So on Friday, hubs came hoe from work with some nice news. All the lay off papers have been handed out and he still has a job. Now, we aren’t looking for rooms in las vegas hotels, but we ARE breathing quite a bit easier!

The equipment hubs makes at his workplace is in high demand as farmers are using them to harvest corn to sell to people who make ethanol, and the ethanol market is doing very good, so it is likely that his company will pull through this recession, just based on the corn header sales.

It makes it a lot easier for us to spent the money we had planned on Christmas gifts, that’s for sure.

It’s ten PM on October 31′st. My children (Dementor, zombie and pirate) have had their Halloween make up scrubbed off them, brushed their teeth (twice!) and have been tucked into bed. Hubs and I have just finished going through their candy bags looking for all the normal contraband – razor blades, bottles of poison, open candies, that sort of thing.

And you know what? candy has gone PC – politically correct – on us!

Out of the entire candy haul, there was not a single package of candy cigarettes – sorry – candy sticks, as they are better  known now… Come to think of it, I haven’t seen them in stores lately either!

It’s a sign of the times, just like how proud papa’s are no longer handing out Dutch Master cigars to announce the birth of their bundles of joy.

Oh well. At least miniature chocolate bars are still socially acceptable – until the obisity activists have their way, at least!

If ever there is a time for a person to sit down online and start researching low cost health insurance, it’s when they are sicker then a dog.

You NEVER see a person stop ad consider their health insurance plans when they are feeling fine, nope, it is always when you are already sick that you start searching.

And right now? I am very very sick.

I’m sick, and I am miserable and I would love to find the truck that ran over me and punch them in the gas tank. But first, I need to sleep.

As I write this, a group of ten and eleven year old boys are squealing like six year old girls over a micro mini helicopter. You see, Our son turns ten on the 29th of October, which is a Thursday, and therefore not a good day for a Birthday Party. The weekend right after his birthday is Halloween, so, also not good.

Therefore, Parker sat down to pizza cake and presents a little over two hours ago. One of his gifts was an Air Hogs Micro Mini Helicopter. While the boys were downstairs playing with the play station, My husband charged the heli and when it was charged, gave it a go.

Our 65pound dog, Smokey, can now cross “searching for colon cleanse reviews” off her To Do list becuase when that little two inch long helicopter started whirling its wings, she just lost.her.shit. She cried, whined, barked ran in circles, hid, jumped and even danced over this ting. she was both absolutely terrified and super interested in it.

In the end, her reaction to the heli meant that hubs stopped playing with it, sent it downstairs, and gave out son instructions that if he wanted his R/C to last longer than an hour, to never, ever fly it near the dog.

This Saturday we started our Christmas Shopping. We bought season one and two of Corner Gas for my in laws. They don’t watch a lot of television, but what they Do watch, it’s something they LOVE, and they fell in love with Corner Gas immediately!

We still have NO idea what to get my father and his wife, but it will come to us, it always does.

We are going to get the kids a net book, some clothing and they will give each other a small toy each. I asked my husband to get me an external hard drive and he, well, he has no idea what he wants for Christmas at all.

I was thinking that with as much as he loves Rock Band, and in particular, the drums, it might be an idea to get him some lessons and a set of stainless steel drums. My only problem is that I think the nose would drive me insane. he has a talent for music and instruments and would very quickly be able to play the drums well, but still, the noise. Ugh.

Other then a drum set, though, I have NO clue what to get him!

I think it’s time for me to start searching for a health insurance lead. A mental health insurance lead!

last night I had the weirdest dream, and you were all there. you see, it was my high school reunion, and we were all gathered in these..cottages.. some type of small rooms, but the “doors” to get from one to the other, you had to move the dresser and crawl through the hole behind them.

And I had one of my kids there, just one, my littlest, I kept calling him “market” becuase I wanted to market and sell his cuteness.

There was this one part, where we were all in this long dark tunnel and everyone kept jumping out at everyone else, trying to scare oneanother, but no one was ever scared, so everyone kept trying harder and hards, and every time someone would try to scare someone, that person would plop down, right in the tunnel and start writing a blog post about the encounter, then they would try to scare someone else!

It was SO weird.

We have a puppy. Ok, she isn’t technically a puppy anymore, she trend one this summer, but she is very tiny. And adorable, and cute, and I love her very very much.

But she has been a hell of a challenge to train. As in…she is still not trained to go outdoors to potty.

She could be trained. Or more to the point, we could be trained, becuase she will go potty outside when we put her pout, we just don’t put her out nearly often enough. And then she goes on the floor. Our bigger dog, she tells us when she has to go potty, but Sam won’t give us a single sign she has to go. Not even a whimper or a funny walk!

My husband and I go out to our garage to smoke, and we often take both our dogs out with us. Sam has started going potty in teh garage when we bring her out. In the beginning we were so happy it was outside the house we let her do it. We clean up her messes right away, but I am worried that the urine will start to wreck the garage flooring if we let her continue.

I guess right now it isn’t that much of an issue, within the next week we will have to clean out the garage to make room for the car becuase of the snow, and our garage is so small that once the car is parked in it there is hardly enough room for us out there, never mind adding dogs to the cramped space.

But what happens next summer when we move the car back to the driveway so the kids have room for their toys and bikes? What if she is still not trained???

It’s been a long week, and I am very tired. More because me and my husband were up until half past two in the morning and then woke up at 9am to go to breakfast at my sister in laws home than the amount of stuff we have done this week.

My husbands sister came in to visit from Florida, so the entire family took this opportunity to gather together. All six kids under the same roof for the first time in five years.

It’s been fun, and the conversation has run from what the best acne treatment is to how comfortable a pillow must be to sleep. We even played charades.

It was my first time ever playing charades, and my sister in laws and my husband were very surprised to hear that. I didn’t do very well, but I did have fun, and that has to count for something, right?

Oh! And one of my sister in laws bought a cappachino maker from costco, it was on sale, and we have spent the past five days testing out her machine very, VERY thouroghly!