OWL!

With the exception of a disturbing coloring book called "Elmo goes to the potty" (I will write a future post on this issue), Luke's favorite book right now is probably, "Franklin Goes to School". Franklin is a turtle who is a bit apprehensive about leaving his parents and hopping on that school bus for the first time. You know, a typical turtle. However, everything works out well for Franklin as he ends up having a very supportive teacher who happens to be an owl.

The story has really touched Luke's heart and he just loves that teacher. So much so that he yells "OWL!" many times throughout the day. I made a little video this evening while we were all eating dinner. I can't say that the video is really funny, but it does capture a Luke-Owl moment. You can also see our "staged" living room in the background. Didn't Em do an amazing job?

I looked on the memory stick just now and found this picture of Luke from a couple weeks ago. I'm just ecstatic. Why? Well, Em has this cute thing where she gets mad at me when I go to certain food establishments without her. Like if she finds out that I had lunch at one of these places during the work day without her, she's like, "How could you do this to me?" and not in a totally joking way either. These places include Five Guys, Chipotle, Maggiano's, and Potbelly. Ah-ha! This picture of a cute boy innocently sipping a milkshake will forever remind me of my wife's betrayal!





In closing, Luke knows his body parts!

HILLoween

Today, Alanna uploaded some new pictures from the Swiatkowski family. Carolina is a great kid, and is getting prettier and prettier every day. Anyway, I absolutely cracked up at some of the photos of Luke they had. Let me explain.

Jonathan and Alanna were so sweet to watch Luke on Halloween night while Em and I went to this retreat. So they took him and Carolina to this Halloween fun night on Capitol Hill called "Hilloween". You see, they just replaced the "Hall" with "Hill". It was really an omen of "change" now that I think about it.

Alanna asked if they could dress Luke up in a costume, and I agreed, just as long as he wasn't anything satanic. So, they dressed him up as a gorilla.

However, Luke took it a step further. As he searched for his true "motivation" for the role, he decided to portray not a wild gorilla, but more of a caged gorilla who had been separated from his parents in the wild. Luke played the part perfectly. No other baby could have better portrayed the outright despair and utter hopelessness of caged gorillas like my son.

Sock Weather

Luke and I have been hanging out tonight as usual, and he's been pretty low key. I've been enjoying it. Tonight he's been working on putting his socks on. Now that it's getting cold, we've been putting them on around the house. He always takes them off, of course, but tonight is the first night where I've seen him want to put them back on. Multiple times over the course of the night he has taken off his socks, and then said "coewl" (his word for cold), which is promptly followed by an attempt to put his socks back on.

But it's hard to get your sock on when you have a MAN FOOT!

Where IS it?!

I was thinking how funny it would be if Obama was actually not born in the United States. And further, if it wasn't the result of some big international conspiracy, but just a family oversight.  What if Obama's Mom was always like, "Maybe I'll tell him when he's a little older." 

You know, my Uncle who married into the family always thought he was Irish-Welsh until he found out in his mid fifties that he was actually Italian!  It would be akin to finding out that Joe wasn't actually a plumber.  Imagine how that would shake you to your very core.  

So here you have Obama about to become the president of the most powerful country in the world, but you know he's been in the attic all evening looking for that box.  But gosh darnit, he's combed through every box marked "Hawaii" without success!

Speaking of boxes, we've been packing a few of our own. Luke has been lending a hand.

In big news, Em passed the bar!  We found out about a week ago.  She jumped in my arms and we started screaming and jumping up and down.  Poor Luke was so scared!  So we picked him up and we were all jumping around together.  Afterwards, I gave my two-weeks notice.

This is for you, Pops!

I know that a lot of you have been waiting for some new Luke pics. So I went ahead and made a slideshow of some pics from the last month or so. Enjoy!

Love,

Rich & Em

Luke Around the House


Family Trip to Texas

Updates!

But no pictures or videos yet, because the camera is in our bedroom, where Rich and Luke are sleeeeeping...  Probably where I should be, but something comes over me on the weekends.  Late at night, I finally feel like I'm free to do just what I want to do.  Usually Rich and I force each other to go to sleep rather than stay up, but since he went to bed early, I haven't anyone to tell me to go to bed!  This happened on our girls' weekend when Ange was in town.  Ash and I shared a hotel room and I forced her to stay up till 3am, flipping back and forth between "JAWS" and "My Best Friend's Wedding."

Briefly, our life, of late, has included...

1) An audit from the IRS.  We'll hear back from them in October when they review our documentation.

2) ~$200 fine for Rich for speeding.  This is actually a big relief, because he had been snagged for "reckless driving," AKA high speeding, which carried major, major penalties, but since his driving record was otherwise clean, they let him off with a "light" fine.

3) Packing up excess stuff around the house and putting it in storage.  All in preparation for staging our house and prepping it to sell!  We're going to try selling it ourselves for a few weeks.  If that doesn't work, we'll pay some friends to list it in MLS.  

4) Looking for a house to buy.  We'd like to get a bit more space and be much closer to Rich's work.  However, our real estate market is really expensive, so we are trusting God to provide a place for us in the right spot for the right price.

5) Softball.  Rich's team made the playoffs!  They play tomorrow at 10am.  We're waking up at 7am, so I'd better go to sleep.

Luke is still very VERY cute.  I'll make sure to post videos/pics soon!  Thanks for bearing with us!

OH.  And I've been terrible with birthdays this year.  I remembered to call my dad and sisters, I think, but I forgot my grandfather's, grandmother's and best friend's.  Boo!!  I hate that sinking feeling.  I've always wanted to be good with birthday card sending... Happy belated b-day Granddad, Mimi and Skoo!

Wed nights with Dad

Emily is back to playing the bass at "praise and worship practice" on Wed nights (she used to promise she'd stop when she finished school, and that it was just to help pay bills). Tonight was a magical night where Luke didn't cry when Em left, he ate his whole dinner, and we had a really smooth bath time and bed time. He even scratched my back. Of course, it's 10:33 PM and he just woke up, but let's hope that he falls back asleep.

First of all, before showing you some of the funny videos from tonight, check out this cute Luke and George Lubbers video Emily took yesterday.

Luke cracks me up, because he's always lifting things. He's always lifting this rachet set and bringing it to you, and now he's lifting this. It makes me laugh, because he makes this grunt noise.

Here's some reading fun. I enjoy making up facts about the animals, as well as pouring out misinformation.

Who didn't want a wolf for a pet when you were a kid? On a random note, did you just think of the movie "Teen Wolf" when I said that? You can admit it, it's ok. Also this video shows how much Luke really knows when it comes to working the tv. Here I was just teasing Luke when I asked him where the remotes were, because I knew he wanted to watch his video! I had never asked him that before.