After The Tenth..... When The Fun Really Begins

Hi, my name is Scott and I'm a sloppy blogger.

I'm guilty of slopping blogging, a new and  crippling phenomenon in my life. In my haste to get our Halloween post published, I ignored the fact that Annie and I had spent a perfectly good Sunday morning running around with the girls to get a pumpkin and to take some themed photos. So instead of having a nice post about how excited we were about the upcoming holiday and the cute photos we took during our photo shoot, and then providing some "night of" shots, I just blew past the first portion.

Not only am I guilty of bad blogging, but I'm also guilty of not paying attention to my surroundings. After we took the pictures you'll see below, we scoured the pumpkin piles for just the right pumpkin..one with a nice round shape, perfect for carving. Now there was nothing wrong with our pumpkin selection and there was still nothing wrong with having a few of the neighbors kids over to watch me carve out my carefully marked up Jack-O-Lantern. Macy even assisted in the scooping out of the seeds. Where I failed in this task was in overlooking that we live in balmy South Florida. Sunday morning we carved up the pumpkin and set it out for display; by Wednesday morning I was wearing kitchen gloves and holding my nose, as I scooped our now rotted pumpkin into a garbage bag. You'd think after 16 or so years down here that I would know that leaving a freshly punctured pumpkin outside in the elements was a recipe for disaster. By that Tuesday, Annie called me at work to tell me that the bugs had had such a feast with our offering that the rotten pumpkin flesh had caused our jagged tooth jack-o-lantern's mouth to close. I've since been told that I should have sprayed it with bug spray first, but I think next year we'll just keep it inside to enjoy.

I can't promise you more posts or even more timely posts, but I can promise you that I will try harder to provide you with more accurate informative posts that are occasionaly even interesting. It is the least I can do for you, my loyal readers.

After spending a fun week in NY, we headed up to Connecticut for an action packed weekend with the Catenis and Grandpa Kupper. Somehow in the course of less than 36 hours, we went peach picking, apple picking where we rode a tractor out to the apples, attended an official New England Country fair, played with what seemed like dozens of dogs and had a yummy Cheesecake Factory dinner. I'm tired just writing about everything we did.

In the pictures below you'll see Laney being protected from the sun, in a creative manner; which is what happens when you forget her hat. You'll also see Macy's new friend, Coco Chanel who put up with a lot of poking, grabbing and prodding, in exchange for a comfortable place to ride in the car.

I'm not sure anyone else is surprised to learn that there are peach farms in CT, but I sure was. Cousin Connery was an expert in picking good ones, a trait he must have inherited from Grandpa Kupper. (Check out the close-up of Grandpa's basket of picked peaches.)

The country fair was quite interesting, at least right up until "the incident" in the pig races. It seems that this group travels around the New England fairs, with their setup of piglet races and Dachsund races. They dress the little dogs up with "hot dog bun" like covers and race them around a winding track, all being narrated by a very talented individual, who almost makes this seem fun. Once the dogs are done, they are herded back into the trailer and out come the little piglets, who are wearing cute little colored bandanas, to help you identify your favorite little racer. All was good until someone forgot to lock the Dachsund door while the piglets were at the starting gate. I didn't know that Dachshunds and pigs have such a hatred for each other, but maybe the little dogs just felt inferior to the top billing the pigs get. Regardless, once the two species mixed, it was quite ugly and disturbing. As luck would have it, I had just weaved our way into the front, so Macy could get a better look at the racing miniatures. Before we knew what was happening, there was some disturbing high pitch squealing and some bloody little piglets. Clearly they were no match for the angry dogs. The moderator, who forgot to turn off his mic let out some un-PC comments as they were trying to separate everyone. Once things settled, the moderator was too shook up to continue and the races were halted until the next showing; evidently to give them time to perform some emergency care...that or to see if anyone need a refill of some new found bacon.

BONUS: In between the time I wrote the post and my cute editor approved it, we had a development. Laney officially turned from her stomach to her back. Just to be certain it wasn't one of those weird moments, daddy made her do it three more times.

Laney was lying on her back tonight, playing with one of her toys and she pulled off a half turn. She was able to get from her back onto her side. And so it begins....