Bye Bye Birdie

It feels as if a member of our family has left us. Mockingbird squawked his last squawk. Now what will I have to wake me up in the morning. That thing was a very faithful alarm clock. Jed tried to resuscitate him, but to no avail. (See May's post Foul Fowl and other Noxious Creatures for more info.)

Wobble Gobble

This year was Wheeler's Wobble Gobble...
we came...
we saw...
we stuffed...
we strutted. That is because the wobbles won the turkey bowl. Sorry feastie-beastie's.


The kid table, before mayhem and destruction broke out. Notice the tablecloth is still on.


After the feast.

Uncle Jesse and Jack.

Jed and D.J. completing the livesaver pass.

Mason and Jara's celebration hug at the Wobble Games. It was so wonderful to spend time with family.

Jack J. Wheeler

Jack J. Wheeler

11/7/08

7lbs. 8oz.

HELP!!!

Okay here is the deal...
We are getting some weird traffic on our blog. They don't call it the WORLD WIDE WEB for nothing people. So, help me out, and if your blog isn't a link on ours, take our name/link off your blog. If that doesn't help to get rid of the issue, we're going to have to go private. We don't really want to do that because it has been so fun to connect with friends we haven't seen in a long time. Don't be offended if your name isn't on our blog. Once we got to a certain number of links we quit linking. We didn't want to leave anyone out but didn't want to look like a phone book either. (If you're wondering why we haven't included your blog on our list that's why. Sorry.) Thanks for your help.

Celebrations

Halloween

The Roman Wheeler's: Caesar, one of his wife's, and his first-born daughter.

Yes, what else can you be when you are having a baby in a week? (Well, besides a pumpkin, but that's everyday.) Jara refused to wear her beautiful, plush monkey suit complete with a banana, so we made her into a Roman too. The toga was worn under much protesting and m&m bribery. When I put leaves in our hair to complete the costume, Jara said "Mommy horns?" We tried to make "baby" (jara's ever-present donkey) a toga but...

Jara's 2nd Birthday

The pinata was this hideous yellow chicken, that only Lin's in Overton could produce. The whole way home in the car Jara kept looking at it and screaming "Bock BOCK Bock BOCK" she discovered this got me off of the phone really fast and now makes the obnoxious chicken screech whenever I am on the phone. Oh well, at least she stopped making it in church and towards unsuspecting mall patrons.

The Martha in me made two birthday cakes and cupcakes for the kids. The Grandma Leavitt in me made the cake look like a theme party for the leaning tower of Pisa, but very delicious. I made two cakes under the pretense that I didn't want anyone to go without, but the truth is I secretly was hoping to have one cake all to myself.

Jara is very lucky to have family close who were more than generous. Thank you family for all of your kindness. Jara has enjoyed each of her presents throughout the day. The telephone in bed this morning to call "Gorki," the tea set to have crackers on at church, the drum to wake up daddy from his nap, (which really wasn't Jara drumming but Jed just can't get the noise out of his head) and the baking set was used as a very entertaining organizational
tool.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving

Jed's Pumpkin

Joshlyn's Pumpkin

Jara liked to sit on the pumpkins!

Storage Solutions

In our first apartment Jed and I lived in together, we had a tunnel to use for storage. Yes, you heard correctly, a tunnel, connected to our landlord's house, (thankfully they were very nice people who did not invade the tunnel.) The tunnel had about 20 feet of cupboards and housed everything from 4-wheeler tires to my excess of childhood memories all stored in rubbermaids. In house/apartment #2 we had a garage. Ahhh a garage. I never thought I would list that on my top 10 wish list but they are very useful buildings. No more hot leather car seats and a place for all of the rubbermaids. Then we bought our current home and no more tunnel or garage. So, we have a "forbidden room" the room where all the crap goes and nobody is allowed in because it is a serious liability. The closet is floor to ceiling tower of boxes, sleeping bags, etc. Every available space is consumed in this 10x10 room. Then I moved all my teaching "stuff" home and it got even uglier. Well, since the intended baby's room is the forbidden room, we decided we would have to do something about the excess o' clutter...

Hence the JED SHED! This weekend with charitable donations of supplies and talent/time we completed PHASE I of our storage solution. (Don't worry, all of you who know about the Narrow's fort, this wasn't that kind of wood donation.)

How could you go wrong with 2 construction management majors and a civil engineer? Brennan reminded me the key word is "management," but I saw the money for Jed's education put to good use this weekend.

Thank you Brennan and Ryan!

Phase II (roof) coming soon...