1.  Healthy Food – breastmilk or appropriate formula, baby food / smashed table food.

2. Safe Place to Sit (with buckles) – carseat, high chair, stroller.

3.  Something to Hold – this should also be something that is “mouthable” (but not  small enough to swallow).

4. Board Books – reading to kids isn’t enough, they should have the chance to hold / taste / sample books themselves.

5. Clean Environment, Clean Clothes, Clean Body.

6. Conversation – they understand far more than you think!  Talk to them as an adult and forgo the baby’ish sounding talk.

7. L.O.V.E. – ’nuff said!

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Kevin worked til 5:30 pm today, and with a 30 minute drive
to get home, we were in a rush to get our vote in before
the South Carolina poles closed at 7:00 pm.
Thankfully, with Ribs cookin’ in the crockpot, dinner wasn’t an issue.
Once Kevin was home, we packed up and
headed over to my parents house.

My parents had voted earlier today, so they promised to watch
Jack-Evan as Kevin and I went to vote.

So…we quickly passed off the baby, a jar of baby food, and
a sippy cup of mommy milk, and headed out the door.

It was soooo dark already.  We’re still not use to the time change! 
There were reports of lines 3-4 hours long earlier
today in our area, but thankfully those seemed to
have disappeared by the time we arrived at our district’s pole.
A few of our local politicians were at the doors making
last ditch efforts polite conversation as we entered.

There were 5 voting booths set up (all of which were filled),
and only 3 people ahead of us. 
We moved pretty fast into our stations too,
and before I knew it, I had hit the “confirm” button
finishing up my own vote. 
With pride, I smiled at Kevin as we walked out the door. 

Sans-baby, we headed off for our first bit of
alone time in 6 months to get some
FREE coffee from Starbucks and a
FREE election doughnut from Krispe Kreme.
Everyone who showed them their “I Voted” sticker
received the free treats.

Yet, the best part wasn’t the yummy doughnut or the hot coffee.
Nor was it knowing we had just taken part in a grand election.
Nor was it the knowledge that history was
about to be made in our great country.

No.  The best part of the day was sitting there with my husband,
laughing my tail off as we slugged down caffeine and dined on sugar.

Regardless of who our president is or how our next four years play out,
the best part of life is being with the people we love – those who we interact
with day to day and would give our life for. 

In the end, that’s all that matters.

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(Voiced by 5 month old Jack-Evan, typed by Mommy)

Once upon a time, I went trick or treating with my mom and dad.

I was a lion, Dad was a yankee farmer, and mom was a southern country girl.

Since I can’t eat candy yet…

…my Grammy gave me some baby food in my goodie bag!

Next we treated my Abuella (Daddy’s birth mom).

Then we went to Aunt Mae’s house.
(She is my Grammy’s sister)

She’s one of *those* Aunts who is always kissing my chubby cheeks.

We had a lot of fun visiting!

And finally, we made our way over to cousin Tammy’s house…

where we saw Willy Wonka…

…Bat Woman…

…and a really funny guy with yummy hair.
(Mom says he’s my cousin.  I didn’t want to believe her.)

After roasting some marshmellows

We said goodbye to everyone

And went back to my Grammy and Papa’s house
for the rest of the evening.

The End.

P.S.  Please tell mommy to stop eating my candy. 
Thanks, Love, Jack-Evan

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“Kevin, come here, you have GOT to see the color of this poop.”

~ Said a few hours after the introduction of carrot baby food.

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Doncha know that when you want your camera the most, that is the moment you are least likely to have it available?

For one, you may remember that I have been obsessed with collecting pepsi points this year.  I was bound and determined to earn 75 points before the contest ended so I could get this very nifty pepsi loungewear set.  (I can get quite OCD with hoarding pajamas sometimes).  

And last week, I finally entered my 75th pepsi point and ordered my set.  It arrived today!!  I barely had time to remove it from the mailbox before it hopped out of the package and insisted on me putting it on.  It’s so comfortable, and it fits perfectly (I was a little nervous about sizing because of some negative reviews on Amazon.com).  I have it on right now, and I wanted to take a picture of it and put it on the “share your images” part of Amazon’s listing for it when I do my review on there.  But as luck would have it,  my batteries died yesterday.

Another picture worthy moment I wanted to capture was Jack-Evan at lunch time.  Now that he’s 5 months old, we’ve begun introducing him to veggie baby food (we introduced him to rice cereal last month).  The other day, we fed him some sweet peas for the first time and that went well.  Today, I introduced him to sweet potatoes.  His reaction to them…along with his face and full body shiver…was hilarious.  It only took a few bites though before he became accustomed to the taste – he ended up loving them.  I also intoduced him to a sippy cup that contained some expressed milk  He’s always refused to drink from a bottle, but the sippy cup was a different story.  He loved it!  He took right to it, holding it with both hands and everything.  I was quite proud of him.

Then… one last picture worthy moment occured tonight…

After dinner, Kevin, Jack-Evan and I hopped in our SUV and drove about a half mile away to our local farmer’s market.  We were going to get a pumpkin!  Three, to be exact.  In the interest of fairness (and cringeworthy goofiness) we just had to have a daddy, mommy, and baby pumpkin.  We arrived at the farmer’s market around 7:15 and spent about 3 hours looking for the perfect pumpkin. 

Ok, well, it was only like 10 minutes, but it really did seem like it was going to take me forever to choose which pumpkin was the best!  (Isn’t that silly?)  The entire time, the logical part of my brain was telling me to just pick a pumpkin, that they’re really all pretty much the same, yada yada yada.  But the emotional part of my brain was causing me to run around outside, in abstract giddiness, plunking the colorful range of orange pumpkin skins and listening happily to the plink sound.  I bet I plunked 33 pumpkins in all.  Whilest I was searching for our daddy pumpkin, Kevin took Jack to the little pumpkins and helped him pick out one.  After Jack had his pumpkin, we still had 2 more to find. 

Finally, we decided on the perfect large pumpkin (one that weighed 21.84 lbs, had the most terrific stem, and made the best plink a picked, plunked, plump pumpkin could make.)  Again, it seemed like it took forever to choose mr. daddy pumpkin because they had so many choices.

Kevin made me tote it. (hrmph.)

Then, without much adieu, Kevin took us over to the medium pumpkins, and within 3.7 seconds he had picked out a cute momma pumpkin for me.  Since all of the pumpkins were located on the outside, we had to go inside to pay.

So imagine this – out of the nighttime darkness, and into the farmer’s market we march – a large 6’1 inch male, carrying a baby carrier (with baby) and 2 smallish pumpkins, along with a 5’4″ small, pepsi-clad female struggling under the weight of a 20+ lb pumpkin.  Oh yes.  I was wearing my pepsi loungewear. 

And we were all grinning like possums!

The 3 pumpkins didn’t cost quite as much as I thought they might.  The larger pumpkin was only .49 cent per lb, and the total cost for all 3 was about $15.00.  That’s not too bad for a fun fall family tradition.

Our pumpkins are now sitting on our front porch, awaiting to be carved tomorrow afternoon.  I always make toasted pumpkin seeds too when we carve our pumpkins!  So by this time tomorrow night, we will all be munching on some fabulous, crunchy, salty pumpkin seeds.  (Yummy!  I’m getting excited just thinking about it!)

Perhaps I’ll stop by the store and pick up batteries tomorrow.  I do so want to get pictures of Jack sitting with his first pumpkin.  Such cute memories should always be recorded for posterity…

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