Pumpkin Carving 2009

Hi everyone. After a (very) extended absence, the monkeys are back. Hope all of you haven't deleted our blog from your lists!

The kids were all excited this fall to carve a pumpkin. We finally got to it last weekend. Mom monkey has been down with the flu for about a week, so Dad and the kids did this on their own.

First we got a pattern that we downloaded and printed, then cut it out and traced it on the pumpkin with a sharpie. We had bought some patterns over the summer specifically for this, but of course we couldn't find them this weekend when we needed them. We'll probably find it at Christmas.

Secondly, we then de-gutted the pumpkin. The kids pitched in like champs (I thought they would be too squeamish).

Pat is having second thoughts about the "guts"

Nicole didn't really touch the guts. She is just posing.

This is the pumpkin with the pattern on the front. Can you tell what it is?

Final step, we cut out the pieces from the front. This was kind of delicate. I did a lot of the fine work, but the kids got to cut out some of the larger pieces.



Voila!! Final product. I bet you can tell who it is now!

Snowy Script Ohio

As many of you know (and probably are too. if not, there's always hope for you!) I am a huge Buckeye football fan. From time to time I come across funny Buckeye related stuff (e-mails, internet videos, etc. I saw this one today and I just had to post it. It has been a rough winter already with snow and cold, and I admire this guy (or gal's) creativity and fanaticism.

Note the fooball helmet headgear also. All I can say is "awesome" and "Go Bucks". I wish I had thought of it myself.

Four eyes are better than two!

With mixed feeling we learned about a month ago that Patrick's vision wasn't so hot. He failed a vision screening that the kindergartners got at school and we made him an appointment with an ophthalmologist last week.

Both Yadira and I were pretty surprised, we honestly had not really noticed there was a problem. Before he had the doctor visit we did some rudimentary testing at home and figured out, holy "cow", he really can't see things clearly at a distance at all. I guess that is why he had been sitting close to the TV (although it seems like all kids do that).

It turns out that his vision is 20/60 without glasses. He would fail a vision test for his drivers license. It took a while for me to come to grips with it (him being so young), but after some thinking and prayer I realized that it is really no big deal. If him needing glasses is all we have to worry about then we are fortunate indeed.

Well, the little monkey got fitted tonight and voila...





Sponge Bob specs at their finest (can't see Sponge Bob, they are on the ear pieces)

Christmas at Disney

Well, the Miller Monkeys got a crazy notion to pack up and head to sunny Florida during Christmas break. You likely figured this out already if you read our blog and saw the beach post. (all 2 of you who read this blog) We figured it was as good a time as any to go. I had about 10 or 11 days off (thank you, God) and Yadira was able to get off for the week between Christmas and New years. We ended up driving down on Christmas night, left about 10 pm and arrived in Orlando the next day about 3. It was so funny, as we got further and further south it was really not warming up much. In fact, the next morning driving through South Carolina and Georgia it was downright icky, cool and rainy. I thought, "great, we left Ohio for this?" It was remarkable, though, right around Jacksonville the sun came out and the temp shot up into the 80's. We opened the sun roof and blared salsa and merengue music. I guess that's why they call it the sunshine state.

We were blessed with nice weather the whole time. As I stated before Yadira's brother Jesus and wife Laura went with us. The Miller's stayed at the Country Inn and Suites and they stayed with Laura's aunt who lives in Orlando. Saturday 12/27 we went to Magic Kingdom, knowing that the 25th and 26th the park reached it's max capacity. Well, the 27th wasn't far off either. It was so packed you could hardly take more than a step without bumping into someone. With how crowded it was we surprisingly were able to do a lot of rides, many of the ones we missed when we were there in 2007. We got in Magic Kingdom (so named because your money "magically" disappears from your wallet faster than Bill Clinton chasing a big mac [or an intern]) about 11 am and stayed until about 1 am. Amazingly, the kids stayed awake until then. We had a 9 pm snack of elephant ears that kept them charged up.

Even Mickey and Minnie were dressed up in Christmas garb to greet us at the entrance!

Jesus and Laura at the entrance. Note the poinsettias making up Mickey's head.

Some mean looking pirates (actually from the Caribbean, believe it or not).

One thing that I made mamma monkey promise before we went in was that we would not wait in line for hours to take pictures with characters. Guess I told her who's boss. Yeah. Note how far Nicole is placed from said chracters. She was clawing my shoulder trying to get farther away. That's not a smile on my face, that's pain.

Cinderella planted a surprise kiss on Patrick's cheek. Boy, was he surprised...

and nauseated.

Nicole tentatively approaching Belle. She did actually take pictures with live characters, just not anything in a costume.

Whoa! I'm feeling diiiiizzzzyyy! Elephant ears ready to make a repeat appearance on my lap.

Laura enjoyed taking pictures with the characters as much as the kids did.

Nicole with a pint sized pixie.

Cinderella's castle was decked out in Christmas lights.

Part of the deal to get Nicole to pose with at least some of the characters was a bribe to ride Dumbo. We kept walking by the Dumbo ride all day and the line was huge. She kept saying she wanted to ride it before we left. So the deal was, if she posed she could ride. If no pose, "No ride for you!" We finally rode it about 11 or 12 at night, one of the last things we did before leaving. Note the coating of dew on Dumbo's ears. By that time it was really cooling off (and we were in shorts, of course).



One of the only good shots of us with the castle in the background. And even this one is tilted, but I didn't feel like photoshopping it. We took about 20 shots with the castle from different angles. Just one of those odd things, someone always looking off or things out of focus.

We did get our money's worth, and squeezed every possible minute out of 'ol Mickey. Our day was even more exciting than I let on. You can ask mamma monkey for the details of her day, but I can clue you in with a few key words (migraine, nausea, vomiting, near fainting and First Aid involvement, allergic reaction, asthma attack, very swollen lip). I did not think to take a picture of her with the puffy lip. Probably God was sparing me from some great butt whuppin.

Beach Bums

It's hard to believe the holiday seasons have come and gone so quickly! First, many apologies for not posting much in the last couple of months. It has been crazy at the Miller Monkey house. Thankfully, we had a great Christmas break and went to Florida for 10 days. We were in Orlando for a couple days and went to Disney Magic Kingdom one day (will post separately). We then spent M-F in Sarasota at my Grandma Miller's place. She treated us wonderfully, as always. We went to the beach several times (both Lido and Siesta Key) and here are a few pictures. It was nice that Yadira's brothers and their spouses/families were there too (Jesus and Laura drove down with us) so the kids had a great time playing with their cousins.

We took this just hours before packing up and heading back to reality :(

The kids always want to get buried in the sand for some reason.

Dad and Nicole working on a castle.

Finished product (actually this one was the kids and uncle Jesus' doing)

Some movie star we happened to see while we were there. She was not camera shy!

The kids found a couple live sea urchins. They took turns holding them and then released them. We didn't tell them that Mom and Dad did a science project in college that involved injecting sea urchins with chemicals and then ... well you know the rest.

The kids with Cristian and Elise, their cousins from Goshen.

Close up of a sand dollar. We found two beautiful ones and they promptly got crushed trying to carry them home. In case you didn't know, Santa brought Yadira a new Canon digital SLR camera for Christmas. The quality of our monkey pictures should improve a little, at least. If nothing else, you sure can take a lot of them in a hurry.

The kids (and their mom, not pictured) at their usual friend-making with complete strangers. God has surrounded me with wonderful, social creatures that can just go up to anyone and talk to them like best friends. It is a blessing, probably to offset some of my anti-social tendencies :) Anyway, they found these ladies who were expert shell hunters and took them to their secret shell stash. They came out with some beautiful specimens.

Aloha from Sarasota. May God bless you all in 2009!