When the wife is away...

...the husband will play (a.k.a. cook unhealthy food).

These are some pictures that Gene took while I was away yesterday at a bridal shower. I took Kinsley with me but left both boys at home. Gene cooked "smiles" french fries and a buffalo burger (topped with cheese, maple-flavored bacon and a fried egg...the same burger he ordered from Tedd's Montana Grill). When I got home I said, "Why does my house smell like breakfast at McDonald's?!" The maple-flavored bacon smell is still lingering in our house this morning.

(Gene wanted me to point out the green vegetables in the above picture of Callan. He DID feed the boy some peas along with the burger and fries.)

bringing in the new year

Being a new family of four (with two kiddos under 2), we didn't have any plans for new year's eve. Then at the last minute, we ended up with two couples over for a small new year's eve party. It was so much fun!

Callan was more than happy to have Noah over to play with.
He loves to follow Noah around and do everything that he does.

"If you laugh, Noah, I'll laugh, too!"

buddies

Steve and Beth getting all giddy over holding little Kinsley

My husband is known for coming up with some "less than smart" ideas. Brent and Jen brought over some champagne. Jen said this particular bottle is really hard to get open without it shooting all over the place. So, Gene told Brent to hold the pan over the bottle to shield the top from bolting off, and...

...when that didn't work, Gene decided to try to bite the top off. Luckily it didn't shoot into his mouth and out his nose. :) I said I was seconds away from bringing in the New Year in the ER with my husband with a cork stuck in his throat!

Multiple Surprises

Not only has my husband taken over this blog the past month to write 30 things that he loves about me, but he has also been scheming behind my back to create another surprise to show his love for me. Here's how the story unfolded this past weekend...

WEDNESDAY:
Thursday nights are our regular date nights. We have a baby-sitter set up each week to watch Callan while we get away for a few hours to invest in our marriage. Since we already went to Boston to celebrate our 5th year Anniversary last month, we decided to just go out to eat on our regular date night (Thursday, October 29th) to celebrate our anniversary one last time since our true anniversary date is October 30th. Well, here's where things get interesting...

On Wednesday night our baby-sitter, Tammy, (for Thursday) calls and apologizes profusely but says that she can't baby-sit at the last minute because she had some work for grad school that needed to be done by Thursday night and she just found out about it. So, I told Gene and we said that we'll just have to cancel our anniversary dinner.

THURSDAY:
Gene came home from work and said that he found us a baby-sitter who could watch Callan on Friday night while we went out to eat. Del and Renee, our good friends, would be over to watch him. Great!

FRIDAY:
I get ready for my date with my hubby. Del comes over to watch Callan. He said Renee would be by later. We leave and go to Frederick to eat dinner. After dinner we walk out to the car and Gene pulls out a piece of paper. He hands it to me and says he has a surprise for me. The paper is a reservation confirmation sheet for a hotel in Frederick. We get to the car and find a packed bag in the front seat.

I found out Gene had called our baby-sitter, Tammy, and told her to call me to cancel on Wednesday night. He had Del watch Callan until my mother-in-law arrived at our house to spend the night with Callan. Once my mother-in-law arrived at the house, Del drove up to the restaurant that we were at and put our overnight bag in the car for us.

So, now I was completely surprised and speechless as we drove to the hotel. We get there and Gene gives me an anniversary card....and inside were two tickets to see Wicked on Broadway in NYC on Saturday! Now I was REALLY speechless! I couldn't believe that he had planned such a wonderful weekend for our 5th anniversary!

SATURDAY:
Woke up at the hotel and headed to NYC for the day. Arrived back home Saturday night, exhausted but even more in love with my wonderful husband. :)


I told Gene that I had to brag about all the details he had to organize in order to pull off these surprises:
1. He got friends of ours to purchase the Wicked tickets for him because I'm the one who does the budget in our family, so I would have noticed the purchase on our credit card.
2. He got Tammy to cancel her baby-sitting duties for Wednesday.
3. He got Del to baby-sit Friday night AND he ended up packing some of our overnight bag for us. Gene typed up a list of things that I would need for the weekend but that he couldn't pack before we left since I'd be using most of these things to get ready for our dinner our Friday night. (This is the funniest part of the story...) So, we showed up at the hotel and Gene said, "Let me check our bag to make sure Del packed everything I asked him to." I said, "You mean two guys (Gene and Del) packed my bag for this weekend?!" I was afraid to look. But when Gene opened the bag he pulled out two curling irons (haha....Del found two in our bathroom and just packed them both) and Gene had told him to pack my entire make-up drawer, since he didn't know what make-up I would need. This completely cracked me up!
4. Gene had to make sure his mom arrived at our house in time for Del to leave and drive to Frederick to drop off the overnight bag before we left the restaurant.
5. I had made plans for us to have a photoshoot with Beth on Saturday, so Gene had to call her husband and tell him to tell her to pretend the shoot was still on but it really wasn't because we'd be in NYC.
6. Gene also typed up a list of instructions for his mom to tell her how to care for Callan for the weekend (his sleeping schedule, etc.).



So, the moral of this story is...my husband really is the bestest husband ever. He's a keeper. :)

LOVE YOU, BABE!!

Code Red

Gene was trapped at school yesterday for two hours on a "Code Red," meaning all the doors of the school were locked and all teachers had to scurry into a classroom that had locks on it. Policemen searched the premises of the school looking for armed robbers. Yikes! They fled from Frederick County to Montgomery County, trying to hide in our neighborhood by the new school Gene works at.

Last night Gene even said that he thinks that he came close to seeing one of the four robbers when one tried to open the locked door that he (and 9 other people) were hiding behind. They called the office asking if there was an officer in the hallway asking for them to open the door and the office said that no one was supposed to be in the building. Praise God that He protected all the teachers!

As of 5:30 last night, the police had caught 3 of the 4 robbers and were tracking the 4th. What a wild end to Gene's first week of school!

Read the local news article HERE.

A Funny Mispronunciation

The other day Gene was wearing one of his favorite t-shirts that says I Love My Dodo across the top with a picture of a Dodo Bird. One of his students from Nigeria came up to him and asked, "Mr. Huston, why do you love doo doo (meaning poop)?" Gene just laughed and said, "It's pronounced Dodo, and it's a type of bird."

There are some things about teaching innocent children that I do miss...

The Microbes are Here!!

A few weeks back I did a post about this awesomely unique website, www.giantmicrobes.com

Anyway, with my month's allowance I decided to pick three microbes that were not only awesome, but also that would match our pack 'n play. My original plan was to replace the three ugly tan bears, which presently hover over our pack 'n play. I guess I'm a tad bitter because they were supposed to be safari animals, though the small print on the pack 'n play box said, "Mobile animals may vary. " And they did.

Anyway I'd like to introduce you to our top choices. (Yes, Renee helped me choose these microbes.)


SCUM




























Description: phytoplankton which grows on sides of aquarium or on seaweed
Favorite Food: Ammonium and nitrates
Enemies: Glass shrimp and Algae Eaters

LYME DISEASE




























First identified: in the 1970's in Lyme, Connecticut

POLIO





























Fact: by 1957 polio cases in the USA had dropped by 90% because of vaccines against the disease

WARNING: This story may cause you to throw-up or laugh until you cry

Please note: This story is not for the squeamish!!

Well, Gene and I fell into bed last night at 1:30am after a 4 hour wait at the ER. Here's kind of how the evening's events unfolded...

At 9:15pm I was finishing up the ladies' meeting that I had with the girls from our CG when I got a phone call from one of the guys in our CG (who was supposed to be in a men's meeting with Gene and the rest of the CG guys). He started laughing and said, "Renee, we're taking your husband to the ER right now because he just blew a chicken bone or something out of his nose and he can't get his nose to stop bleeding." This comment was followed by various other laughs in the background. I said, "Who is this and what in the world are you talking about?" Ben put Gene on the phone and he confirmed that it was true, so I left my CG ladies at my apt. and told them to pray as I drove to the ER to meet up with Gene and the guys.

When I arrived at the hospital, I found the whole ER waiting room staring at Gene, Sung, Aaron, and Ben (the 3 guys from our CG who insisted on coming along) as they all made a scene by telling and retelling and retelling the story over and over again. (Ok, any girl who is reading this right now, this is the part where you are supposed to feel sorry for me!) They kept on laughing while Gene sat there holding his nose and Ben kept on looking in "the bag" that they had brought with them with the mystery "chunk" inside, while taking pictures of it with their cell phones. They were all enthralled with the story and kept recounting it to me all night long. I'm sure we were quite the scene for all the other ER patients as the boys kept exclaiming, "Dude, what do you think it was that flew out of his nose!?"

Gene and I were very blessed to have all three of the guys stay with us and care for Gene as we waited 3 1/2 hours in the waiting room while Gene's nose kept bleeding. Ben made sure that Gene stayed stocked with gauze, and Aaron and Sung kept asking if we wanted any food or drinks. We kept telling them that they could leave because I was there now, but they insisted on staying until we went back to the dr. Thanks guys! We were truly blessed by your care and generosity! (Even though we know that they only wanted to stick around so that they could find out what in the world the "thing" in the bag was!) haha

At 12:15 we were finally called back, and then the guys left. We then sat for 45 more minutes back in a little tiny room next to the bathroom while we waited for the dr. The nurse came in and said, "Well, I hear you have a nose bleed." And Gene said, "Yeah, but I'm concerned because something blew out of my nose 4 hours ago and it's in that bag." She then went on to say (without even looking at it), "Oh, it's just a blood clot." And Gene said, "Umm, I know what a blood clot looks like and that's not it." So she took a peek and said, "Wow, you're right. I never saw anything like that before." And when the Dr. came in, she also said that she had never seen anything like that before either, so she referred him to a nose specialist. She said last night that it looked like a piece of his sinus lining came off. She wants him to get checked out by a nose specialist this week to make sure that there is no further damage.

So, the funniest part of the whole evening was when the guys kept looking at the "thing" and were trying to give it a name (yeah, I know......boys are gross) and I said, "Why does the bag clang on the table when you set it down?!" and Ben said that it was because they had put the "thing" in ice before they left to preserve it. And Aaron said, "Yeah, Renee. You know, like you would do if you lost a piece of your finger. You have to keep it on ice incase they need to reattach it." Ben said that it was his brillant thinking to know to do that. Needless, to say, the "thing" is now in our freezer because Gene has to take it to the nose specialist to show him. Ewwww......

Anyway, Gene would love your continued prayers because he currently has NO sense of smell and he's heading off to the doctor again on Friday. And I would love your continued prayers as I steer clear of the freezer while "Pauly" is visiting us. (Pauly is the oh-so-affectionate name that the guys call "the thing.")

(We'll spare you the grotesque picture of Pauly, but for anyone who is truly brave and wants to see a picture of it, Gene can send it to you.)