Saturday, October 30, 2010

Jack-O-Lanterns '10

We are a little late this year with our jack-o-lanterns, but I just look at it like there is less time for them to rot on the porch. Alison helped me to start with on Thursday, and we finished Friday.



I even started showing Alison how to carve pumpkins. I drew the picture on the little one and let her do some cutting.


Next year maybe I'll try and teach Sarah how to carve a good pumpkin.

Here are what they looked like with the lights out. They should be very spooky on the porch on Halloween.





Saturday night I had to go out and get another one because one of the original four had started rotting outside while waiting to be carved, I tried to carve the rotten spot out, but it was just too big. So I did a quick carve job on it making Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas.


Sarah’s is the vampire one and I carved it Friday night while she was away that the Mall of America. So when she got home and saw the face I had carved for her she was very happy.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Halloween Party

Alison was feeling better just in time for her class Halloween Party. Kris got to help plan things with the other room mom, so she was able to do a lot of the same things as they did last year when Ali was at Riverside. It sounded like they had a lot of fun, so here are a few photos of the party and the other kids’ in their costumes.





Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 42 today and how did I spend it? Working and watching Sarah cheer at a girls basketball game. Kris wouldn't let me take the camera to Sarah's game, so there are no photos of her cheering. It's probably best though because Kris told me Sarah was nervous about having us there. She did a very good job though (at least in my opinion).

After the game we went home because the girls (mainly Alison) wanted to me to cut my cake (I think she was just hungry for a piece of it). I really love the fact that they want to make me a cake every year.

And this year when I opened my present, I let Ali take the pictures since she is in camera club at Shady Lane. So here is what she did, a nice, extreme close up.


After that we had my cake. I asked the girls to help me blow out the candles but Sarah wouldn't. Ali did, and she got all of hers blown out.


Monday, October 25, 2010

Back To School

Ali was back as school today after a week off. I had stopped a couple of times last week to get any homework for her so she wouldn't be so overwhelmed when she went back today. She was scared when I dropped her off this morning because she was afraid she was going to be so far behind and that she would still have tons of stuff to do to get caught up. This was on top of all the normal every day stressing out because none of her friends are there when I drop her off and she ends up being alone. Luckily this week is a short one (off Thursday and Friday for teacher in service days or something) so it won't be too bad.

Slacking

Anyone who comes to see what is happening in the Hahn household on a regular basis will have noticed that there have been few entries in the month of October. I apologize, things have been busy with work and with the girls’ activities. By the time I have had time to sit down and type out what was happening, I was just too tired and wanted to go to bed instead.

I have however, been keeping notes so over the next day or two, I’ll post updates of all the highlights from the last month as well as the current happenings.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sick Again

Since Sunday morning Ali was feeling under the weather. Her fever was in the neighborhood of 102 to 103. And Kris took her in on Monday and she saw PA. She asked how long Ali had her cough which we had only noticed since that day. They ordered a chest x-ray and it turns out she had pneumonia. So she got a prescription for some antibiotics and Tylenol. After three days of not having her temp go down, even after giving her Tylenol and Motrin, we took her back in on Friday. Luckily this time we got to see her regular doctor. He ordered another chest x-ray and it turns out she had pneumonia in both lungs now. So he prescribed a second antibiotic and she got an inhaler as well. A day later her temp was practically gone.

The bad part was that last week was Red Ribbon Week at school, and Ali had to miss all of it. She was very sad about that. But at least she’ll be ready to go back on Monday.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

End Of An Era

After finishing the yardwork of cleaning up leaves and cutting down hostas, I decided to turn my attention to a project I should have taken care of this past summer... Taking down the girls’ sandbox. They haven’t played in it in almost two years so it is just taking up space. And really, I wouldn’t expect Sarah to be playing in it at her age anyway. So I shoveled out some of the sand and took it over to Kris’s folks’ house to fill up some old cans of paint. The rest got spread out on the ground and will be covered up in the spring when I try to enlarge the patio area next to the garage.

It is something I should have done a year ago, but it makes me sort of sad doing it. It’s like closing the book on the girls’ childhood. They aren’t little girls anymore. The next thing will be taking down the playground.

It came apart very hard. When I put it together I used deck screws instead of nails, and the screw heads had become so corroded that a couple of them broke when I tried to take them out. I finally got everything dismantled and it’s all ready to be tossed out. The good thing is that there won’t be a place for the mice to congregate over the winter this year.

Fall Yardwork

This weekend was time to start getting the yard cleaned up, which means raking leaves. But more than anything, I needed to cut down the remaining hostas on the sides of the house by the neighbor’s driveway. This was all mixed in between listening/watching the Packers game against the Dolphins.

The hostas didn’t take too long, but the leaves did. Normally I try to just bag everything with the lawn mower but there were just way too many leaves. I will say that one of the best decisions we made was putting up the fence. Since we had to move it in off the lot line because of electric lines, I have about four or five feet of property on the opposite side of the fence that I need to take care of. While raking leaves on that side of the fence, I also raked up a couple of plastic bags, a candy wrapper, a tennis ball, and a couple of balls of aluminum foil. That is stuff that would have been in my backyard without the fence. I really need to snap another picture of the garage next door... But I digress.

After the hostas were cut down, I needed to put the plastic window well covers on to try an minimize the amount of leaves that we get in there. They also help once the snow comes, especially when the snowblowing starts. By the time I had finished with the leaves and the hostas, etc. the Packers game was over and I really didn’t miss much.

I also reset all the mousetraps around the foundation of the house. I hadn’t caught any in a while, so I don’t know if that means it is getting too cold for the mice or if I have simply wiped them out. Though with the garbage dump next door, I am sure that I will have plenty more opportunities at killing mice. Lately it has only been moles that are being snapped in them, though I think if I had to guesstimate a total since summer, I would be in the neighborhood of 40-50 mice and moles caught.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Halloween Decorations

Halloween is right around the corner and Alison was bugging me to finally get out the Halloween decorations. As much as I love Halloween, I really don't have that many things to put out. But that's no big deal. Kris doesn't like the clutter around the house so I keep my focus mainly outside, which is nothing more than a couple of lighted pumpkins, a couple of plastic ghosts that look like posts, and out jack-o-lanterns. We have a couple of little figures that my mother gave me a few years ago that Alison loves to have out so I took those out of storage as well.

Since we are still a little far out, the jack-o-lanterns won't be carved for a couple of weeks, though we do need to go look for our pumpkins before all the good ones are gone. But it should only take about a half an hour or so to get the cords out and the things staked outside. One of these years I need to really start collecting some good, spooky things to put in the yard.

Cleaning the Basement

After finishing the driveway (and cleaning Alison’s feet) we headed over to Kris’s parent’s house. We were helping to clean out their basement of all the things that had collected there over the years. Lots of stuff got taken to Goodwill, and lots just got tossed. We also tried cleaning all the cobwebs, and spider webs. Since no one goes down there anymore it was just awash in spider webs. YUCK!

Overall it took us a good six or seven hours of cleaning and carting stuff out of the house. We found all sorts of things that hadn’t see the light of day in years. The girls ended up bringing home a kimono that Kris’s dad got in Japan was he was in the service in Korea, and there was a box of old record albums, which included an original Sound of Music soundtrack. Overall we filled their recycling bin with all kinds of empty boxes and had, I think, five or six giant yard bags full of trash. But now you can at least move around down there and find things.

Footprints

Before I went to get cleaned up from sealing the driveway, I needed to get things put away. As I was doing that and about to get in the shower, I heard Kris shout out the window to Alison. She was outside doing something or other and I heard Kris ask her why she needed paper towels. Then she walked downstairs, and I knew exactly what had happened. She had been outside blowing bubbles and was chasing them around and ended up running onto the wet tar on the driveway.... BAREFOOT. She didn't want to tell me (or Kris) because I had told her several times to stay away from the driveway.


So now there were several tarry footprints on the concrete and porch:


I was sort of mad at first, but as I was outside cleaning Ali's feet with a combination of baby wipes and turpentine, I softened a little. When I thought about it, it was sort of cute thinking that Ali thought she would be able to get her feet cleaned up with just a couple of paper towels. I don't know what she was going to plan on doing about the footprints on the concrete.

I ended up telling Ali about how my brother and the stupid kid that lived behind us when we lived on Alva St. walked through the freshly tarred street and then walked all over a brand new driveway.

It took about an hour, but I finally got her feet cleaned up. I figured I would take care of cleaning the concrete later, because we still needed to get to Kris's parent's house to help out.

Sealing the Driveway, Again.

I was busy this weekend. It started with going into work early. And when I got home I had to get ready to reseal the driveway again for winter. Anything I can do to try and get another season out of it before having to get it replaced. But I had to rush because there was more to do on this particular Saturday.

I always hate doing the driveway because I always feel like I never mix the sealer good enough. It always ends up being too watery to begin and then too thick when I get to the bottom of the bucket. Plus, every year I seem to wait to long and there always ends up getting leaves in the tar. But I was lucky enough for it to be semi warm and also relatively calm, so there were few leaves and the tar was drying pretty well, so that by 11:30, I was done and ready to move on to the next item.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Garbage Pickers

So we got the new microwave set up, but that meant I needed to get rid of the old one. I wasn't sure if the garbagemen would end up taking it, but I figured I would put it down at the curb anyway. So I set it out when I left for work next to the garbage cans.

When I got home I didn't see the microwave, so I figured that the garbagemen took it. I asked Kris about it and she told me that we didn't need to worry, because by the time the girls left for school it was gone. I said, oh the garbage men must have come early, and she said, uh, no they didn't, it was just gone. So in the time between when I left for work, and the time that Sarah left for school, someone came by and just took it. Well, OK, I guess. It was still working after all; I think the keypad was all that needed to be replaced. I just thought it was more of a hassle to repair it, but if someone wants to take a shot at it, ok.

Test Results

At the end of September, I had my annual PM visit to the doctor. Kris convinced me that since I am now over 40, I really need to see the doctor at least once a year to make sure all systems are still working the way they should. So the report? All things are go. I got my lab test results and everything was good to go. My cholesterol levels were good, though they were slightly elevated, or off the averages, but still within the normal ranges. So looks like I am good for another year. Though I will say that a little more exercise can’t hurt. So I have that to look forward to.

Sleepover

Ali is having a sleepover tonight and she is very excited. It is with her first new friend from her new school. We have to go to the Jr. Indians game in the morning to watch Sarah cheer, so hopefully they will feel like going to bed early. But so far Ali has all kinds of things planned. Games, movies, she has the air mattress set up in the basement, and is all set to go, we are just waiting for Izzy to get here. I'll try and post some pictures if the girls let me take some.