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)