Hi Mom!

These are the words I hear almost nightly around 2am. A little head appears at the side of my bed and says "Hi mom". I just say, "Go back to bed, Naomi" and she trudges back to her bedroom. But it's the same routine night after night after night. What does she think she's doing wandering around the house in the middle of the night? One of these nights I think I'll just ask her what she's doing and see what she says.

Birthday Ideas

David asked me yesterday what I wanted for my birthday. He said he wanted to get me something nice. At first I thought a new camera- a really nice one. My pictures always seem bad to me- blurry and just not great quality. But would I really have the patience to learn all the fancy-pants stuff? And would I use it any more than I use the one we have now? David just had to have that expensive video camera last Christmas and we've taped less than an hour's worth of stuff, I bet. So I decided maybe not a camera. Asking for my old house is probably out of the question. I could use a new computer, but David wants one too, so that's out. Any ideas what I need, don't have, and can't live without? I can't even suggest jewelry, cause I never wear the stuff I have. It shouldn't be this hard to come up with something I want.

Halloween

Ok, I know alot of people think we should be condemned for celebrating Halloween. But it isn't like I've started my own coven in honor of the day. It's just a fun time to dress up the kids and get some sugar. And exercise. Since our neighborhood must be anti-halloween-ites, only every third or fourth house had anyone handing out candy, and since I couldn't very well tell Hope to be content with her five little pieces of candy after we finished the block we were supposed to ToT on, we walked quite a ways. And thanks to whomever thought it was a great idea to build houses on hills, we got to walk up and down everyone's stairs- some of these houses have 10 stairs up to their door. I carried Naomi up most of them so she didn't fall or get trampled. By the end of the evening, I had shed my sweatshirt, pushed up my sleeves, and was breaking a pretty nasty sweat. I can tell Disneyland is going to be lots of fun if I can't even walk up and down a few flights of stairs without huffing.

I found an angel costume on ebay several months ago that was either 1¢ or 99¢, I can't remember. But with shipping, it was about five bucks. I really thought about getting a devil costume for Naomi, but I thought that might be pushing it, and I couldn't find a cheap one, so she wore Hope's skunk costume. She loves hats, so she loved the hood to it; I put it on her early in the day and had to hide it from her so she wouldn't wear it all day long. Joel had two pumpkin costumes, so he wore one of them, but he and David stayed home and handed out candy while Hope and Naomi went ToTing. Naomi got the hang of things pretty quickly, holding out her bucket and taking handfuls when people let her pick her own candy. She was so sweet- she couldn't say trick or treat, but she never missed "thanks, bye bye". She learned quickly how to say candy and chocolate, and most of her candy has been removed from her pumpkin so we won't have too many days of listening to her ask for it.