Wedding Shower!

My mom and my sisters threw a wedding shower for me last Saturday. We had it at Third Church in one of the rooms in the basement. The people that came were most of my friends, and then my mom, sisters, and 3 nieces. Here I am with my family members:

And here is the whole group. Sarah Williams couldn't make it but sent a picture, so we were sure to include the framed photo in the group picture!

We had some yummy harvest food--pumpkin whoopie pies, apple cake, cider, coffee, etc. and then played some games.

Scott had told me he had an "appointment" on Saturday morning, and I had a feeling it was something to do with the shower. I was right! He went to my parent's house on Saturday morning, and they filmed him answering some questions. Then they asked me the same questions, and if I didn't say the same answer, I had to put a piece of gum in my mouth. For every wrong answer. And they had bubblicious gum. Those are big pieces of gum!

Here I am, grabbing my first piece of gum. This isn't so bad...


But then we got to a series of questions where Scott did not give serious answers! For example, they asked what we were going to name our first son and our first daughter. We have talked about that a little, and haven't decided firmly on names, but did say that we didn't want to name our kids bisexual names that could go either way, just to avoid confusion. What does Scott answer!?!? "Well, I think if we have a son we will name him Taylor. And if we have a daughter we will name her Taylor." Of course I got that one wrong! And he gave silly answers for a couple other ones as well! I think I ended up with 7 pieces of Bubblicious in my mouth!

All in all, I thought (when Scott was being serious) that we had very similar answers and have a good relationship. :) Although I don't know what his favorite Bible verse is...
I managed to blow a bubble without drooling all over. This is only about 1/3 of the gum--i didn't want to make the bubble any bigger just in case it popped in my hair! I spit the fist sized piece of gum into the garbage can. In hindsight, we should have spit it onto a napkin and taken a pictures to truly understand the size of the wad of gum in my mouth!

I have an open house this week on Thursday, so on Sunday we had a cleaning blitz at my house. Scott picked up all the little branches in the yard, which was a huge task!

Mom, Lynn, Hannah, Carrie, and Tim came over and helped clean also. Boy, you can really do a deep clean in a short amount of time with this many people! I think we got all the stuff done on my list. A special thanks to Mom for cleaning the bathrooms (my least favorite job) and to Lynn for doing the basement (my second least favorite job).

I finished making Carrie's Christmas present Saturday evening, and wrapped it. Here it is sitting on the sofa. Carrie touched it and felt that it was soft and fluffy, and immediately guessed that it was a body pillow. Boy, is she smart. Bet she doesn't know the pattern, though!

Snow!

Last weekend it was record high temperatures in Iowa. Saturday and Sunday it was about 75 degrees, and I actually wore capris for a while. On Monday night, Nov. 2, I went to a football game in my jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt and I was easily warm enough. It was about 70 degrees on Wednesday. Yesterday the temperature started to drop...

...this morning when I left for work it was snowing in Oskaloosa! It wasn't sticking, as it is waaaaay to windy right now, but it was definitely snowing. Once I got on the highway, the snow stopped, and it is just a littly rainy in Des Moines. I hope that we don't have a foot of snow in Osky when I get home! Last year there were a number of times that we got 15" of snow in Osky, while Des Moines and even Pella only got 4"!

My Maple Tree

Monday I got home from work at 6:30, and had to leave for the PC football game at 7pm. The Osky street dept. comes and takes all the leaves that are in the gutter, and my area is scheduled for this week, so I decided to quick rake up as much as i could. With daylight savings time, it is very dark already at 6:30, so I raked in the dark until it was time to leave.
Tuesday I went to eat lunch and do some work at Smokey Row. It was about 75 degrees, so I walked there. When I got home, I saw that one of the giant branches on my maple tree had cracked off and was lying in the yard!

I had been raking directly under the maple tree the night before. I'm glad it didn't fall off on my head!

I have an open house next week, so I needed to get the wood out of my yard as soon as possible! I called a friend that heats his house with wood, and he came and cut it up and took it home in his truck the next day. Thanks, Dan & Nikki, for helping out, and I hope the wood burns well!

Corn Maze 2008

Last weekend we went out on annual trip to Kinfolk and the Corn Maze. We didn't get to go last year, as they did not make a corn maze (the farmer's wife was battling cancer). So we were very excited to go this year! We always go with a group of adults, and we seem to have more fun than any of the high school kids there. We also got to go through the haunted maze section, which is the most fun part. Kinfolk's is a little restaurant in Attica, which is a town that basically consists of 20 houses and Kinfolk's. They have goooooooood braised beef, and I always enjoy the catfish. The restaurant is nicely decorated with antiques and class pictures from Attica High School in the 1930's. There used to be a fountain in one of the dining rooms, but they have apparently removed that some time in the last 2 years. We also have an ongoing joke about the supposed "2 way mirror" between the men's and the ladies' restrooms.

Above: Here we are waiting to go into the haunted maze. We have record high's last weekend, so even though it was at night on November 1 in Iowa, it was a balmy 65 degrees at the corn maze.

Below: Lorraine had taken a funny picture of Sara, and was showing it to Sara and Chris. Scott caught them in the "reveal" moment, and I think that Sara's facial expression is priceless!

Melanie decided she was too scared to go through the haunted maze section, so Scott and I waited it out with her and caught up with everyone at the beginning of the regular maze. In this picture we have scary eyes...maybe we should have gone into the haunted maze and scared the workers!


Lorraine and I take a self-portrait.

When Scott tried to take a funny picture with the cow, Melanie was very embarrassed. But when I laid down to drink milk, she didn't say a thing. Guess that means I'm COOL.

We all took a turn on the slide. It isn't a regular slide--it is a bunch of pvc pipes on rollers, so it's a bit of a butt massage going down.

Scott, Melanie, and Jacob decided to do a train. You get some good speed, so this was a little difficult on the dismount.