It's the return of the Vrabely kid silly video!  Here, Joseph sings his ABCs in an attempt to get Claire to sing them too. 

Un-American

Today, our goal of living the un-American dream finally came to fruition; we sold our town home in Colorado after six years of having it intermittently on the market, and we are no longer homeowners!  Our wonderful realtor, who also graciously managed the home as rental property for us for free for the past 5 1/2 years, decided to buy it from us.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, we took a HUGE loss in the process.  However, it was money well spent when the ongoing monthly losses, stress, anxiety and burden are taken into consideration.  Praise God for sending us such an awesome, generous realtor/buyer, and for allowing us to shed this burden after so many years.  Sayonara Colorado condo.  I'm sorry to say, you will not be missed.

Occupied

It's been a while since I have graced the blogosphere with a post.  Unfortunately, my grand return to blogging is really nothing to write/facebook/tweet/blog home about.  I just thought I would post some pictures of the products of the two activities that have been stealing my time and attention and have resulted in my blog hiatus; crocheting and baking (or croshaking, if the two were to be combined into one, single, awesome, yet messy activity).

First, a progression of pictures in order of my earliest crochet projects (no, those were not done by a handicapped monkey, they were simply my first, clumsy attempts at crocheting something with a shape) to my most recent, slightly more wearable projects

And second, some pictures of my first attempts at baking.  I finally faced my irrational fear of yeast, dough, and kneading and have successfully made a few batches of incredibly (and dangerously) edible goods.  They are, in order, white bread, french bread, garlic-herb challah, cherry scones, and tomorrow's cinnamon-rolls-in-waiting just prepared this morning and awaiting their fiery, but delicious, doom.

Thanks for reading/looking!  On another note, if anyone has a digital SLR camera just laying around, feel free to lend it to me so I can take better pictures.  I promise to return it when it quits working.

Control Freak

Since all I seem to be posting lately are links to other peoples' excellent blog posts, here's another fantastic one:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/12/28/predictable-laws-and-lucky-breaks-how-not-to-be-a-control-freak-in-2012/

Mr. Right

This blog post was spot on.

http://www.titus2atthewell.com/congratulations-you-married-mr-right/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+titus2atthewell+%28At+The+Well...In+Pursuit+of+Titus+2%29

Is the Celebration of Christmas a Pagan Ritual?

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/celebration-christmas-pagan-ritual/

Claire Demonstrates Some of Her New Skills

Claire was singing along to the alphabet song today.  She doesn't know the whole song but she will get a few combinations of letters right throughout the song.  I set the camera on the counter to see what I might capture in this cute little moment of her being in her own world.  She also happened to say something else that she says a lot which I would never have gotten her to say if I were purposely trying to capture it on video, "ready, set, go!"  Then at the end of the video she said something that I'd never even heard her say, "thanks, Buddy" (to Joseph), which was really cute.  All in all, a very successful secret video.

What the J.P. Has to Say About Halloween

A Very Griswold Halloween

The Vrabelys had a Griswold family moment today on our way to the pumpkin patch.  It was a fall festival and pumpkin patch fund raiser for the Galloping Grace Youth Ranch.  In a hurry, as usual, I hopped online to find directions before leaving and quickly printed directions to the ranch.  About an hour later, as we pull up to the ranch, we noticed there were no vehicles and um, the gate to the ranch was closed and securely locked with a large chain.  Oops!  A phone call to my mom (who jumped online and googled it for me) later, we discovered that the fund raiser was not actually at the ranch, but at a much closer and easier to find location back in the city.  Hee hee.  On a positive note, though, because we were gone much longer than planned we had to stop for lunch and we discovered that our family of 5 can eat lunch for $19 at a certain taco establishment.  So our intentional choosing of the free pumpkin patch for the purpose of conserving funds actually ended up costing us a good $30 in gas and provisions.  Nothing like a good Griswold moment to keep you humble!  Enjoy some pictures of our time at the "free" pumpkin patch.

Playing in the corn box

In the Corn Maze

Julia picking out the turkey she wants for Thanksgiving

Oh my!

Pumpkin Bean Bag Toss

Claire holding her pumpkin

Couldn't lift it so didn't get to keep it.  :(

Joseph's selection

Julia's fine pumpkin

Cool Bug

This is a testament to how boring my life is at times.  I've been reduced to taking pictures of bugs on the front porch.  But this one really was cool!

As I was about to open the door I noticed this loiterer

He's decided this may not be the best spot to hang out anymore

Joseph getting a good look at our friend

Claire trying to see too

He's a little grumpy he has to find a new place to loiter