back in the saddle...

i really have been meaning to post something for a while, but my computer is dying on me (it waited until right after the warranty ran out. how convenient) and randy's hasn't really been the pillar of reliability lately either, so what little time i've had at a computer has not been devoted to blogging. additionally, it means that we haven't downloaded any pictures, so once again, a post without pictures. sorry.

we had a busy november. i've spent a lot of time reading for my two book clubs and really enjoyed both books, which is good, seeing as i picked the book in both of of my book clubs this month. i'm not sure how i managed that one. for one, we read cat's cradle by kurt vonnegut, a great satire, and for the other, jane eyre by charlotte bronte. two very different books, but both were great. i had read jane eyre before in high school (my mom actually paid me to finish it), but didn't remember much. i got way more out of it at this stage of life than i did then. i hadn't read cat's cradle before, but randy loves it and got it for me for my birthday, so i figured that by selecting it, i would ensure that i would read it. since i was hosting both books, i had to make sure and finish each of them. normally, reading two books in a month wouldn't be that big of a deal, but with everything else we've had going on this month, it was a bit of a push. after a few late nights though, i pulled it off.

perhaps the biggest event of the month was beth's wedding (i will post pictures once we get them back). i actually have to admit that i really didn't do too much to help out with the wedding. my mom and audrey were really the ones who planned and executed the whole thing. mostly i just showed up where and when i was told to. it was a wonderful wedding though - great to spend time with family and great to add bruce to our family! i think that the most fun thing for me was to have my parents and all of my siblings together in the temple at once.

most recently, we got to go up to boise for thanksgiving. i have to say that i had been looking forward to this for a long time. all of randy's mom's family came into town and we had a great time. we got there tuesday night and didn't stop eating until we left on saturday. i'm just claiming that madeleine had a growth spurt over the weekend. randy's mom knows how to feed people. you can only imagine what thanksgiving dinner was like. i thoroughly enjoyed having the weekend off without the thought of impending finals looming over me. i really just got to relax and had a great time with randy's family. we don't get to see them nearly often enough!

that's our busy month. i'm sure that december will prove to be even busier with the holidays, randy's finals, and madeleine's arrival. hard to believe she's finally coming!

spider wars

although not a fan of spiders, i'm generally fine with killing them on my own. in fact, when they're small enough, i generally let them be.

so this morning, when i turned on the light in the bathroom and spotted a large, hairy spider about a foot away from me (i suppose that anywhere in our bathroom was about a foot away from me at that point, but i'm not complaining about the size of our bathroom...), i actually had no intention of waking randy up to make him "take care" of it. however, when i initially turned on the light and it crouched down into a defensive position, indicating that it wasn't going without a fight, i did groan out loud. before i knew it, randy was wandering into the bathroom, bleary eyed, to see if everything was okay. since he was up anyway, i asked, "do you want me to get you a shoe?"

despite randy's general difficulty in waking up prior to a morning shower, he became amazingly alert once i handed him a flip-flop and he actually went into what can only be described as an i-lived-in-the-jungles-of-the-philippines-for-two-years-and-of-necessity-became-a-spider-warrior stance. i've never seen him move that fast in the morning and when the flip-flop came down quickly on our intruder, the spider actually exploded and body parts flew around the bathroom. randy quickly cleaned them up and went back to bed and i proceeded with my morning routine.

what an exciting way to start the day.