It's about here.

Well, we are down to the wire. Monday and Tuesday, and then up bright and early Wednesday morning to head to the airport at 5:30am. I fly out of Indy through Midway, Chicago and then on to Islip in NY.

I'll be honest, there's been a lot of emotions, thoughts, ponderings and all. I'm excited, elated, but nervous and worried at the same time. I'm elated and ready for the new dog. However with the discussion of greif lectures on a couple of handler email listserves, I'll be frank, I'm downright a little scared of what emotions are going to surface when I'm there. Mike keeps asking me if I'm ok and I know I'm feeling very reserved, withdrawn, and very emotionally and physically drained these days.

I have been really busy late, and am super behind on emails and such, so if I haven't answered your emails, I'm intending to do so VERY soon, please bear with me. I'm packing right now for myself and for Meaghan to go to Aunt Nancy & Uncle Mike's, along with trying to prep as much as I can for Mike, stuff for our annual Halloween party. We did a lot this weekend, and are busy yet but made good progress.

We finished off the soccer season yesterday. Yay! And for the afternoon, we are ALL tired from a busy and long week. So we all laid down and took naps until time to get ready for church. After church, we went with Amy and Mike to Pizza King for dinner, and then went to Walmart and let the kids pick out pumpkins. We then went to Lowe's, looking to get some styrofoam for making some tombstones, after Mike had seen a video on You Tube, but we decided against it as the kids began to melt down, I was losing my patience with them, and cost factors too, since funding is far less than comfortable at the moment. So we headed out of there and for home, getting the kids to bed and we talked for a while, winding down, spending some time together, and just trying to get a feel for what we wanted to accomplish for Sunday.

We got up Sunday morning, having slept in a good bit, and Mike, Alex, & Meaghan went outside and began working on finishing up the outdoor decorations and such, as well as cleaning up the garage which was quite a mess. Katie and I stayed inside, as I cleaned up/picked up inside the house as Katie worked on finishing up her homework she had for the weekend. The little ones soon came back in and were getting hungry, I wrapped up with what I was going for inside and Katie finished up her homework.

We then fixed lunch and all ate, followed by naps for Meaghan and Alex and Katie, Mike, and I went back out to the garage and continued on cleaning things up out there. We got the bikes moved to the shed, the garage pretty well cleaned up. I cleaned up the clutter of sewing stuff I had, moving the tall filing cabinet that Dad and Sue had given us a while back over in between the two shelving units I have and putting all that away in there, as I'd wanted to do for a while now. Mike went through and cleaned off the work bench and we got the floors mostly cleaned off. We moved the patio set and glider into the garage for the party and put the hose reels away too.

Before moving the patio table into the garage though, we put it on the driveway and while Meaghan and Alex were napping, we let her clean out and carve her pumpkin, since she had her christmas program practice at 4pm. She did so, carving a skeleton face on her large pumpkin. Then about the time she was wrapping up with that, Meaghan and Alex woke up, so they came out and joined in, cleaning out thier pumpkins to be carved. Then it was time for Mike to take Katie to practice, so he took off and I moved the gutted pumpkins inside to the island and cleanned up outside. Mike got home and moved the table on into the garage.

I worked on carving Alex's pumpkin, which was a "Mad Mummy" and then we ate dinner of leftovers from the pizza last night and some heat and eat chicken nuggets. I later tonight carved Meaghan's pumpkin- which she asked for Jasmine first, from the movie Alladin, and next for a mermaid, but I told her she had to pick from the booklet of templates we have. Which it now makes since that she picked the "viper" as the bad guy, the evil Jafar, turn's into a snake and looks very similar to the design that we carved her pumpkin into.

I promise, I'll post some pics soon of the house, the pumpkins and so forth, as I'm uploading the 400+ soccer/pumpkin pics now. LOL! Will go out tomorrow and take pics of the house, now that things are all done outside. :) So look for picture posts tomorrow evening or Wednesday. :)

Speaking of pictures, I will be taking the nikon camera with me and plan to take pictures of my new dog and of Suzi's new dog if she allows it. I too will be journalling my experience while in NY and hopefully with as much detail and ferver as I was able to before. :) I hope to share with everyone what all is going on, and will do my best to keep things up to date on here, much better than I've been doing lately about home life!

Well, it's once again super, super late, (stayed up and finished Meaghan's pumpkin, just about finished one of 2 booties for Amy's baby wee welcome set, and updating here) so I'm going to sign off for the night and get some zzzzz's before Mike wakes me up in the morning.

Hasta luego....