Halloween Parades

Annual Black Family Carving Party

On Monday, we had our traditional Black family Pumpkin carving party. It was bunches of fun. We had pizza and chips, and games, and carved our pumpkins. This year we came with the gunk in the middle already taken out (props to Mike who did all the hard work while I was at work!!), and it was much quicker. We were sad that Megan and Porter could not come due to illness, but hope to have them next year. Connor was Jack Sparrow, Lauren was Hannah Montana, Lily was a pumpkin (we just loved her tights!!), Colton was Optimus Prime, Ellie was a Snow Princess.

I LOVE lawyers

I had to take a couple minutes out of my work day to blog about lawyers. No offense Brad, but lawyers suck! Well, mainly custody battle's suck.
Instance # 1: Mr. Lawyer calls and says his son is going to be a new patient in our office (we LOVE new patients!!). He needs to come here to establish records and get copies of clinical notes from the dentist mom took him to in California. Dad has custody and does not want the child to have braces in California because then he thinks mom would request custody, etc. Dad raised the child while mom was in medical school, blah, blah. I need to call the other office and get the records if I can get them e-mailed that would be awesome. Oh, and can I call dad when I get the records. Oh, and can I ask about what the insurance is and what the identification number is, cuz mom won't give it to him, and he needs to know it. Oh, and can I give him the id # when I find it out. So, 4 days and a conversation-with-him-every-single-day later he calls to cancel the appointment. Mom is agreeing to have dental and orthodontic treatment with a dentist in Utah, so dad needs to be compliant. What a waste of my time!!
Instance # 2: A mom calls and says she's in this big custody battle with the father of her cute 3 year old. He needs to have an IV sedation because he needs fillings on 9 teeth, so I told her she needs to pay a $200.00 deposit. She tells the dad, who calls me and asks if the deposit will be refundable. I say only if the two insurances pay all of the billed amount, then of course I will be happy to refund the deposit to whomever pays it. Then later his lawyer calls and says they need a letter stating what the deposit is for, and once the treatment has been completed, they will need a copy of the billed charges. In my happy voice, I tell them of course I will comply with their request for lots of papers.
I am justifying this blog because I never post about work items, and I thought everyone would want to know about my work as well as my home life. I am here at work about half of the week, so technically I should blog half the time about work...but I wont.

Bad boys, bad boys

So, I hate to blog this, but I have to. One of my favorite things to waste time with is to go to other people's blogs and then go to their links and read about them and try to figure out how they are linked to the person I know, etc. I have heard this called blog stalking, but I can assure you I am not a blog stalker-just nosy as Mike says. It is cool to read about other peoples lives; their joys and struggles. I was doing that this morning and happened on to a website about a woman who is fighting for her life with Leukemia. I viewed her pictures and ended up sobbing (that's what I do, remember). Then the mailman rings our doorbell with an e-bay purchase delivery for Mike. (A Titan's hat for his trip to Denver to watch the Broncos play the Titans) Rachel pulls it out and then Austin puts it on. He says, "cool people wear their hats like this (backwards), or like this (sideways)." Then he starts singing, "Bad boys, bad boys, whacha gonna do." It brought me back to reality and made me grateful for all the funny things he does, and how much I love my kids, and my husband. So, as an afterthought, I am going to try to post the video re-play of the scene described above. It's a riot!!!

I have the cutest kids

In order to somewhat redeem myself for posting so many pictures of Jenny, I am posting some more pictures of my cute kids.



Here is Austin's self portrait:

Danny and Jenny

Ok, so technically I have been forbidden from posting any more pictures of Jenny on the blog, but come on, how else is her mom going to see the pictures? So, Mrs. Oechsle, these are for you.

In Remembrance

We mourn the loss today of our dear friend and hamster, Oreo. She was a good hamster. She loved to chew and run around in her ball. She chewed the couch in a couple of places when Mitchell left her unsupervised. We even had an incident where she was lost in the couch for a while. She has been in our family since Christmas 2006, and we shall miss her.

A fun lunch

Just another great Austin story for you all. I went up on the roof to shut down the swamp cooler, and when I came back in Austin had decided to make lunch for Rachel and himself. He said he wanted a sandwich, so he made a peanut butter, cheese and mustard combination. He was about to add mayonaise when I said he may want to just stick with what he had. He and Rachel both ate about half of their sandwiches. We'll have to see how they feel later.