HOME

My mom keeps checking my blog and saying, "Oh, I see you're still in Prague," so I guess it's time to bring things up to date. But really, I've been enjoying just being home so much, I haven't had time to write. I truly feel like Samwise Gamgee...we went on an adventure out our front door and have some good stories to tell about it, but I sure am glad to be home. When we were gone, I missed silly things like vacuuming (I seriously always have to look up the spelling of that word) and doing laundry and tidying up. So, I have been making a concerted effort to appreciate those tasks and do them well since we've been home. I keep telling Jeremy that "I'm in The Clean Club now" (which there really is no such thing as The Clean Club, it's just a little game I play with myself because I always have been motivated by being "in" with the "crowd" and all that peer pressure stuff, so whatever, don't laugh because it's working).

Here are the photos of our return to home and some of the latest mundane events that I love so much.

When we got in Jeremy's parents van at the airport, I thought Annie would punish us, but she just kept looking back at us and smiling, like, "Oh, you really DO exist!"

So happy together

Evan got a black eye while we were gone, but otherwise the grandparents did great!

Sam got to go on a field trip with his class to a pumpkin patch. I did not help (because of MOPS), but just showed up to take a picture of my kid...I wonder what the teacher thought of that.

There's Sam pretending to listen to the kind, older woman talk about leaves and rocks. There's Natalie, his classmate, who I always see chasing him and trying to hug him and giggling (then he told me that Natalie always plays a game where she pretends to be ME and I was like, "What?" and felt a little territorial and weird, and he was like, "Yeah, and I'm the dad" so then I was like, "Oh, I see." I'm still not sure what I think.) There's Evan, picking his nose, like always. I'd say we're working on that but it might not be true.

Sam got school pictures taken. What a rite of passage. We practiced smiling the whole way to school. I was so curious to see how he would actually smile...so I was pleased to see he didn't do something ridiculous. The fact that someone did his hair like that is the ridiculous part.

Friends came over for a Kazakh-style dinner. I'd love to say that I did it to enlighten them about the country of Kazakhstan and its lovely culture, but I really did it because it's the only way I can seat more than 6 people and feed them without breaking the budget.

A rare moment of Annie sitting still long enough to fall asleep.

Jeremy's grandmother keeps *asking* for a picture of all three kids looking at the camera at the same time to put on her wall. I really tried, I did. This one would have been cute if Evan would have cooperated:

Then Sam decides to pick Annie up, which always results in her crying:

So this is the best we got:

She's in the middle of saying something really important.

Here we are on Halloween. My thoughts of warm roast beef and casually strolling around the neighborhood turned into gnawing through beef-jerky-style meat (crock pot is broken, oven is a far inferior way to cook a roast), grilled cheese sandwiches, lost red light saber, crying little monkey who didn't want to wear her costume, cold children, weird college girl in low-cut devil costume handing out candy (she claimed she was a Spartan when the kids asked her what she was dressed as), and crazy madhouse at the church carnival at the top of our street. Jeremy went home early with the monkey while Darth Vader and Batman and I stayed until the end.

This carnival game was strangely like a casino game...put a pile of candy on a number and see what number the big spinning wheel lands on.

Still picking his nose. Pretty much always.

We have a strict rule about no scary costumes or things that represent death. So I turn away for a minute at the CHURCH carnival and end up with a skeleton. Great.

I made Samuel's Darth Vader accessories, as I pride myself on not having to spend any money on Halloween costumes. While we were getting ready for bed, Samuel informed me that next year, he wants to be black spiderman on one side and red spiderman on the other. Sounds like I'll need grandma's help on that one.