always feel like I don't spend enough time with my boys, with my husband, with my dog, with that great book that I am so anxious to finish, with starting a scrapbook for my already 2 year youngest son.

Sometimes I just work and work until I am too sick to work anymore - although this rarely happens because I refuse to admit that I am sick (and I usually refuse to quit working).

Sometimes I work and work until my husband has that certain look in his eye when I come home and crawl in to bed at 4:00 in the morning. I usually vow then and there to slow down - until my alarm goes off at 6:00 and I get up to go at it again.

Sometimes I work and work until I feel so empty and sad and alone that my chest feels heavy with the weight of it all and I think maybe if I just sat down and cried for awhile some of that weight might lift off and make it easier to breathe.

We are moving the company to a new office in the next week or so - don't get me started on how the general contractor is 3 months late on getting me in there. I have 3 big projects going on locally right now and all scheduled for completion at the same time, along with normal service and maintenance calls, a hugetastic project kicking off in Florida and basically a total revamp of the entire company.

Basically it makes me want to throw up every time I think about it.

And just when I think I should just sit down and I cry - I run across something like this and I sit down and smile instead...

Oh how my neighbors must hate me...

This past weekend was compost weekend.  The days are getting cooler, Fall is slowly unfurling her cape and it is time to put the lawn to bed.
All of this is a wonderful and glorious thing..once you get past the feed lot smell - it is so hard to believe something so wonderful (manure) would smell like something so awful (manure).

Don't get me wrong - I personally love the smell. Not rub it on the inside of your wrists and dot it behind your ear kind of love, but more of a nurturing, healthy life cycle kind of love.
My men shoveled...

And raked...

And shoveled some more...


And when all was said and done we played (having already become accustom to the odor...


Jared trying to end his football career at 8...

And all of us appreciating what the earth has given us this year by trying to give her a little offering in hopes of our next year being just as beautiful.

Brief Diversion

A free hour and only minutes from Landa park, I am so happy we stopped in.


A little time on the playground...


A walk along the river...

The hunt for river creatures...

Where's the pocket fisherman when you need it?

A little time spent cleaning off the bridge...


Climbing the "mountain"...


Admiring the hard workers...

And follow it all up with a nap...

May we never forget just how lucky we are.

Bones of a Poet - Yes!

So my Bones of a Poet - Yes! e-course started today and I am already very excited.  Check it out at Persisting Stars - Madelyn Mulvaney is one beautifully talented lady.  I am not 100% sure what I want out of this course, but if nothing else it will serve as a little me time, something that is all mine with no kids, unless I bring them in and no husband, unless I bring him in.  No work and no customers and no deadlines and no invoices or payroll or IRS or any of the horribly unfun parts of owning a business.
I plan to be totally honest with the other participants in this class and more importantly totally honest with myself.  I think that this will be well deserved me time, that hopefully leads to a lot of me time.

Herb Babies

Yesterday was the 19th Annual San Antonio Herb Market – I get excited all over again just typing that! Gabriel went in to work to get ahead for next week – isn’t just so diligent – so I dressed the kids in layers and headed downtown!

Jared spent the ride getting acquainted with my camera….first through a self portrait

and then the moving shot...

We took the obligatory picture in front of the antique gas pump – is it physically possible to pass an antique gas pump with out photographing it?

And then the gloriousness was revealed to us…oh if only I had smellabog…you would be so utterly happy…

I will admit I was not able to spend the kind of time I wanted with all the green herb babies, and organic hand made soaps and teas and oils and other glorious bits and pieces, but a 2 year old at a street market is not ideal.  Although it did give Jared some more time with my camera...

That said – we still had a great time, got many new green babies for ourselves and some Mexican Mint Marigold for a brave friend, Jared even picked out some fantastically minty soap for himself. We will be back next year and I recommend it to everyone close enough to join us!

Oh how she mocks me...

My dear friend Wendy who is smack dab in the middle of working her artist's magic for me has posted with the sole intention of driving me crazy.  You can see the teeny, tiny little bit she has allowed me to look upon here.

She's a sneaky one this Wendy, but I'll pay her back. 

AND, despite her evil ways and based solely on this little taste - I love it already.

Hormonal Genius

A few weeks ago I did something I thought very grown up and mature of myself - I commissioned a painting from a painfully talented friend of mine. It was all very forward thinking and purposeful. We discussed sizes and scale and colors and mediums, we discussed the feelings I want from it and the emotions it would elicit. Once we were on the same page and the deal was done - I felt glorious! I felt immediately that I wanted the painting yesterday, but I knew that what I really wanted was for her to spend as much time as necessary on it so that it would be everything we both want it to be.


Then, I found out she was in the family way! What a wonderful and exciting thing - made even better by the fact that she was 20 weeks along before she even realized it!! She was halfway finished before she even got started! Lucky...


But what about my painting? How would this little dirt loving earth baby growing in her belly affect her art? I remember being pregnant with both of my boys - there was good and there was bad and toward the end of both there were some times that Gabriel would just rather forget - God Bless him for not running away when I was waddling about and could not have given chase.  Most of all I remember hormones - happy hormones and sad hormones, hormones that laughed uncontrollably and hormones that cried until my eyes swelled shut. These hormones coursing through my veins making me feel everything so much more intensely than I normally would.


I realized, rather quickly, just how lucky I was. If my painting had a fraction of that feeling, those emotions - my lord what a wondrous thing it would be! She is an artist down to the center of her being and now her being was double occupied! I can't wait to see this glorious piece (and I am pretty excited about the little hippie she is cooking too!)

I will admit though, the closest I got to artistic genius was 1 week before my due date when I locked my depressed crying self in the bathroom and stripped the paint off the cabinets with Scrubbing Bubbles (it totally worked). My husband thought I was crazy and maybe I was.

Obsession

I have an obsession.  I can't control myself.  It fills my thoughts almost constantly.  I need help.  I need a fix.  I need more bandanas...

While reading a friend's blog not to terribly long ago I came upon a most wonderful thing -  Blue Yonder Bandana Pants.  I managed to control myself for a couple of days.  And then I brought the sewing machine out of retirement...and it was all down hill from there.

That is the camo pair I made last night - I will spare you the American flag pair, khaki pair and checkered pair I made in the 2 days before that.

These are 4 of 6 new sets of bandanas I purchased today in order to make even more bandana shorts and bandana pants for the little guy.

I am chomping at the bit to get these started.  AND my head is already spinning over modifications and upgrades and taking these guys into winter with us.  I have to admit, I am a little out of control right now.

I don't know if it's the fact that each pair of shorts, or pants as it were, costs less than 2 bucks or if it's the fact that my oldest thinks it is the coolest thing even that I made him a pair of shorts - unfortunately he didn't realize clothes came from anywhere other than the store (we are working on that one).  Either way I am truly enjoying myself and that in itself is priceless.