Happy Halloween!

Happy haunting y'all!

Random Bits...

Last weekend, we had a fun time at Teya's spooky Halloween birthday party. Here are Max & Andrew winding up for a pinata whack: The kids going for the loot: And the kids digging for more loot in a cauldron:Other random thoughts:

I am bummed that this will be the first election I won't vote in. I really have no excuse, but I let the deadline slip by me for registering in Utah.

I also can't believe that Reese Witherspoon & her hubby split! Theirs was a little more surprising than say, J. Lo & fill-in-the-blank or Nick & Jessica.

Well, we'll hit a few houses trick-or-treating tonight. Ben is wearing a hand-me-down pumpkin costume (I figure I'll take advantage of that until he's old enough to care), and Max is a racecar driver (see above photos). I'll get a pic of them later.

Also, New This Week

First, an extreme baby close-up:Ben's version of peekaboo:Max has entered an exciting new world called Pees While Standing. (Sorry, no pics of that!)

I Stand Corrected

This is going to be a long post...bear with me! So I thought it was a heckuva week when Andrew had the stomach flu. I had no idea what was in store for us. As most of you know, the virus that he had was a particularly nasty little creature that decided that simply making my hubby sick to his stomach wasn't enough; it wanted to attack some more of his body, namely his heart. Andrew spent a weekend in the ICU with myocarditis (don't look it up on the internet, it will scare the pants off you). He then was off work for a week. On Monday, he saw the cardiologist, who is pleased with the progress. The virus weakened Andrew's heart a little, so he has a little less energy & he still has some minor muscle pain from the ordeal, but is otherwise OK - thankfully!! Hopefully he'll eventually have a full recovery. He's on heart medications & will continue to follow up with the cardiologist. The good news is his back doesn't hurt anymore. Thank you all for your calls, e-mails, thoughts & prayers. They mean a lot to us!

The contractors continue to make awesome progress in our basement. Yesterday Ben napped through jackhammering & a smoke alarm being set off by their soldering. Amazing.

The boys & I have been on our own this week because Andrew flew to Dallas Monday night for the second (and final) part of his training for his job here. He returns tonight.

Here are some pics from Tuesday, when I took the boys to Red Butte Garden (SLC's botanic gardens). They currently have a dinosaur exhibition going on, so Max enjoyed finding the dinos peeking out of the plants. Ben just rode along in the wagon (I don't mean to be a bad Mom & not have any pics of Ben at the gardens). I'll include a picture of Ben on his 11-month b-day so you can see him too. We enjoyed gorgeous weather at the botanic gardens, yesterday it snowed, and now it's warming up again.

And one of my thoughts for the week: Rush Limbaugh is just a rotten excuse for a human being.

What a week...

...and it's only Thursday. I can't believe I last blogged Monday - it seems like much longer ago than that. Tuesday night about 11:00, Andrew got sick. Unmentionables violently shot out of all openings in his body until Wednesday afternoon. Today he started easing back into food and life. When someone in the family gets sick, it seems like the world just halts and the days drag by. Max also had a pretty good cough Wednesday & Ben was still fighting a runny nose (translation, everyone was sick except Mom). We all seem to be getting back to normal today & I am crawling out from under the mountain of "sick laundry". Thank goodness!! And the boys & I seem to have dodged whatever Andrew had, whether it was a bug or something he ate. Double yeah for that. You take good health for granted until it goes on hiatus for a few days.

I took the boys to the pumpkin patch today. What a fun afternoon! We'll probably carve them tomorrow.

We also decided this week that we're going to finish the basement. I know, I know, I've preached it myself: you lose money when you finish a basement. However, Utah has its own set of rules. After talking to our realtor and some of Andrew's co-workers, it seems that having a 5 bed, 4 bath house in Utah actually is more valuable than a 4 bed, 3 bath house, so a basement finish here is not such a loser. Plus, we'd love love love the extra space for a toy room & guest suite. So we have a contractor all lined up. Should be done around Dec 1 (so hopefully by next summer in contractor-time :) ).

That's it for now.

Colorado Trip

All the Shiers are back in Utah after our trip to Colorado. The two-legged ones arrived yesterday afternoon and the four-legged one made her return from the doggie hotel this morning. We had a really great trip, despite the fact the both boys got colds & had very runny noses. We had a fun time just hanging out with the family. Max and Ben entertained everyone with the new tricks they've learned since they last saw them.

Whenever we are at Grandma Jill's & Grandpa Jim's Max likes to sit on the farm equipment several times a day:

Uncle Jody and Aunt Whitney came down on Saturday to see us: On another note, our builder is supposed to plant trees in our yard, lining the streets. While we were gone, the builder planted the trees along one side of our yard, so we were so excited to see the trees when we got home! (We are on a corner, so the other street hasn't been planted yet.) That's it in a nutshell...

Oktoberfest

I went to my first Oktoberfest celebration this weekend. And it was in Utah. Oktoberfest? In Utah? Yep, you read that right. Pretty funny, huh? We had a really great time, enjoying the gorgeous fall colors and hanging out with Tom, Krissa & Teya. There were lots of kids activities, overpriced (but yummy) German food, polka, lederhosen, and, oh yeah, lots of beer. ("Danke bitte," anyone?) A very fun afternoon. And the truly awesome part was that Oktoberfest was at a ski area called Snowbird. When we pulled into our driveway, our trip-meter read 40 miles. That's ROUNDTRIP.