Mary Kay Party

It's true, there is no party like a Mary Kay party. Cara hosted a holiday party last weekend that seemed to go rather well. I'm not exactly sure about the Mary Kay end of things, but I do know that the cookies were delicious. Tater had a great time greeting all of his friends as they came by. He was very excited to see all 3 of his grandmas on the same day.

With the party came our Christmas decorations. Cara got the tree up and decked it out all by herself. Now I need to do my part and put up some lights outside. I may just stick with a few lights on the porch and forget about the angel that sits in the yard. We had a mishap last year involving Mom, Tater, and the angel. :) I'm not completely certain I'll get them up this weekend, but that's the goal.

I just finished grading my last batch of essays at 10:30 last night. Grades have to be in by 3:30 today, so it was crunch time. Next week is going to be great, though. We went to school on Veteran's Day so we could have Wednesday off of next week. Woo-hoo! It's going to be a much-needed break. We start reading Julius Caesar when we come back, so I'll need to make sure I have everything together. Four more weeks after we return and it's Christmas break time again. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. Let us know how things go.

News

Sorry it's been a while since our last post. I let school, gigs, and lessons bog me down. I recently stopped teaching guitar lesson at B-Sharp to free up some time. I was having a hard time juggling two jobs, gigs, and trying to see my wife a couple hours out of the week. I feel better already.

Baby plans are going well. The heartbeat was right around 155 tonight. It's still pretty high. Does that mean a girl? We'll have to wait and see. Cara has really been popping out lately. It seems like not much progress will be happening and then BAM! Her stomach pops out another couple inches. Cool stuff.




I've been looking around for a new car since our baby news. As much as I love the Geo, it's not really conducive to car seats and strollers. We found a Subaru we liked over the weekend and went for a test drive on Tuesday. Cara started wheeling and dealing and we got them to go quite a bit under the Kelly Blue Book price. It's an '05 Subaru Outback with 58,000 miles. It doesn't have a sun roof or leather, but the CD player and seat warmers are nice. It also has a programmable rear view mirror so you don't have to worry about a garage door opener. I though that was kinda cool. It's going to be weird driving through a parking lot and not setting off car alarms because my car is so incredibly loud. You think I'm joking, but it happened with the Geo. I hope all is well with everyone. Let us know how things are going.

Pumpkins and Spooks

I hope Halloween was fun for all. I finally got around to carving my pumpkin last weekend. It's probably a good thing I didn't get to it the weekend before. It hasn't been a week yet and it's already getting soft. I was thinking about doing something stupid, but I settled on the classic triangle-eye pumpkin face. A good choice, I think.







As a rule, Carroll High School does not allow staff or students to dress up for Halloween. This year they decided to make a fund raiser out of it. Anyone who dresses up pays two bucks, which goes to help pay for the medical bills of a student who had a serious growth removed from his optic nerve. What a great opportunity to help the cause and wear a chicken suit all day. I've been looking for an excuse to wear it to school. My students thought it was pretty cool. I got my fair share of odd looks (from students and faculty), but it was worth it. The best part was wearing my Chucks underneath the chicken feet. One teacher wore her regular clothes with a sign that said "Nudist on Strike." I also liked the art teacher's costume. She's the one on the right dressed as a bag of leaves.



I had another gig a couple weeks ago with the new trio I've been playing with. Dan, the guitar player, is a friend of mine from town who used to play in the Brown Bottle Band and the Trainhoppers. I met Brandon, the drummer, in the music department at IPFW. I have a lot of fun playing with those guys. This is a small clip of us playing Revolution by the Beatles.