Happy Halloween!

I have always liked the month of October. What better way to end it than with such a cool holiday!

It was fun carving pumpkins with you Mark and Jill!

Don't try this at home.

Working hard begets hard work

Last year when my parents came out, somehow we convinced them to spend four days of back breaking work to lay our wood floor. It is beautiful, and we are very grateful to them.

Unfortunately for them, they didn't learn their lesson. When they foolishly came out to Illinois this time, we put them to work again, building us a front patio and flowerbed. I am very happy with the results and very thankful to my dad, who never complains about hard work and never has his whole life I am convinced. I am also grateful to my mom, who also worked very hard helping with the patio and raking the leaves (although I kept trying to convince her that the leaves on our lawn were a very small percentage of the biomass that was about to fall on our lawn from the sycamore tree in about a week but she replied with "well it is that much more you won't have to rake up." Can't argue with that logic.) She also bought the beautiful mums, which make me happy every time I see them. I want to take them to a taxidermist to preserve when they die I love them so much.

Ruben's mini-me

warty

THANK YOU!

the Parents and the parents

Let me introduce the parents:

And the Parents:

The parents spent the weekend with the Parents and everyone had a lovely time.

This picture sums it up:

warty

Here are some highlights:

The BEAN. Aka cloud gate. Whatever. I like the bean better. This is a good place to note that we also walked down the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago, and my mother, still recovering from chemo, out-walked all of us. We couldn't keep up with her!

Little Poland! I stocked up on Inka!!! (This is my dad getting a scent of śledź - a true Polish delicacy.) 

The Art Institute of Chicago (free on Thursday nights! Woo hoo.) Why is it that the only picture my husband took there was of a dead head and a pluck? I don't understand that man.

There were some moments of deja vu...

(see American Gothic above. Which one do you like better?)
And we learned some disturbing things...

Alex saw some disturbing things...

Basically, there was lots of squash.

I love squash. I was in heaven.

There were some risqué moments

some fingers...

And a lot of good food.

I am so glad you visited mom and dad!!!

The story of chickens

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl that met in an O-chem lab. The boy asked the girl to marry him. The girl left on a mission.

The girl came home. The boy was still there. He asked her to marry him again. She said yes this time. 

They were happy.

They moved to the middle of a pancake.

One day, the girl thought, "a cat would be nice."

So they got a cat. 

He sat around and sucked life out of all that were around him. The boy tolerated him. The girl loved him. 

The boy ate oatmeal.

One day, they both thought, "a dog would be nice."

So they got a dog.

She was too cute for her own good.

The dog wanted a yard, so the boy and girl bought a house for their dog. 

Then, the dog wanted a friend. So the boy and the girl got another dog.

The dog liked eating couches and books.

Then one day, the girl saw an article about a rabbit and thought, "that looks tasty fun!"

So they got rabbits. 

The boy ate cake.

Then one day the girl said to the boy, "we should get chickens!" The boy said, "I always wanted to be a chicken farmer!"

So they got chickens.

Their life was complete.

They all took a nap.