It's Ladybug Infestation Time Again!

I'm a little over-due from my usual weekly blogging. I had such a busy weekend that I didn't even check my e-mail, which these days is unheard of for me. With the impending move on the way I'm trying to do what I can so that when it gets here we're not killing ourselves to get out in a short time. The good thing is that we're not selling the house right away, so we don't have to have everything out in one day. We can move sort of gradually. However, I hate moving, so I'd like to keep it from dragging out as much as possible. This weekend I got the laundry room cleaned out. It's one of those rooms that has become a catch-all for the things we know we don't want to throw away yet but don't know what to do with. Well, most of it got thrown away this weekend. One thing I won't miss is the ladybug infestation we get every year around this time. It usually hits at the end of October, but this year it's hit a little late. Yesterday I swept hundreds of them out of the floor in front of the door and windows. I don't know if any of you know that ladybugs have a distinct smell, but in swarms they do. When I walk in the door every afternoon the smell hits me. One year I made the mistake of vaccuming them up, and I had to get rid of the bag because the vaccum cleaner smelled like ladybugs. Maybe soon it'll get cold enough to kill them all. It's just funny because if people were all crowded together and this huge creature came up and started killing them, most of the people would scatter and never come back. Not ladybugs. They don't seem to care if I smoosh all their little friends, or thump them across the room. They just carry on with their invasion fearlessly. Ugh! Since I haven't taken any pictures since Halloween I'm including some pictures of the kids from when we went to the park a couple of weeks ago.

Halloween '07

Halloween has come and gone again, and for some reason I follow the exact same picture format every year with my pictures. Same place in the yard, same poses...at least the costumes are different. This first picture is of the 5, yes, 5 pumpkins that I carved all by myself. Drew helped me dig the guts out of the huge one (for reference it weighed about 50 pounds). Then she drew a face on another pumpkin and lost interest. Evan wrote "boo" about 50 times on his pumpkin, and then drew a face the size of a half-dollar, so he was a little upset when I carved a big face in it and not the tiny one he drew. I couldn't get him to understand that I just didn't have the precision I needed with my kitchen knife. Alli drew the face with the tiny eyebrows and the huge round mouth, and then wrote her name across the top. She also did pretty well digging guts out. So, after I worked with Drew to clean out the big one, and then finished off cleaning Alli's, that was it for me and guts. In the last ones we just set the candles on top of the seeds and everything. It worked just as well, so I may just skip that step in the future. As far as costumes, Drew wanted to be Sacagawea, probably because Andy goes around saying her name all the time because it sounds funny. This was as close as we could get. I was just excited they had an Indian outfit at the costume store, seeing as I waited until the 27th to buy costumes. Alli is a spider princess (the name that came on the costume bag), and Evan is Optimus Prime from Transformers, which Andy was especially pumped about. The mask made it through one house before he didn't want to wear it anymore. Of course they had a great night and got tons of candy, which we all ate and felt like puking before the night was over, and still have tons left. What's sad is within the next couple of weeks we'll eat all the good stuff out, and then the cheap-o yucky stuff like Mary-Janes and Bit-O-Honeys (sorry Dad) will be left over, only to get thrown away while we're cleaning out to move. Oh yeah, we're moving! Our date is January 1, and it's only about 10 minutes north of here. The good news is that it's one mile from Wal-Mart and the bank and several eating places, and there are even places that will deliver. Nothing delivers here. We're moving mainly because this house is just too small. The kids' rooms are tiny and so is our bedroom, and the living room is so not conducive to entertaining (because we're such party animals). The new house is so nice and has lots more room. The kids will all have their own bedroom, plus a playroom. We should be able to live there with plenty of room for at least 10 years (we've been here 7!). Plus, it comes with one of those underground invisible fenses, so it's all ready for Daisy, and it also comes with a golf cart! That was the deciding factor. I'm kidding, but, seriously, we've already decided that next year we'll be trick-or-treating on the golf cart. So, that was the first of many holidays to come and our big news. I can already smell the Thanksgiving turkey, and, yes, that overwhelmed feeling of not having a clue where to start with packing has set in as well.