Our big adventures

Disclaimer: I forgot to post this one. Sorry. Here is Halloween just in time for Thanksgiving. . . Beau has had his costume for well over a month. He committed to a blue Power Ranger one day in Wal-Mart, and he never waivered. His big brother, on the other hand, was a different story. He just decided earlier this (Halloween) week to be a cowboy. If you know Nate, you know that it was a really bad idea for me to send him and Brayden alone to the Western store to buy "a cowboy shirt." They came back with a full-on cowboy hat, shirt and ostrich-skin boots. To be fair, it was all on sale and Brayden wanted boots anyway, but that was one expensive Halloween costume. He was very cute, though. Halloween at Wal-Mart Ok, people. I have never seen anything like this. For my Sprint friends who were at 5901, this made that look like we hardly celebrated at all. Boy, do these people get into Halloween. In the row beside me, they turned the row and cubes into the Wizard of Oz - complete wi...

Wow! I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted anything here. I've partially waited so that our "we've moved" cards could all get out and those new to our blog could catch up. And, I've partially just been tired. (Sorry. I hope I didn't lose too many of my readers.) So it's Halloween night. Since we just got back from trick-or-treating, I'm going to save the commentary and post it with the photos maybe later this weekend. Kindergarten election day Nov. 4 is election day at Centerton Gamble Elementary, just as it is across the nation. Brayden will be voting for "the guy with the brown skin and black hair - Barrack ObaRma." And he's voting this way because "He doesn't want the bad guys to have guns. He only wants the good guys to have guns so the bad guys won't have them, so I want him to win so the bad guys don't have guns." Apparently he learned this on TV. Can you say Alex P. Keaton in the making? The...

If you're reading this for the first time because you just received our card and you're wondering why we're in Arkansas, read the post just below this from Oct. 4. Otherwise, read on. Today is Monday, Oct. 6. It's in the 70s and rainy in Bentonville, Arkansas today. The boys have a new-found love for the rain. So when we got home, they ran out to the backyard (what little actual yard there is due to most of it being consumed by the pool) to play in the rain. This quickly turned into splashing on the first step of the pool. And then the second. And then kicking water at each other. By now they are pretty well soaked up to their waists. See exhibit A to the right. If I were a boy (and I'm reminded often that I'm just a gwirl ), I'd imagine this is pretty close to heaven. And this afternoon when I saw the spark in those sweet, little pairs of blue eyes, I could hear the wheels turning, "We're ALMOST completely wet. Surely it's ok if we just go ahea...

So this week I sent out most of our "we've moved" cards. I'm assuming we have some newcomers to the blog, and some friends who are shocked at the city and state indicated on the "we've moved" card. For those of you wondering what in the world is going on and why we'd move to Arkansas, here's the Reader's Digest version of the story. For those of you who already know, I'll put some "what we've been up to" info in the next section and then you can skip the rest. What we've been up to This week has flown by. I was in St. Louis visiting Karen, Dave and baby Donato on Monday and Tuesday. Beau started gymnastics at Aspire on Thursday, and our long-lost friend Ginnie Monnington (now Solomon) came over for a visit on Friday night. I've posted a picture of Ginnie and her lovely family here. For those of you out there who know and love Ginnie, she's doing well and has three beautiful girls and a very nice husband. She...

This week we've just been living life - going to work and school, grocery shopping, the usual. And it still feels different here. Even though, according to my mom, I "don't get home until about the time I would have anyway," (meaning that I get home around 6 most days, which is when I got home living in Blue Springs) there's still more time in the day. You see, now the store, dinner, ice cream or anything else we need is always less than 5 miles away. We spent a couple of evenings this week just letting the boys ride their bikes out front. This let us visit with neighbors and enjoy the weather. The resident 12-year-old told me this week that there are 20 kids under the age of 12 in this neighborhood - on three streets. Baby time! And not for us, if that's what you crazy people may be thinking. I just wanted to shout out to Donato Carroll Ruggeri, Dave and Karen's new little guy who was born on Sept. 19. AND to Carson James Gift, my cousin Erika and Landon...

The big news Karen had her baby!! Donato Carroll Ruggeri was born on Sept. 19 at 6:23 p.m. at St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis. He weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces and everyone is doing well. Congratulations, Karen and Dave! If you'd like to send them well-wishes, Dave's e-mail address is davidruggeri@yahoo.com. A new car First of all, Shelly Thorington, if you're out there, the day finally came. I traded in my 8-year-old Xterra and bought a 2009 Honda Accord on Thursday. They gave me well over blue book for the trade-in of the Xterra (wahoo!), and we got an extra set of tires and wheels thrown in with the car. If that didn't sound strange, read it again. We got an EXTRA set of TIRES and WHEELS. So here's a tip for anyone going to look at new cars. If the car you want has wheels other than what came on it as stock, or if you want them to put something else on, don't let them charge you for the tires and wheels that they took/take off and don't give to you. My...

Hurricane Ike was supposed to have brought rain to Arkansas the entire weekend. As my good friend Julie Nurski says, "Since when did Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas get hurricanes?" Well, we only got rain on Friday night and Saturday, and it was a nice, gentle rain. Grandma Zellers and Granny came to visit this weekend. We went to see bull riding at the Benton County Fair on Friday night. And on Saturday, the boys and Nate met them at Denny's Diner for breakfast. The rain stopped just long enough for Brayden's 2 p.m. football game. Go Raiders! (I can't believe I just wrote that.) So if you've been keeping up with my blog, a few entries ago I went on a rant about how I couldn't believe that there was no football here for kids younger than the second grade - and how we finally found it. Boy, did we find it. Here's my shout out to Mutt and Lisa Ketteler for responding to the quiz about the football team name. It is, in fact, the Raiders. Ugh. Double ugh tha...