Out With The Old, In With The....Old?

Change is the one thing that is constant. We are professionals at change, especially this year. Maybe we should write a book? At least this is one that we know we can handle! Brian is starting a new job on Monday. He is going back to being the spokesperson for Homeland Security and everything else that job entails. Dad, he gets to have a badge again!

So, to the people at Homeland Security, we missed you, Brian is back after a year of you asking. To those at the Governor's Office, it's been fun. An annoucment to all of the office blog stalkers (you know who you are)...you are still welcome to peek in on our lives :)

9 Months!

Cole turned 9 months old today. It seems that the days are long, but the weeks and months fly by! His favorite activities are crawling, eating carpet, talking, laughing and running my life :) Here are a few pictures from the last month. We love him more and more each day and can't wait to see what the next nine months bring. No more growing?? I can have wishful thinking, right?? :)

Witches Night Out

Last night we had some "girl time". Witches Night Out is something that a little historic village does every year the weekend before Halloween and it is a lot of fun. There are lots of little shops, music, food, everyone dresses up and SALES. I have found that going when you don't have money is not as fun :( This year I went with my friend Carrie while her husband, Jeff and Brian watched the kids. Cristine came along but dared to be different and did not even wear a witches hat! There were SO many people this year that it was hard to move through the crowd. We did end up with some glorious fudge, after waiting in line for a half hour, but did not get to go to the bakery for cookies. The one thing I wanted to buy was not on sale, darn. We walked away only with our chocolate fix and smiles at some of the things people dare to wear out in public! We'll look forward to next year.

Chatterbox

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

After many unsucessful attempts to get Cole to talk on the phone to Grandma and Aunt Mandy, we finally captured his new words. Remember to pause the music on the sidebar. This is what I get to hear all day, "ba ba, ya ya and (Brian's favorite) da da". Those of you that know Cole in person are aware that he has been very vocal from the beginning. Now it's just more sounds strung together. Instead of sounding like a kitten, now Mand has deemed that he sounds like a puppy. Should I be offended? :)

Night on the Town

It's rare that any of us get the opportunity to dress up and head out for a special night. Even more rare when you are Brian and Niki Hyer. I can't remember the last time we actually took some time to get ready and were alone together for an extended period of time...oh yeah, it was a work thing! Well hooray for work! This years Governor's Gala was a little different than last time around. Also known as: I am not 7 1/2 months pregnant this year...it made the whole thing more enjoyable!I didn't get to wear real diamonds like last year but the awesome vintage jewelry was my grandmothers. We had a good time just being somewhere without children or construction. We are so grateful that my parents were conveniently in town to watch Cole so we didn't have to worry.We must be getting old though because we were home by 11:00, ready for bed. It's not often that I get Brian to wear a tux and I get to be "sparkly", as my mom calls it. We enjoyed each other's company and have gone back to our jeans and t-shirts in this little place we call reality. SO boring-why can't we wear satin heels on a regular basis, why??

Heard It Through The Grapevine

We inherited more than our fair share of yard work with the new house. Even with all of the pulling out trees, cleaning out beds, adding new driveway, etc. there is still a lot of maintaining. A new adventure was the six very LARGE mature grapevines. My grandma was jealous. The closest I have gotten to harvesting grapes is watching A Walk in The Clouds. (Love that movie!) Being the farmer's daughter I knew that I needed to attack this new project and make something useful out of it! Hey, someone in our family had to harvest something this year, right?These three large mixing bowls are only 3/4 of what I picked, and the grapes on the pergola...well, they are still on the pergola. We don't have a ladder to get up there OK? There are at least four varieties that I could recognize and we ate most of the green grapes, but there was the dilemma of what to do with the Concords. They are too bitter to eat straight out and they have very large seeds. So, I decided to try my hand at making homemade grape juice. Now purple grape juice is something that I never buy at the store and it really isn't my favorite taste in the world, but what else was I going to do with an overabundance of Concord grapes? :) This is my attempt to document like the food blogs that I am so in love with and visit practically every day (Pioneer Woman, this is for you!)It took me almost the entire day to finish but after washing, mashing, cooking, mashing, cooking, straining, washing, mashing, chilling, etc. I got about 3 quarts of very thick juice. The sad thing is even after all of that work, not very many people in my household were thrilled to partake. I pratically had to force Cristine. Here is the final product. All in all it tasted pretty good watered down. I think however that next year I will give the Concords to my neighbors :)