"It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like..."

Christmas!! Yeah man! Now that Black Friday has come and gone, we can look forward to making this Christmas the best one yet. A few ways I have taken it upon myself to get in the holiday spirit:

I wanted some holiday candles so I went to Target and found...a roasted chestnut candle. It is great! It's not as overpowering as those other pumpkin spice candles. I also found an apple spice candle which accents the other candle perfectly.

I put up the Christmas lights on the house yesterday. Between climbing on the roof and sitting and kneeling in many different positions to get them on the trim, it's a workout! But they all work, so...success!

Watched Planes, Trains And Automobiles yesterday morning. Oh man was that funny. The truth is, don't we all know that someone that wears on our last nerve every day of the year and not just on Thanksgiving? I know most people would say that I am that someone, but I don't care ha ha.

Emmy has her list to Santa all ready:



At first I thought she had really planned the whole thing out, but later I found out she copied the toy catalog from target verbatim to make sure she asked for 10 times the number of toys she really wanted. Greedy? A little. Smart? You betcha!

I thought Christmas last year was perfect. So why mess with what works? But this year will be a little weird with Grandpa not being there. I mean, I know he's always with us and all. How do you say good-bye to someone who's been there since the day you were born? We only get so many Christmases on this Earth, so we have to make them count. Emmy and I discovered this song a while back, and I think it sums up how we feel:

"The Passing Of A Legend..."

Yes, unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, and On Sunday 11-15-09 Grandpa passed away at the age of 87. We got together Sunday night, my family that is, and basically just hung out trying to plan his service and keep Grandma company as best we could. Then Tuesday night we went to the viewing and it was then that the whole thing really kind of hit me. He looked so peaceful and it was a little hard to see him laying down like that. Keri and Dean were great in putting together a slide show of pictures of his life. I watched it a couple of times. Even though there were some embarrasing pictures of me (aren't they all? lol) I saw Grandpa at my age and it was very cool to see more then a little resemblance. Today is the funeral and I am proud to be one of the pallbearers. I don't know how I will react to the service but as long as I'm not blubbering like an idiot I think I will be okay. Anyways...here are some of my favourite pics of Grandpa that I was lucky enough to capture:


My 30th birthday. Emmy was only 3!


Christmas 2004. Nothing better then crossword pajama pants!


The day Zachary was born. You never saw a prouder great-grandpa ever! Knowing that our name will continue to live on was very important to him.


Christmas 2005. This one will always be my favourite.


This was in 2007 for a friend's 90th birthday. I always tried to get as many pictures of all four of us as possible. Four generations is a big deal!


This was his 85th birthday. What better gift for a former Navy man right?


Labour Day 2007. This is one of my all time favourites. All five of the Overall men in one picture.


This was at Canyon's 2nd birthday. How many people could say they had a great-grandson older then their grand-daughter? Funny how life works out sometimes.

To be honest, it was kind of neat putting this post together. Going down Memory Lane is never a bad idea and right now I cannot think of anything better. Rest In Peace Grandpa. We will always miss you and never forget you.

"You're Makin' Me Dizzzzy...!"

I happened upon this while in the Kroger parking lot the other night. This kid...or adult, whoever...played both parts of "Dueling Banjos" on "Guitar Hero" and literally blew me away how fast and accurate he was able to play this! I tried to play "Seek And Destroy" by Metallica one time when we were at Best Buy and even on the easy level I got smoked. I guess this is one game for the younger crowd.

Had a great Halloween! Our neighborhood scored a 0 in participation so we went to Cari's parents' neighborhood. Here they are in their costumes:


Don't know what Zach is trying to be but my guess is: totem pole?

Emmy had to make a pumpkin for her school's pumpkin parade:




I thought she did a great job. Not as gory as I wanted, but it turned out the school isn't a fan of gore so much. Ah well.

And finally, we had a family birthday party for young Zachary at Incredible Pizza! Games, tickets, prizes...how can ya go wrong?:


Yes! Finally! Transformers have made their way into Zach's toy collection!! He now wants to own all of them...muah ha ha...the time is now.

Cari: "Hey Zach, which would you rather play with...that boring old Transformer of this WONDERFUL EXCITING SHIRT?"
Zach: "Is she kidding...?"

It's still not as cold around here as I want it to be. I went to Walmart today and looked at some candles. They have a mulled cider and a cinnamon vanilla. I bet if I lit both of them at the same time...ooh yeah.

"Hurts So...Bad!"

Yes, the usually healthy feeling-good me has been in extreme pain since Sunday morning. I woke up and my right foot was throbbing. I could still walk, but as the day went on it hurt more and more. Finally, by Thursday it hadn't gone away but had in fact gained strength, so I went to the doctor and they took some blood and did an x-ray. The good news is, a girl who sits right next to me had the same thing so they did the same things for her and found out she had strep down there! Weird, wild stuff. Hopefully that is what it is so they can prescribe an anti-biotic and that should do the trick. You never realize how much you need your tootsies until they throb in pain constantly. At least they gave me Vicodin to soothe some of the pain until they know what's going on.

Halloween was great! We started out trick or treating in our neighborhood and found a total of two houses with their porch light on. And no one was even at home at one of them. So we went to Cari's parent's neighborhood and people really went all out decorating their houses and scaring people. A guy in a gorilla costume hid behind a tree and really scared Emmy ha ha.

Here are a few more pix from our trip to the Arboretum. I wanted to put more on here a while back but time keeps on slipping...slipping...into the future...anyways:


I love this shot! Instead of big gigantic sprinklers they use these misters which create a ghostly appearance, even in daylight.

"Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar"

This thing is huge! Wouldn't want this in my yard. I need to take a chain saw to both of my front yard trees. Someday...


Mom: "Do you see all these pumpkins Mike?"
Me: "I sure do! I dare you to pick one up and just walk out with it."
Mom: "But Mike, that's stealing!"
Me: "How can it be stealing if there are hundreds of pumpkins laying around?"
Mom: "Good point. I'll start the car..."


I love this shot. You may not have noticed, but Cari's favourite colour is...GREEN!! One day I'm going to see an outfit of shirt for her that will be green and she doesn't have it. It's a daunting task as I think she owns every green shirt known to man...or woman.

Thanksgiving is coming up soon!! I really enjoy the four day weekend (don't we all?) plus Cari jumps on the "Black Friday" bandwagon and will get up at the crack of dawn and get our Christmas shopping done in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, yours truly gets to sleep in a little until the kids get up, then no one sleeps. I wonder if there are any kids that are aware that they won't be kids forever and just enjoy each day for what it is. I like to think I did, but at the same time I just wanted to be an adult so I could do more of what I wanted to. So many fun times being a kid. Fortunate for us the bad memories tend to fall to the wayside.