The Littlest Link and Jay's 2nd Halloween!

Figured I better get this one out before Thanksgiving is upon us!

We don't go "all out" for Halloween like some people do, mainly because hubby's family has never been one for the day (his dad HATES it with a passion, coming from a religious point of view). But there are some things I enjoy doing - pumpkins and dressing my kid up being some of them!

This year we took Jay to the pumpkin patch for the first time (we figured he was too little last year to really enjoy any of it). We were only there for about an hour, and he refused to give up his Thomas notepad so he could actually do much of anything, but oh well... I'd like to think we had fun! (side note: he didn't know what to make of the witch lady and her skin being all green, lol...)

"Oscar... why are you 2 dimensional and not talking?!"

Running around, with notepad in tow. He would NOT give that thing up!

Climbing up to the Great Pumpkin

We took photos in the face cutout thingys

We let him pick out his own pumpkin and I carved it a few days later.

And then there's his costume this year...

Little Link from Zelda!!!

You may have seen this idea on Pinterest awhile back (obviously I did, as that's where I got the idea for it). It was too awesome not to do!

Raiding the Trick or Treater's candy bowl

Hubby had to work so it was just me and Jay this year so we stopped over at my parent's house for trick or treat, by my aunt's who lives around the corner from my parents, as well as by one of Jay's uncle's houses as he's in the same neighborhood, lol... my mom joined us for Trunk or Treat up at church this year. Hubby's sis, my cousin, and some friends of theirs did a Finding Nemo themed trunk this year.

Hubby's sis as the yellow fish from Finding Nemo, Jay, my cousin as the starfish
and a friend of theirs as a turtle.

Freaking out over Tigger and Pooh =)

They also had people dressed in costumes to entertain the kids as they waited to get into the Trunk or Treat part of the lot, including a Tigger and Pooh, who Jay went crazy for! He let out a squeal of "Tigg-ah!" and went running over, pulling on Tigger's leg to get his attention. While we waited for hubby's sis and her friends to finish up, I took Jay back over to where Tigger and Pooh were stationed, to keep him entertained for a bit since there wasn't much of a crowd by them anymore. He danced along with them (they had a band playing music during the event, Jay would stop and dance every time we snaked past them, lol...) and just had fun in general, interacting with Tigger and Pooh.

We found Link's game!

Quite a few people recognized him as Link and corrected those that didn't - one lady behind us, in her 20s, even jumped the line to come take a picture with him, she thought he was too cute! A guy, probably in his 40s or 50s, corrected his wife when she mistook Jay's costume for something not Link, lol... Older, non-gaming people called him "The first Robin Hood" or Peter Pan... someone even thought he was an elf (with a sword and shield, really?).

Afterwards we stopped by Best Buy to say "hi" to da-da as he was working all evening - the customers he was with thought Jay was the Jolly Green Giant, although hubby quickly corrected them, lol... it was funny though, as Jay went running through the video game section of the store while a couple college-aged guys were playing one of the demos. They both saw him - one started smiling and laughing while the other exclaimed "OMG! That. Is. AWESOME!!" It was too funny!

Too cute!

All in all, I'd say we had a successful 2nd Halloween!

Jay started to get a bit tired and overwhelmed by the end of Trunk or Treat, so we sat down and I let him pick out a piece of candy (he seems to like Snickers). He got quite a bit of candy. I also left out our bucket of candy again this year, with the sign to take a few. We had 2 groups of Trick or Treaters before we headed out. And I'm guessing a few more stopped by as there was a bit of a dent in the candy I had left out!

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Be sure to check your children's candy though! This year there were 2 reported incidents in our area of objects being found in kid's candy - one that was posted online showed a razor blade stuck in a thing of Starbursts, while another report showed that of a pin/needle in a piece of candy! How sick and sad is that?? And the razor blade one was found in a decent neighborhood too!

I voted... but not for Romney OR Obama.

As I've mentioned before, this election, if anything, has made me realize one thing: I'm a conservative moderate.

That being said, I don't like Obama for a number of reasons and I didn't like Romney either. To me, they were basically the same and both represented some of the more extremes of their respective parties.

I couldn't vote for Romney due to all the extreme stuff the Republicans were pushing (mainly the whole "war on women" and some of the outrageous comments that came out of that). I couldn't vote for Obama because I don't agree with a number of stuff he's pushing and claims he's made that I doubt he'll follow through on.

I've always said though that if you don't vote, you have no reason to complain about the outcome.

Honestly, as I've said before, Ron Paul seemed to be the only candidate running this time around that made any sense and didn't come off as a moron or a-hole. I looked at Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and some of his views were a tad too liberal for me, and then there was the Green party... and yeah, bunch of hippies if ya ask me, lol...

Yeah, I could have sucked it up and voted for "the lesser of 2 evils" or "NObama" but I didn't want to compromise myself and my beliefs in doing so - I wanted to be able to vote yet still sleep with myself at night.

So... I did something I've never done before and went the write-in route this election year, writing in Ron Paul as my candidate.

And I'm glad I did.

I'm proud to be part of the 1.7% of our country's voters that didn't vote for Romney or Obama this time around.

Honestly though, I know quite a handful that went the write-in or third party route this time around, as I know too many people that didn't like either Romney or Obama either (yet most of them went the NObama/"lesser-of-two-evils" route).

I'm Going Home...

Well, to my university's homecoming that is.

It was last month and I decided that since it's already been 5 years since I graduated and I haven't really been back there since, why not?

We drove the 30 miles over in the late morning. I took the back roads for nostalgic reasons. It was fun driving past all our old favorite just off campus places.

First thing we did on campus was check out the remodeled Cole Hall.

For those that don't know, Cole Hall is the building where the 2008 Valentine's Day shooting occurred (I've mentioned it on Valentine's Day every year since). On the main floor, the building consisted of 2 big auditoriums used mainly for Gen-Ed lectures that the majority of students took during their time at NIU, as well as housed a small anthropology museum. Thanks to the voices of students, alumni and others, they made the decision not to tear down the building like originally planned and instead sent out a survey as to what should be done. The result was a remodel. The outside and front/main hallway got a total facelift, the auditorium where the shooting occurred got split, part of it now being a smart classroom while the anthropology museum expanded into the other part. The other auditorium got a facelift as well so it no longer resembles the old one. Pretty neat.

Gotta admit though, I got chills and started to choke up a little just walking through that building again. I had several classes in that damned auditorium during my time there. It was a tad emotional.

After that visit, we headed over to the Alumni and Visitors Center and proceeded to the Alumni Village area behind it where they had various tents for each college at the university where you could eat free food. Since I was an Art major, we went to the Visual and Performing Arts tent. Can't say I knew a single person there. After we ate lunch we went in search of the school's newspaper tailgating tent, since most of the people I knew during my time at school, outside my art classes, were the newspaper staff. Sadly though, this being the 1st year with a new adviser in years, there apparently wasn't one! Which sucks as I knew some of my fellow newspaper staff people were th

ere... somewhere.

New building in the end zone!

We did get tickets to the game though, where we were up by A LOT at halftime (which is when we

left as Jay couldn't sit through an entire 3 hour football game). There was a lot of changes though - at the one end of field is a new field house that I had no idea existed. You could also the new high-tech residence hall from the stadium. I got myself a new t-shirt, as well as one for Jay to grow into.

After we left the game, I ran into a few of my fellow newspaper peeps - the gal that was editor-in-chief the semester I started as well as 2 guys that I worked on staff with for a few years. It was nice catching up with them!

Jay hamming it up at the football game
with mommy and his plastic Geico gecko
(you can see the plain backside of it)

From there we took a drive around campus and then went to our favorite local dinner, just off

campus.

Then we drove over to the theater so I could harass my bestest buddy from my time there. Sadly, the last of the kids I worked with on staff had just left not too long ago, aside from one that is now management and left before I got there.

If anything, this trip made me realize how much I miss DeKalb and my time in college... we really did have too much fun in college!

Funny story though - at the Alumni and Visitors Center, Geico had a booth and they handed out pompoms with a plastic Geico gecko as the handle. Well, ours immediately broke off so we gave it to Jay to play with... Little Man clung to that plastic gecko alllllll day, lol...

Got fleas?

Last week we took Jay to the immediate care clinic Friday evening after I got home from work, as when I picked him up from my mom's she said pointed out that he had been scratching his scalp so much that he was causing it to bleed and scab.

Turns out, my kid has fleas.

/facepalm

So yeah... we think what happened is that the dog got em as her flea collar fell off a week or so prior to this and she was rolling around on the carpet, scratching, etc... and Jay plays on the carpet, also rolling around so yeah... he probably got them that way. Found a few in my hair but not nearly to the degree that Jay has.

We've been fighting that battle this past week, washing our hair with the dog's flea and tick shampoo (which the smell almost made me nauseous at work the other night!). We also "bug bombed" the house last weekend to kill em all off but who knows... we might have to do it again.

My poor baby though... it's funny to say "my kid has fleas" but at the same time, makes me sad.

Miss Me Much?

Hello again!

Long time, no... see?

Anyways, yeah, I've been AWOL on the blog here for the past month or so... been a tad bit busy in RL, taking care of the little guy, plus one of our leads at work had a fulltime job offer literally fall into her lap and being the most experienced regular associate at work, my boss talked me into taking on the position temporarily through the holidays so she has adequate time to find someone for the position and get them trained when it's not quite so crazy. Can't say it's been too bad... having been there officially 2 years now (as of this week!) and management treating me as one of their own for quite some time now (and the fact they love how they never need to micro-manage me), it's been a pretty smooth transition. I closed with the other lead tonight and she told me our store manager was telling her how I'm doing just fine when it comes to closing. Opening is okay aside from certain parts of the paperwork (the parts that require annoying math) that I tend to have a little trouble with, but apparently everyone does at first. My next shift is my first time closing without another member of management working with me. If I wanted the position permenantly, it'd be mine, but honestly... I don't. The main reason I accepted it was because I know I'm the only qualified and most experienced person on our staff that could step up and do it, not to mention last year during the holidays my boss had me working 5 days and 30 hours a week, and I knew odds are it was going to happen once again so I figured I might as well get paid a little more for it this time around. I'd much rather work 3 days a week though and be home with Little Man the rest of the time. Especially since hubby works 2 jobs. I really don't want my child to grow up feeling like he was raised and disciplined by his grandparents because mommy and daddy were always working.

I'm getting a few posts lined up to get ya all caught up and things I wanted to "document" here on the blog, such as Halloween and the recent election among other things.

Some quick blurbs though...

My sister is now 5 months pregnant and just found out this week that they're having a little girl! I so knew it too, simply because I was hoping for a girl and got a boy and they were hoping for a boy and so of course they'd have a girl, lol...

One of our good friends from long, long ago (she was a bridesmaid in our wedding) just announced this week that her and her husband are expecting in May! So excited for them!

I'm hooked on Gossip Girl. I blame Tara (Fabulous But Evil) and the rest of you on Twitter. And of course now that I'm caught up via Netflix, it's in its final season. Cuz that always happens to me - I get hooked on a show and by the time I'm all caught up it's almost over for good. Booo... but I am soooo for Chuck and Blair and their relationship drama. It's soooo bad, but soooo good! And hubby's gotten into it with me too, as he kept coming home at 4am while I was in the middle or just starting an episode and we'd watch a few. He likes Chuck and Blair drama =) Like I told Tara, Chuck and Blair better end up together for good and there better be a Chuck and Blair wedding this season or I'm going to be sooooo upset! Those two are sooo right for each other! Yes, I'm gushing over a fictional TV character. But when it comes to Chuck and Blair, how can you not??? I'm so over Dan though... I liked him and Serena during the 1st season but after that... Dan got kinda annoying. Nate and Serena need to end up together and Dan can just be alone. I also would like to smack Lily upside the head for Rufus... wtf?! Rufus is such a good man... I really would LOVE to see a "When Rufus Met Lily" flashback episode done a la the Valley Girls episode - that'd be AWESOME!

Have any of you noticed an increase in spam comments lately? As you know, I haven't posted in like a month but I get almost daily spam comments on completely random old posts... You all complain about capcha's on blogs (which I hate too, especially now that they include numbers!) so I took em off and yeah... spam comments on a near daily basis!

Stay tuned for more!