Happy First Week of Fall!

For those of you out there in Bloggy Land, Happy First Week of Fall! Here are a couple pictures of the weather right now in good ol' St. Louis. The weather has been unusually consistent, and a little warmer than what you would expect in the fall. But we'll take it!!! Before we know it we will need to warm up our cars for 30 minutes and shovel the snow off the driveway.


The arrival of fall comes with excitement and dread. I will start out the dread and end with the excitement.

The Dread of Fall in St. Louis:
Really, there is no blame on Fall except that it comes before winter. And winter in St. Louis means teeth chattering, frigid air that slices your skin. The aches that come from shoveling the snow knowing it will all be covered back up tomorrow. Driving in the snow is a whole other blogging event that I don't even want to think about right now.

The Excitement of Fall in St. Louis:
The sweet relief from the blistering heat in the form of cool, crisp air. The air smells like crunchy leaves (just hang with me on that one!). Picking apples and pumpkins from the local farms is incredible. Wearing your favorite sweatshirt outside for the first time since early spring, but you don't need a hat or gloves. Getting an extra hour of sleep when we "fall back" our clocks. Enjoying candy corn while watching Halloween movies. Carving pumpkins! And the MOST spectacular food holiday ever invented: THANKSGIVING! (I realize/respect that Thanksgiving is much, much, more than food...but it really does offer a once-a-year occasion to enjoy delectable foods without guilt!!)

An item that fits into dread and excitement:
Rams Football. For obvious reasons, we St. Louisans are dreading the start of football season. We ask ourselves, "Is it really that bad?"
And the answer is, "Did you really have to ask that question?"
To put salt in this wound, our beloved baseball team is not going to make the playoffs this year. So this leaves nothing to look forward to except the good munchies at football parties. (Hence--the reason for Rams football being in the excitement category.)

Happy Fall!

Eye-opening sleep

It is pretty much a requirement for modern parents to upkeep some sort of online blog or profile about their kids. Well, we are that way about our dog Belle.

Belle is like most young children when it comes to sleeping. She falls into a deep sleep very quickly, and when she does it is quite entertaining to watch her. Her most impressive feat was sliding off the couch in her sleep.

Typical of dogs, she moves all 4 paws as though she is chasing something. She whimpers and growls with the occasional full-on bark. The cutest thing ever is when she barks so much that her tounge sticks out. I have tried many times to get a picture of this before she barks again and it goes back in. This time I have suceeded!

Her eyebrows start to twitch and her eyelids begin to flutter open. I didn't know this until recently, but dogs and cats have a second eyelid. It is vertical whereas the outer eyelid, like people, is horizontal. So her outer eyelid will open, and then the secondary eyelid opens. Creeeeepy!

So creepy that she looks like this when she is sleeping:



She didn't even flinch when I took these pictures. She was totally asleep. Ka-razy!

Stage 6: Tour of Missouri

This afternoon Robbie and I were able to experience our first international cycling race. It was so awesome to finally see it in real life! One would wonder how important this race is because it takes place in Missouri. :) To let you know, this race has the best of the best in international cycling. We're talking about guys who compete in the Tour de France and the recent Summer Olympics. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy. We were roughly 150 km from the finish line.

That Cart

How is it that we always get "that cart" when we go grocery shopping?


Immediately they greet you. Immediately the confrontation is on. And no, I'm not talking about the greeters at wally world. It is the inevitable cart selection pressure that starts as soon as you walk in the front door. You want to pick the right cart that is free of blemish, and full of promises for a quiet and smooth shopping trip. Unfortunately the cart selection process usually has to occur in a few split seconds because there are 5 people behind you with screaming kids or they are on a time crunch to get to their next errand.

You look for the tell-tale signs of the cart not to choose. For instance, rusty parts or a sure sign of abandonment like newspaper ads paper-mached to the bottom. Sometimes you are lucky enough to get an omen to telling you to not pick a cart before you are stuck with it. Like when you go to pull the cart away from the row, and it won't budge. Right away you should just give up and move to the next one available.

I am unfortunate enough to always get stuck with a jalopy cart despite my best efforts to avoid one. Typically the symptoms don't show until you are too far away from the cart corral to exchange it for a new one. "That cart" is plagued with a ridiculously loud noise. The noise comes from a squeaking wheel set, or I've even had a cart with a rear wheel (the load bearing wheels) with a piece missing so it clunks on the linoleum floor as it goes round and round.

"That cart" has steering situations in which it either pulls too strong to the left or right. Just last night I had a cart that refused to steer left, and without a large amount of effort would severely turn right. (usually on top of my toes)

I've noticed that whenever I happen to get stuck with "that cart" I tend to get glances of sympathy/relief from other shoppers. They know the feeling of having "that cart" and would never ostracize you for it, yet they are all too glad that its not them pushing it around.

Anyone else out there have a good "that cart" story? Consider participating in this public service announcement if you do!

Age related bugs, Blogging, Voting, and Caving

Today I have a few things on my mind, so there are 4 parts to this blog. I promise to keep each part short and sweet. One might ask, "Why blog all of this at once?" My answer to that: I have to travel to get Internet access.

Part 1: Age related bugs
Last week we were so lucky to have celebrated the marriage of the nicest guy and girl in the world, and because of that many old friends reunited. In the wee hours of the morning the conversation turned to how our lives have changed. We used to talk about who we had a crush on, and now we talk about our husbands, babies, and mortgages. My circle of friends and I are in the mid-twenties and we've all been bitten by the marriage bug. Now the baby bug has claimed a few more. It made me think: what are the bugs to come? In a few years will we all be bitten by the house remodeling bug, or the PTA bug? What is the age 40 bug? My guess is that it will have something to do with dealing with our adolescent children or how we are saving for retirement. The age 50+ bug will have us talking about which medical procedures we have endured. The more you've had, the higher your rank is. Of course, I could be totally wrong. I sure hope so!

Part 2: Blogging
All this thought about age-related bugs made me think of an article I read in the St. Peters Journal a few days ago. It was about how my generation is struggling to find an identity. (we even have 2 names for our generation: generation y and the millenias) Is my generation going to be defined by the fact that we blog to communicate? How much we love YouTube? Or could it be the Iraq War? Surviving the economic downturn (lest I call it a depression)? Not saying any of these things would be a bad label, I am just curious.

Part 3: Voting
In this election season, I have decided to start a poll on our blog. Just for fun. I realize the current topic is rather narcissistic ("Do you like reading our blog?"). Now that I've had time to think of some really great questions, be ready to vote! Some may ask your opinion of less trivial things like t.v. show topics, and some may even slice into politics. It depends on how risky I'm feeling. So even though you may never comment on this blog, I urge you to vote! :)

Part 4: Caving
As most of you know, we have a siberian husky named Belle. She is wonderful. She also has a favorite past time: caving. No caving of the spelunking variety, just caving in the house. She loves finding little nooks to make a cave out of. After doing some more research on huskies (I don't know how much more I could do), I've found that they love to have a cave for a den. When it snows outside Belle will literally dig a little hole and sleep in the snow for hours and come out feeling refreshed. Inside she sleeps under 1 of 3 things: the computer table, the coffee table, or the foot stool. Belle is over 50 pounds and we don't know how she manages to slink under the coffee table or foot stool. But she loves it. I thought I would share a couple pictures.

This is Belle in her coffee table cave.

Compare the size of Belle to the size of the coffee table space behind her.

So cute...and violent!

After arriving home and parking in our garage, we were amazed to find a little critter who had hitched a ride home on top of our car. We're pretty sure it is just a classic grasshopper, but this one was sporting quite the brilliant outfit. Neither one of us had ever seen one so brightly colored before. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a grasshopper of some tropical descent. Anywho, being the nerdy science teacher, I told Robbie to make sure it didn't get away so that I could grab the camera. After a few snapshots Robbie decided to put the cute little guy (or girl--not sure because it wasn't wearing pants or a skirt) in his hand. It walked around his palm for a moment before inflicting large amounts of pain on Robbie. I guess the grasshopper used those cute little fangs to let us know he didn't want to be bothered.