Yes, we're still alive.

Ok, I know, I know. I have been woefully remiss in my blogging duties lately. I actually started a couple of posts in the last month, but never finished them. Blame it on being busy, blame it on my new, long, tiring commute, blame it on writer's block, blame it on distraction, blame it on 3rd trimester exhaustion. Heck, I blame it on ALL of those things!!! But I am feeling really guilty, so I promise to see this post through to the finish today, Sunday, November 22nd, 2009!!!!

I guess I'll just recap the last month, which included Halloween! I apologize that a lot of these pictures will be familiar to my Facebook friends....

Unfortunately, our trip to Pumpkinville was thwarted this year by illness and weather.

We had a touch of H1N1 in the house mid-October. Mitch had it, Tyler did not, but he had some other virus that the pediatrician couldn't quite diagnose, so he was put on Tamiflu just in case. As was I because I'm pregnant. Tyler was fine in a couple of days, Mitch took at least a week to recover fully. Fortunately, and miraculously, Evan and I managed to escape it all.

And the day we were supposed to go to Pumpkinville with the Holmquists, Mitch and Tyler were just barely recovered, and the weather was terrible, so we couldn't go. It was unfortunate since we had such a fun time last year (http://karenandherboys.blogspot.com/2008/10/sunny-saturday.html).

But, we still needed pumpkins (the boys had been begging for them for WEEKS!), so the following day, though still rainy, we headed to a local nursery to make our selections.

Yes, he pulled that wagon, and it was HEAVY!!!

A few days before Halloween, there was some carving to be done!

I have some cute video of Tyler scooping out the pumpkin, but it's taking forever and a day to upload, so I'll have to try again later.

On Halloween, we were excited thinking we would have many trick-or-treaters, so we were prepared with LOTS of candy.

This is probably less than half of the candy we had at the ready. But alas, we maybe had 20 visitors. We're still working on the candy...

But it didn't stop us for having a good time with our boys. Here they are getting ready to go out:

Weren't they CUTE?!?!?!?!?

Here we are heading to our first house.

We went to the Jones's first. They were the first people to build on this street, and in fact were the only ones here for about a year before any more houses started going up. We met them during the building process and they are very nice. They brought us cookies as soon as we moved in. We thought it appropriate that theirs be the first house the boys went to on their very first trick-or-treating excursion.

Here they are waiting at the door:

We only went to about four houses, but we had a good time.

A big thanks to Mimi for buying the boys these AWESOME costumes!!!

The house is coming along sloooooooooowly, so no new pictures of that for now!!

Other events this month included Charlotte's first birthday!!!! I have some pictures, but they will have to go in a seperate post because for some reason I'm having a terrible time manipulating them. I can upload them, but then am unable to move them where they need to go. Very frustrating! Doesn't seem to make sense, but it may have something to do with the fact that the pictures are from my Blackberry (yes, I finally got a Blackberry and I LOVE IT!), because I was also having trouble with the pictures from my office farewell party.....

Yes, my farewell party. Baby girl is scheduled to arrive via C-section on December 16th, and my last day at work will be December 9th. Not just my last day before maternity leave, but my last day. We have decided that after the baby arrives, I will not go back to work. With three kids, it just doesn't make sense any more for me to work. Nearly my entire paycheck would go to paying the daycare/preschool costs, and what would be left over would barely cover my commuting costs. So why spend all my money for someone else to take care of my kids?? I don't plan to never work again, but for now, I will be a stay-at-home mom. I'm both excited and daunted!!! It will certainly be more difficult than any other job I have had, and I hope I'm up for the task!

Well, I guess that will be it for now. I've been at this for hours, and now it's time to tend to the boys and get them off to bed. Here's one last cute picture of the boys occupying themselves before dinner one evening:

I think it lasted about 5 minutes.....