catch-up

as much as josh and i have recently found our eyeballs wearily adhered to schoolbooks and photoshop, those certainly aren't the only activities we've done around here. but rather than risk creating the world's most obnoxiously long post, i'm going to ease into my blogging catch-up by putting just one picture up from each day and then promising myself that i'll expound on each one as the week goes on.

how to bake an apple pie:

mining in the playroom:

christmas with the cobbs:

mommy date:

ballet sneak peek:

the bakers:

yes, that's izzy riding a dog...

busted!

wacky weather:

the many faces of isabel:

swingset demolition:

baby santa:

ok, that wasn't nearly as much fun as i was thinking it would be, so i'm going to go ahead and get this weekend's stories in before i go to bed. as of this past weekend, the problem we'd been having with the neighborhood woodland creatures had gotten completely out of control. not only were there now two huge holes in our chimney siding, but the hyperactive squirrel and her posse had decided that 3am was a splendid time to play chase in the wall right behind our headboard.

(1:30, 5:00, and 2:15 were all suitable options as well.)

oh, and she had boldly decided to gorge herself out of the bird feeder several times a day as well:

i don't know if the marathoner in our wall bothered josh all that much or if he was more affected by the condition known as NOWMMREM (night-owl-wife-meets-multiple-ridiculously-early-mornings). whatever the underlying cause, it spurred him on to action. and after a couple of phone calls around to our neighbors to find a mega-ladder we could borrow, josh was 30 feet in the air replacing the rotten wood with oh-so-chic, completely unmatched siding that they had on sale at lowe's.

honestly, if it meant getting rid of the squirrels, i would have taken siding that was painted with green camouflage or hot pink paisley. i just couldn't take another night with the demons.

but that wasn't josh's first man-job of the day. a couple of hours earlier when we got out of church, i told josh i had a photo order to deliver to a friend. i wasn't paying any attention when we pulled into her neighborhood, so we zipped right past her house before i could tell josh where to turn. we turned around in the next cul-de-sac (which had some houses under construction), and before we knew it, we felt a weird bumpity-bumping as we drove, and when we turned the radio off, we could hear the whistle of air escaping from our tire. soooooooo.....

josh spent the next 20 minutes prying the bolt-pierced tire off of the car and replacing it with the tiny spare. (look familiar, B and LL? too bad neither of you was home...i was totally going to bum some food off of you for my carload of ravenous preschoolers!)

as we drove 35 miles per hour back to our house, we talked about how much we thought it would cost to replace the tire. and we came up with a great plan. we could sell christmas trees!!! so here's the ad:

product: christmas evergreens
quantity available: three
dimensions: approximately 25 feet tall by 8 feet wide
availability: immediate

as a matter of fact, they're already down for you...all you have to do is haul them off!

remember that super-gusty storm we had here in the south last week? well, we had three casualties that night. this is what i woke up to the next morning on our deck...


so if any of you has a 30-foot foyer you would like a beautiful tree for, give us a buzz. we've got just the evergreen for you! (although if your foyer is 30-feet tall, i think i have to pronounce it "foi-yay"). :-)

in the "things to be thankful for" category, not a one of the trees hit our house, and the one that fell toward our deck did nothing more than rest gently there...no damage! oh, and the tire? the guys at the tire store patched it for us for free! whoo-hoo!!!!!!!