So tonight as you know is Halloween. Of all the holidays, this is the one I hate the most. I hate all the scary movies that are on TV, I hate all the gross and bloody costumes, I hate the annoying commercials that try to be scary. I also hate the fact that I am scared to let my cat be outside today. Basically, I hate what the holiday itself represents.

BUT…on the other hand, I do like the “fun” and innocent part of Halloween where the kids dress up in their cute costumes. After seeing some little babies in adorable outfits tonight, I am excited for next year when we will actually be able to dress up our own child. I told Greg that in a couple years we will finally not be one of the families home on Halloween, but instead will get to partake in the festivities ourselves. We have discussed how we are going to treat Halloween, and I am so glad that we agree on how we should treat it as parents. We will let our kids partake in the candy gathering and let them dress up. I remember doing that as a kid, and it was always great fun. However, we both agree that we do not want gross or devilish costumes, nor will we decorate our house in such a manner. There are plenty of innocent, yet fun costumes and decorations out there to choose from. ..

So, as always, we had a wonderful time with Shad and Lynette. We played a lot of Crazy Uno in front of the fireplace at their condo – so cozy! Snow was coming down outside, so that made for a beautiful evening. Now we are trying to talk them into having a kid so that our kids can grow up together.

Then on Saturday they stopped by for awhile before they headed back to Omaha. Their dogs were so excited to see them again. Ours were really sad to see their playmates go, and pretty much just laid around all afternoon after they left. We took all four dogs to PetSmart before they left – how fun! We did run into another dachshund there, a beautiful red one that was happy to see our dogs. And of course we received lots of comments and people stopping us to pet our dogs – it isn’t too often that you see 4 weiner dogs all together!

That same day, we also saw a standard-size red dachshund running across the green belt near our house. We tried to catch him, as it was apparent that he was running loose. We have never seen any other dachsies in the neighborhood so we don’t know where he came from. He wouldn’t let us get close to him, but thankfully Greg was able to chase him away from the busy street. I wish we could’ve caught him though and kept him until we could find his owner. I would hate for anything to happen to him.

Greg and I are taking the afternoon off from work and are going to head up to visit Shad and Lynette at their condo in the mountains. Hooray! What a great Friday.

We have had a fun week so far. We currently have 4 dachshunds at our house; our two (Molly and Chloe) and we are also watching Shad and Lynette’s 2 dachshies (Belle and Maggie) as well while they celebrate their anniversary at a condo up in Dillon. The dogs are getting along fabulously and behaving pretty well. They enjoy playing and last night we let ALL FOUR of them sleep in bed with us. You would think that maybe Maggie and Belle would not have a preference of whom they sleep next to (since they do not belong to us) like ours do, but oh no. ALL FOUR dogs had to share MY side of the bed. So basically I woke up with two in the crook of my arm, one next to my hip, and one between my legs. I was basically confined to a very small portion of the bed, but I was toasty warm!

We hung out with Shad and Lynette at our place on Saturday. They talked us into purchasing a digital video camera which we had been planning on doing since August but just have procrastinated on. So we were able to take a lot of video of the dogs playing. On Sunday, Greg and I drove up to Dillon to hang out with Shad and Lynette at their condo. Their condo is great and the mountains are beautiful (of course). We drove into Breckenridge to eat at the Columbine cafe, which is a great little cafe we found on our last trek together to Breckenridge. We then headed back to the condo where we entertained ourselves with some Crazy Uno and MarioKart Doubledash (as always).

The only bummer about having such a great weekend is that it makes the time go by way too fast, and then it was time to go back to work on Monday. I am so unmotivated about work anymore.

Well, our blog has officially been spammed by an online casino. This morning when I checked my email I was greeted by about 100 new comments from said casino. ARGH. That should be illegal. Soooo….I am upping the security on all comments. Some comments may require our approval before you will see them on this blog if certain key words are used. So please feel free to continue commenting (I love comments), but do not be alarmed if you do not see them register right away, as they may go into a queue awaiting our moderation/approval before they will be posted. If the spammer(s) still gets by, I will have to make ALL comments await moderation, but I am trying to save that as a last resort. Stupid spammers.

Wow, my first re-org at Corporate Express. Sun experiences them quite often, and I am sure our I.T. departments here do too, but this is the first one to ever effect me directly. I must say though that I am excited for the change. Maybe this new director will be more lenient about employees working from home or working part-time. (Hey, I can dream, right?) And speaking of dreaming, maybe there will be room in this new organization’s budget to up our pay to what we should be making.

One bummer thing we also learned today is that there is a possibility that our whole team will be moving to another building. This other building will not be quite as convenient for us – there is no on-site cafeteria, slower intranet, it is not right off the highway, and it is farther away from Sun which makes carpooling for Greg and I not quite as convenient. I sure hope we do not get moved. I am pretty spoiled here right now and I don’t want that to change!

I just had to make this sappy post, as it kept me awake last night for awhile as I thought about it. Anyways, here goes…

I am the luckiest woman alive as I have the best husband ever. Really. Greg is so thoughtful and so sweet to me. Early on in our marriage, I used to be a little disappointed that I didn’t get surprised with flowers and gifts ‘for no reason’ very often, as that didn’t fit with my romanticized version of what I thought a good marriage would entail. And while I still treasure the times I do get these things, in our almost 5 years of marriage I have come to realize that in the larger scheme of things that they really aren’t that important. I get shown love in SO many better ways! Like the times Greg makes me dinner because he knows I am tired after a long day of work. Or the sweet emails he sends me telling me he loves me or that he thought I looked extra nice today. Or his sharing his excitement about our coming baby and making sure I get enough rest and good, healthy food to eat. And the times he tells me that he appreciates me and all I do around the house. These are just a few of the many reasons why I am the luckiest woman alive and why I have the best husband in the world.

You have probably all seen this email forward, but I still think it is pretty funny (and oh so appropriate) for this coming election.
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Democrats vs Republicans

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”

She rolled her eyes an said, “you must be a Republican”.

“I am, how did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly you’ve not been much help to me.”

The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Democrat.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “how’d you know?”

“Well”, said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it’s my fault.”

So this weekend a good friend of mine, Nate, whom I have known since I was 12 (wow-14+ years!) came to visit us. He was in town to visit his father who is in the hospital here (and who thankfully is recovering well). It was so great to see him. Nathan is one of those great friends whom you can go for a long time without seeing, but then once you get back together, it is like no time really has passed. We met at camp years ago and since he lives in Casper which is 2 hours away from where I grew up, I guess we are used to sporadic visits, contenting ourselves to mostly see each other at camps or youth rallies throughout the year.

Anyways, we kept busy playing some Mario-Kart Doubledash, shopping for computer gadgets, and looking at old pictures of ourselves together back when we were in our awkward stages. There’s another reason that he is a great friend-he met me during my most awkward years and still liked me anyways. hehe.

I have been a paying subscriber to Yahoo’s Launchcast Radio for quite awhile now, and let me tell you that it has been worth every penny. I love this concept they have. I get to rate songs, artists, albums, and genres and then they play songs/artists that I have rated and also suggest others that it thinks I might like. The awesome thing about this is the exposure I have gotten to artists whom I never would have heard of otherwise, since they are not played on mainstream radio (which I coming to loathe). I have bought several albums based upon these selections and have several more on my wish list. Plus, I get to listen to all my “oldies”. I always thought it was funny that my dad still liked and listened to all this music from when he grew up. But now as I get older, I find myself doing the same thing.

Okay, on that note, here is an embarrassing and revealing thing about me, but I recently rated Wilson Phillips really high so I could get some of their classics playing through my radio. Laugh if you will (and I am sure you are if you are not too busy rolling your eyes), but I just have always loved them. I think it is the great harmonies, or maybe it is all the good memories that I have associated with their older stuff. Kristy and I had ALL their songs memorized and we have a recording of us singing to their songs when we were 14. Her hair was red, mine was black. Yes, black. Oh, to be 14 again…

Some good artists I have come across: Keri Noble, The Waifs, Barlow Girl, DJ Sammy, Glassbyrd, Downhere, Pivitplex, and Seven Places – just to name a few. There are so many more.

Tonight, in a rare occurrence, both my sisters, my mother, and myself are all online at the same time. I love online chatting! And since we all pretty much live in different towns, that is a pretty cool thing. It sucks living so far away from family, but it is nice that we are able to keep in touch with our blogs and the occasional chat session. (I am not a big phone person.) Now if only we could talk my brother and dad into getting blogs or something so we know what is going on with them…but trying to get boys to do anything is a chore in itself I guess.

It is sad to say, but yet another Dilbert cartoon hits home again. Have you ever been in a conference call at work and been suspicious that someone on the other end of the call was in the bathroom? I have actually been on a call where we actually heard a toilet flush. Crazy. If I ever had to use the bathroom and was on a conference call, I think I would turn my speakerphone off or mute the phone or something. Then again, I don’t think I would ever use the bathroom while on a call with people I work with…

So can anyone tell me what Kerry’s plan is? He keeps talking about some “plan” but I am clueless as to what this could be? I also found it interesting that when Bush brought up a speculated cost for all Kerry’s “plans” that Kerry denied the figure outright, but he never did say what it would really cost? Or, how all these new plans would be funded, yet he plans on cutting taxes. Interesting.

Well, I admit that I have only watched portions of the debates so far. My mind has already been made up. And no, I am not voting for Bush just because he is a Republican and that is what I am registered as. I actually did do a comparison of all three candidates, and I have to say, I agree with Bush and his initiatives maybe 80-90% of the time. The one thing that I agree with Kerry on is the loss of jobs to overseas countries should stop. However, I heard a rumor that the Heinz company does some of the same with their jobs… So I guess I don’t trust Kerry, since he seems to say one thing and and his wife’s company does another. Then again, he also says one thing, and then says another depending on the political wind blowing at the time.

A good comparison of the three candidates can be found at Fox News-just click on the Eye on the Issues button. I think everyone should be informed about the issues.

So my doctor appointment yesterday went GREAT! Greg was with me, of course. All my blood tests came back good. And of course we got to listen to the heartbeat. It didn’t take more than 1/2 a second before the doctor found it – this quick whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. It was amazing to hear and think about the life there. It brought tears to me eyes then and again now when I think about it. The doctor said the heartbeat sounded good and strong.

One thing I learned though is that we need to get Greg’s blood type figured out. Since mine is O -, if his is RH + , I have to get a shot in my muscle at 28 weeks and then again after the baby is born so that my body doesn’t freak out and think there is a foreign blood type there. Weird. After looking at WebMD.com because I wasn’t sure quite what the whole RH + stuff was, it turns out that this basically means any blood type that is + would require this shot for me. Yikes. Let’s just hope Greg has a negative blood type.

I also got a flu shot yesterday. I guess they are limiting flu shots this year due to a shortage of the vaccine, but pregnant women count in the group of those at high risk, so I am one of the lucky few to get one.

My 12 week doctor appointment is this afternoon. I am so excited, as we are supposed to get to hear the baby’s heartbeat today for the first time! How amazing is that?