After a lovely 4-day visit, dad and Cara are officially on their way back to VA. :( It was super fun getting to see them back in good ole' Spokane - we did lots of visiting, catching up with all the grandparents, pumpkin carving, a bit of shopping, and i even drug them to a concert! (well, Cara was excited at least...)

Don't be strangers, you two! (Or Pooh and Gummy either...) LOVE ya!

i rock at life.

this is the pumpkin i carved... not bad for my relatively little skill. mind you, i got the image off google, but still...

i also free-handed a "puking" pumpkin for the Parlange gang, which looked pretty sweet too.

Happy Halloween

From the gals in the chemo suite!

San Diego zoo pics

As further proof that I am terrible at documenting events, here are the only pictures I took of my 6 days in San Diego...

Sara and I decided to go to the Zoo! It was a fun, sunny day, perfect for wandering around.

Here is the only pic of the 2 of us... I am horribly squinty-eyed here and look awful. But Skoky looks adorable! :)

The lions were sleeping. Not sure why i took this pic, since all i can see is his balls. oh well.

baby giraffes. cuteness.

we seriously stood at the elephant exhibit for about 20 minutes, cuz right when we got there they started giving baths and it was adorable.

my fave animal of the day! the panda's apparently spend about 18 hours/day sleeping, and they do it in the trees! freaking precious, i loved this guy. the zoo actually has a new baby panda, but he won't be out on display until December. boo. don't they know we pay good money to see these animals?

flamingos. kinda creep me out, actually.

turtles. obviously. i don't know why i uploaded this terrible picture to post, but i'm too lazy to erase it. enjoy.

Slacker!

I am probably the worst picture-downloader ever. As proof, here are some pics from the week I spent out at Camp (yes, that was waaayyyy back in August)!

This is Greg braiding my hair. Apparently the first braid he'd ever done. It turned out surprisingly good - not good enough to leave in and wear around, but still...

Katie K, Nic, Danielle and I all dressed up (the building behind us is The Arc, where campers have been writing their names for many a generation - my name appears no less than 6 times. You are only supposed to write it once. Whatever.)

Papparazzi for the dance...

Best cabin-mate ever! Danielle and I first shared a cabin when I was a fifth-grader and she was going into fourth! Lots of history in these walls... ;)

me and Ellen! we decided to dress like cowboys that day. For no reason whatsoever...

Michaela - showing how much fun it is to cook for 60+ people...

thank you Lavs!

For introducing me to my new favorite website of all time, Regretsy! I love it so so much, mainly because the person who writes the comments on this crap is even snarkier than I could ever dream of being... See example below.

"Look, I’m a vampire! What? Wait let me lower the glass a little bit. Okay now look! What? Okay how about now? No? Try putting your head on the table and looking up at me. See? It’s like I’m drinking blood. Because I have fangs. No, on the glass. No, those are etched in the glass so it looks like I . . . oh fuck it."

costumes, anyone?

Here are some pretty awesome Halloween costume ideas... brought to you courtesy of wtfcostumes.com!

nothing says "class" like a pregnant nun - which, actually, I heard one of Pia's pregnant friends is dressing up as...

Any true "Office" fan will want to go as bobblehead Dwight. Although, personally, I am partial to "3-hole punch Jim."

And, possibly my all-time favorite costume (for so many reasons): The homemade Midget costume! Love.

repeat... get over it.

i put this cartoon up waaayyyy back in the early days of the blog. but i have nothing else. and my inner ear itches right now. and i HATE it. and the snorking sound drives Pia nuts (which is actually kinda funny in an annoying-little-sister way)...

san diego

Just checked into the hotel for nursing conference and am killing time before dinner (see the view from our room)! Had a lovely weekend with Sara, just mostly relaxed and caught up on eachother's lives which was great and much needed! I took a couple of pics from our trip to the SD Zoo today, so will post those once i get home... :)

ps, i totally brought the bad weather with me - it was in the 80's here all last week, and as soon as i landed the clouds and wind came out and haven't gone away! oh well, still sunnier/warmer than Spokane...