Owen - sooo cute

Can anyone stand how adorable he is?!!??! My baby is a genius; he says a million words and even sings at 18 months. Don't you want to eat him!

Parent Visit

My parents have been coming out to help us get organized one weekend per month. My dad does yard work and other labor and my mom cooks, cleans and does other helpful household stuff. In November, we checked out a restaurant called Bistro 29. My halibut was undercooked and Patrick's chicken was bland. However, they served some really interesting chickpea fries and a delicious onion soup finished off with cider. 3 stars (out of 5); the decor was great and we would go there again.

Carly Comes to Shop

Carly and mom came to visit in November. We shopped and went to a chocolate cooking class at Ramekin in Sonoma. The best thing we learned was how to make these edible chocolate pretzel baskets. Mmmmm. Carly told all kinds of wild stories including a particularly juicy one about my mother in college. We ate lunch at this yummy Spanish restaurant and saw a sad movie. Gotta love a Gals weekend. Patrick had to do errands around the house, but he also got to eat my chococlate goodies so don't feel too bad for him.

Halloween

This year was our first year in a house and I couldn't wait to get trick or treaters. I bought mounds of Candy, but only got about twenty kids. It was otherwise a quiet evening that involved Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin and nibbling on chocolate. I made Patrick dress up at home, but he didn't wear his costume to work. I was in Devon's class and he thought I was a flower; another little boy said that I was the color white. In case it is unclear, I am an egg. This is in commemoration of one of the three foods I could eat during the first 12 weeks of my pregnancy.

Contractors

When moving into a new (old) house, there always seem to be a million little projects that need to be completed and never get done. We hired a contractor and tried to get a bunch of little jobs done before all of our stuff started filling up the house.

Things took too long during the closing and our poor guy had to work among our chaos. Many days I would come home from work to find him busy with projects. It was almost sad when he finished all his projects and there was no one in the house anymore when I would returned from work. However, I was not sad to stop hemorrhaging money. Small jobs kept becoming complicated, time consuming ventures with this old house.

Here are my conclusions after this experience with a contractor that we both really liked and who did a great job:

1. Nobody will show up on time.
2. It will cost more than your estimate.
3. Hire someone you like b/c you will be seeing a lot of them.
4. The job will take longer than you expect.
5. Inevitably, the previous owner of your house will have done something wrong that the contractor did not foresee and you will have to pay lots of $ to fix.
6. The contractor will discover 10 other problems while fixing the 1 you hired him/her to repair.
7. Being a home owner is much more expensive than expected.
8. I wish I was more handy
9. Or that Patrick didn't have to work such long hours

Devon

Here's a cute picture I took of Devon about three weeks ago in his classroom. He's doing great (almost no seizures) and is getting adopted soon. Yea! Such a sweetie, Patrick just loved him. I've never met another person as happy as Devon.