The days have gotten dark enough...so I figured it was time to amp up the blog a bit to try to compensate...It seems that this has become a weekly post, at best, so I'm going to declare that the new case and let you feel more excited when the bonus posts show up :-p. It's been a good week, thus far. When asked how we're adjusting to being back in California from Illinois, my general response is that A. I was never completely adjusted to life in Cali, anyway...and B. we were barely in Illinois long enough to have it factor much into the adjustment levels :-p.

Some of last week has already escaped me. I do remember quite clearly, though, being overall pretty tired. I think one of the highlights of the week was going to Old Navy for the stuff and save sale. If you know me well, you know that I DEPISE shopping! (especially when I don't have a goal in mind). I think it's more that the idea of spending money stresses me out quite a bit. Adam even does most of the grocery shopping because we probably wouldn't eat half as well if it were up to me to buy the groceries. I usually end up guessing the amount he spent fairly close to the actual price, but by that time, it's already spent and not up for debate. In any case, Old Navy did what they set out to do with the sale by getting a very unexcitable customer up and in line before the store opened to get my 50 percent off...not to mention the 50 percent off of clearance. I ended up spending less than 100 dollars and significantly improving my winter wardrobe...and Adam's! I was pretty proud of my purchases...and it doesn't hurt that I got several compliments about one of my new ensembles at church on Sunday. Friday evening, Adam and I decided to go play some baseball before eating dinner. It didn't last too long, though, since Adam twisted his ankle...followed by my best pitch ever being hit quite well by Adam directly into my shoulder. Unfortunately, the bruise wasn't half as cool as I had wanted it to be. We then decided to come home, eat, and try our luck at Wii Baseball, instead.

Saturday was a pretty fun day for us. It was both Halloween and Heidi's birthday, so we had a full day of festivities. We slept in a bit that morning, and then got to carving our pumpkins. With only one carving knife between us, homemade patterns, not gutting the pumpkins before carving them, and all the other events that come along with pumpkin carving...it was quite the adventure. Our pumpkins both turned out how we wanted them to, and while after one night of candle heat, my poor Charlie Brown cooked too much to keep his face intact, we got one good night of pride out of our pumpkins.

After carving, we took Colton and Jack to Albertsons to pick out flowers for their mom, went to lunch with Heidi and the boys, gave her our present, and shared a pumpkin pie twister at Fosters Freeze (delicious!) It was nice to spend some time not thinking about Halloween and focusing on Heidi's birthday. I think she had fun, too. However, afterwards, we had to head home...get out some energy playing Wii, and devote some time to our amazing costumes :-p. Originally, I was going to try to be Amelia Earhart. I have a hat from Gap that looks somewhat like a pilot's helmet, so I was going to go off that...but I wasn't happy with my options for the rest of the costume. Therefore, in true Erin last minute costume style, I threw together "Roadkill" instead and Adam creatively pulled together a baseball player costume.

Fully adorned in our costumes (and amazed that, at 80-90 degrees at the end of October, we didn't need more clothes to stay warm) we headed to Heidi's to pass out candy while they made their rounds to Wayside's Fall Fest and trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. We were somewhat disappointed in the beginning at the lack of kids, but we ended up running out of candy by the end of the night, so that made up for it. We also frightened a couple neighbors that had asked if we were new to the neighborhood with our less than well thought out responses of "No, we're just borrowing the porch to hand out candy....But we do know the people that live here." Oh well...we don't live there :-p.

Sunday, we headed to The Well. We hadn't been in two weeks, which felt like a lot longer, so it was nice to see everyone again. Afterwards, we stopped by Petsmart and Trader Joes, made it home long enough to make a shopping list for groceries, and then Adam headed to the store while I worked on roasting pumpkin seeds.

I spent most of the day on Monday fighting with my computer again trying to convert our wedding video to a readable format. I had bought a program when the trial version seemed to be what I needed but would only do 5 minutes of our video without paying for the full version. Of course, when I bought the full version, it only did the first 18 minutes of the video, even after multiple tries, and I am still fighting with the very elusive company (no contact phone number and broken english email responses) to get my money back. After they sent me a different program that only converts files to the format it's already in and them asking me to email them the file that was too big to have on anything other than an external hard drive and thus impossible to transfer by email, I have now threatened to get other parties involved if he didn't comply with my numerous requests for them to return my money. I'm really not expecting that to happen, but it can't hurt to try. I have since resolved my issues of video conversion using other means and hope to have time and motivation to do something with the videos...and inspiration of what the final format should look like. That evening, we decided to do something different together and ended up playing the board game version of "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" We both eventually were able to say we were...after 7 times playing (although Adam is pretty upset with the accuracy of some of the answers to questions involving weight, density, mass, etc. He says he's TOO smart to be a 5th grader, apparently.)

Yesterday, I had yet another appointment with the dentist to get my other half of my mouth cleaned. This time, they gave me a lot more medicine to numb my mouth in the beginning than last time since I ended up needing more last week. Even that amount, though, needed supplementation. It seems that I inherited my mom's gene's for high tolerance to pain medicine. Thanks Mom. In light of dental work, the afternoon was spent doing some laundry and making rosemary, parmesan, garlic bread and heating up some Trader Joe's Butternut Squash soup. We had a very filling dinner! After some Wii time (we've been doing a bit more of that, lately) we headed to Heidi's. She invited me to go out for margaritas with some of the neighbor ladies on the street...and Adam graciously watched the boys so we could go. I had a good time, and while I don't see myself being very close with the other ladies, it's always nice to have opportunities to meet new people. I was really impressed, when we got back, to find Adam, Colton and Jack doing an art project at the table. Adam was really tired to begin with, but knew that opportunities for me to meet people are times to cease, so he agreed to hang out with the boys. They LOVE him, too, so they will take any opportunity to spend time with him and run with it. I have to admit that I like watching them interact, too. It makes me smile to see how good Adam is with kids...and as much as he won't always openly admit it, how much he enjoys spending time with them.

It's hard to remember that it's November here with the weather as warm as it is. I'm not enjoying it getting dark so quickly, so I'm doing the best I can to savor the sunshine (not that there's any lack of it.). We'll get to try out our parenting skills next week. Heidi is having surgery and will be in the hospital for a few days, so we'll have the boys for all of Monday-Wednesday. I anticipate both of us being VERY tired by Thursday! Adam's on his way home, now, so I'm going to make a frantic last attempt to get some things accomplished in the next half hour. Enjoy your week!