My laptop has just been crippled by a killer Trojan virus. I will know in approximately 200 minutes whether or not my computer can be saved. Thus, I am left to the posting capabilities of my droid until otherwise noted.

Thank you.

And remember, external hard drives will save your sanity in cases like this, especially when you have tens of thousands of digital pictures taken of your children since they were born. (I would be throwing up right now if I did not have them backed up… Halle-friggin-luja!)

Again with my powers of persuasion, I tried to convince my boys to be Angry Birds for Halloween, just like our awesome pumpkins, but my boys were not swayed and had other ideas. Since they now have an obsession with Pokemon, nothing was going to change their minds about their choice of costumes this year… So, I introduce to you, Pikachu and Torchic:

And a woman in the middle who should own stock in black pencil liner.

Instead of carving, we decided to paint our pumpkins this year.  Who said Halloween had to be about Jack-o-Lanterns?  Due to my irrational fear of using knives, I coaxed my boys into thinking it would be cool to make Angry Bird pumpkins.  Thankfully, they thought that it was the coolest idea.  So, I pulled out my rubbermaid tote full of long forgotten acrylic paints, and we went to work.

This is what I get everytime I ask Al to smile for the camera.

And a photo of our final creation – “Angry Birds Halloween” by the Wise boys.

In the midst of all of this, I learned how to use a little handheld sewing machine (see those pig ears? Yup, sewn by me) I am just as proud of our Angry Birds pumpkin family as are my kids.  Now, I really should dust off my sewing machine and truly learn to sew. That has been on my “to learn” list for about 7 years now – which is when I received it as a wedding present!

Carving pumpkins is definitely not on that list. I’ll stick with convincing my kids that painting them instead is super cool.