This is called mindless blogging. But I had to share Analise’s favorite website with you, particularly useful for cleaning your screen:
www.TheSlurps.com. Happy Tuesday!

We had a great pumpkin hunt today.

Kristine, Analise, and I joined up with my parents on a

drive out into the Alabama countryside to find Baker

Farm. They provide quite the pumpkin patch experience!

The first fun stop was the Cotton Bounce, where Analise

got in a truckbed filled with cotton, fresh out of the

fields. She enjoyed it, but probably more due to all

the kids bouncing around her.

Then we visited the pony, though Analise

was too young for a ride. She was excited to sit for a

bit and pose for a picture! The pony looked just like

the rocking horse in her room, same color, same pattern.

We spent some time checking out the farm

animals – turkeys, ducks and ducklings, chicks and

chickens, bunnies, goats and calves. It was hard to

catch Analise smiles today, but we got a quick one while

she was pumpkin sliding!

The hay bale maze was very fun, and we

just barely made it through:) Good thing, since were

weren’t prepared to camp in the fields! Then Analise

found the kid-sized tractors, and she couldn’t get

enough of them. Another highlight of the farm was the

large cotton fields, which were ripe with blossomed

cotton bolls.

Then we met our friends Steven and

Medley for a hayride to the pumpkin patch. There were

plenty of “perfect” pumpkins, but we found the best:)

Now we’re ready for a carving adventure in 2 weeks.

We capped off the evening with a

campfire, freshly roasted hot dogs and s’mores. All in

all, it was a great way to celebrate fall!

I just found several cute pictures on our camera that I thought I’d post really quickly. This one is from this afternoon, as she was playing in a bin with her toys.

I’m still in an unmotivated mood. I’ve got several fun things I could be doing with my down time – like working on a fleece blanket or scrapbooking, but I’m awfully tired and not in the mood to get into anything big. Brian’s coming home a little late tonight, and Beverly’s itching for some Analise time, so maybe we’ll drop her off while we have a drive-in Sonic dinner and run a few errands. This weekend should be quiet… no travel! We’re going to the pumpkin patch tomorrow afternoon/evening, church on Sunday morning, and my dear friend Mark Thompson will be joining us for Sunday afternoon and evening as he’s driving through. We’ll keep you posted!

Here’s the Analise for the day! The top three are strolling up and down our front walk with Raggedy Ann, who is very floppy. Analise is never happy with how she’s settled in the stroller, so she’s always stopping to rearrange, and there’s the occassional dumping. The next pic is from this afternoon, as she was playing in a bin with her toys.

I’m going to admit something here. It’s taking quite a bit of courage, but I think there are people out there will appreciate and commisserate with me… hopefully. If not, I’m just going to scare off all future dinner guests, as you’ll see from my story.

I hate cockroaches. I think they’re so gross and ugly. When I lived in Nicaragua, they were a part of life, though, and I managed to deal with them. I can’t kill them – something about the crunching, ew. Anyway, I kept my room clean and pretended that they didn’t encroach on my personal territory, though I knew they frolicked right outside my door. It was part of life, because things just weren’t as clean and most of the homes are an indoor/outdoor mix of rooms and courtyards. I figured it was impossible to keep them out, so I’d just ignore them.

I’m apalled to find that there are cockroaches here in Alabama, or “palmetto bugs” as Brian’s grandma in South Carolina calls them. (I say a cockroach by any other name is still gross and ugly.) Anyway, we occassionally see them in our house. Hiring a pest control company is EXPENSIVE, but I think every day we see one, we get closer to justifying the price!

On to my stories… Saturday evening we had a friend over for dinner. As we were enjoying conversation and dinner, I spied a cockroach running across the wall to our guest’s left, staying just behind her vision. It was out of Brian’s eyesight, too. I sat there watching it slowly move across the wall, agonizing about what to do. Interrupt dinner to kill a cockroach? Unthinkable. Ignore it, and hope no one else notices? This appeared to be the least painful option, especially as the intruder dropped out of sight. And in fact, that’s what I did, and we made it through dinner without event or embarrassment. I told Brian later that evening, after the cockroach made his appearance again, and Brian took care of him.

Last night was our weekly home church, where we host 13 people for dinner, fellowship and discussion. As everyone was hanging in the kitchen doorway, saying goodnight, a cockroach ran across the wall above everyone, largely in my eyesight, though I’m not sure anyone else saw it. This was the largest cockroach I’d ever seen. I couldn’t ignore it, and was mortally embarrased to move everyone away from the wall into the foyer to finish our goodbyes. Everyone consoled me that it happens every now and then, and tried to reassure me that it probably had come in when someone opened the door. Still, I wonder if they’re going to come back next week… I’m so embarassed. Can anyone commisserate with me??

I find it very comical that the weekend we would be able to get a free condo to vacation at the beach, a hurricane would be blowing through the Gulf of Mexico. We had a good trip down there in Brian’s dad’s new car. It’s a Ford Freestyle, that I helped pick out:), complete with a DVD player and wireless headphones, upon which we watched a total of 3 Einstin movies and 2 non-Einstein movies on the trip there and back. Oh – Why did we go to the beach during a hurricane, you ask. Brian had been cycling with some people from Samford who were participating in the MS 150 ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis. We hadn’t planned on going to Orange Beach, Alabama until someone from Samford offered us a condo for the weekend. Who would pass up on a beach weekend?

As we arrived on Friday night at 9pm (see Brian’s post here), we were driving along the beach road to get to our condominium, and it was raining so hard and sand was blowing across the road making it nearly impossible to see. We carefully perservered, though, and hoped the morning would bring better weather.

Saturday dawned grey, windy and rainy. They shortened the ride from 75 to 45 miles, and while it downpoured at our condo, Brian said they missed most of the rain. We had a nice lunch at a seafood restaurant and retired to the condo for naps while Brian’s parents shopped:) How else would you spend a rainy beach weekend?

By late afternoon, the weather had dried out a bit, so we decided to go check out the beach. In spite of getting a face full of blown sand on our way across the street, we had a good time. The waves were rough and the sand was hard-packed from all the rain. Analise enjoyed raking with her rake, going from one place to another all the way down the beach. She was determined to catch a sea gull:) I like the beach with my little one… some day we’re going to have a sunshiney beach weekend!

Sunday was definitely drier, but the wind was between 20-30 mph. The ride was the full 75 miles, and Brian rode out in front of most of the riders and returned before we expected him. He told us, though, he’d been in his 2nd lowest gear because half the ride was into the wind. It had been HARD WORK. Below is some of the flooding from the heavy rains of Friday and Saturday.

We stopped at an Alabama tradition, Priester’s Pecans, for some samples on our way home. We returned to Birmingham to find the remanants of Hurricane Rita tossing tornados and severe weather our way. We got Rita coming and going, how ’bout that? Still – it was a fun weekend! These last pictures are ones that Brian took of some beach homes and the damage left over from Hurricane Ivan more than a year ago.

Analise and I were just enjoying some “floor time”. She’s so good at playing on her own. Just recently she’s started stacking blocks, and I was quite impressed with her creation (with my hand to steady as she was making it higher).

For those of you checking in regularly and wondering what’s happening at the Toone household, it’s been pretty quiet. Analise and I have been laying low lately. This weekend was really cool, lovely weather. Not like y’all up North, but for Alabama, it was wonderful. We went to a Fall Festival in the small neighborhood of Rocky Ridge, for free food and some fun browsing on Saturday. Then we had some family pictures with Brian’s family. We were finally back at church for the first Sunday in 4 weeks, followed by the usual family lunch of baked beans and hot dogs with Brian’s mom and brother. That was about it for our weekend, and today’s been just as quiet. I’m feeling highly unmotivated lately, and trying to get things done one at a time. A “to do” list is seeming too overwhelming.

Oh – Analise has started trying to say a few more words. Last night, she was saying “flur” while we were outside by the flowers. Today we asked her what a kitty cat says, and she responded with “mew-mew” (not to be confused with “moo-moo” which will come soon!). She also said “ball” tonight. All this is a bit reassuring because her 15 month appointment was today, and I was feeling a bit worried that she doesn’t have more words in her vocabulary. They’ll come… and she definitely understands and follows commands very well.

Ok, I hope the 3rd time’s the charm. I’ve tried to post this blog 2 times already, and lost it somewhere in Toone Times Twilight land.

In early September, Analise was sick with a urinary tract infection (UTI) that quickly cleared up with a course of antibiotics. Though I was under the impression that most UTI’s are caused by hygiene issues (ie, wiping wrong), while in fact, research has shown that the majority of UTI’s in young children are caused by something called urinary reflux, where urine backs up toward the kidneys, causing infection. Just to be on the safe side, Dr. Stone wanted us to follow-up with a few tests (a renal ultrasound and a VCUG) at Children’s Hospital today. Hopefully, they won’t be more than just a little uncomfortable, and my easy-going girl will manage just fine. The worst of it may be that she can’t eat or drink from 7am until after the tests at about 1pm. How can I manage to keep her happy and quiet without her favorite graham crackers? We’ll keep you posted…

My favorite season is the fall. And my favorite place to be in the fall is the Midwest. Either Minnesota or Wisconsin will do, though if I had my choice, I’d be in Door County, Wisconsin, munching on fresh, homemade carmel apples. But the trees are intensely colored, all shades of red, yellow, orange and brown, the air is cool, the nights are crisp, and its just beautiful. My sweet friend Robyn picked a perfect time and place (Canon Falls and Welch, Minnesota) for a wedding.

Analise and I flew up by ourselves on Thursday because Brian had things to get done that afternoon. I wondered about traveling with Analise by myself, but we had a direct flight and it was so smooth. Analise slept for an hour, and then enjoyed watching Einstein on our borrowed (from grandpa) DVD player. She was perfectly entertained, and I’ll fly with her on my own any time… as long as we have a direct flight. My mom picked us up, and we had dinner at a fun buffet restaurant and wandered around the mega-store Ikea for a while. Man, I wish I lived near Ikea!

Brian was to arrive at 1pm on Friday, but he managed an earlier flight so we were to pick him up at 11. We spent a bit of time at REI, which was home to some statues of Charlie Brown and Lucy, created for an event honoring Charles Schultz. We wandered around the Mall of America for a time, and then had a great lunch at Chevy’s – a favorite of ours from California.

Oh yes… the wedding! That’s what I was posting about:) Robyn was on the cross-country ski team with me at UWGB, and we both fondly remember meeting as we were running at our first practice, my senior year and her freshman year. We were excited to find that we were both christians, a bit of a rarity on our team. We kept each other sane and became great friends through skiing and our work with Athletes in Actions/Campus Crusade. I’m very very blessed that God sent her into my life! She’s waited most patiently to meet the man with whom she would spend her life, and I can tell Scott is a wonderful man of God and makes her very happy. I only wish we were closer so we could know them better as a couple.

It was a beautiful wedding. They put so much work into all the little details of the weekend, and everything was wonderful. Scott surprised Robyn with a song he had WRITTEN just for her at the end of the wedding. The flowers were beautiful fall boquets, probably the most beautiful I’ve seen (though I love almost every wedding boquet!). The reception was at Welch Village downhill ski area, which was in the middle of nowhere (similar to our reception!), but in the prettiest area we were privelaged to see. Robyn and Scott were waiting at the turn into the parking lot with a “Thank You” sign for all their guests. I wish we had a few more pictures that captured the beauty of the wedding, but Brian had his hands full with Analise! We were so glad to share this weekend with them. And what a treat to see my parents and Kat for our brief time. I’m so lucky!

Yes, I do know how to spell Minnesota, but I wanted to put it phonetically the way its pronounced locally. We are having a blast up here. Analise and I got to go for a swim in the pool at our hotel this morning. Last night, I got to walk around the beautiful town of Cannon Falls while Kristine was in the dress rehearsal for Robyn and Scott’s wedding. Analise enjoyed playing with the rocks out in front of the church. We walked downtown, enjoyed the beautiful fall colors, and saw this butterfly/moth on a pretty purple flower. Enjoy the pictures!