the real benefits of living in a technologically savvy world

looking for that perfectly unique christmas gift that'll scream "this came from me?" and don't worry, it's only slightly less creepy than how angelina jolie used to wear a vial of billy bob thornton's blood around her neck to show how much she loved him. (is it funny that i subconsciously used the spelling "vile" initially? i think not)

picture this: a LARGE artistic portrait of your very own dna or fingerprint hanging over the fireplace in your loved one's family room. cozy. what, not sexy enough for you? looking for something a little more santa baby-ish? how about your lip print, yes lip print, as artwork?

it's probably a good idea to ask yourself before giving this gift: "do i ever plan on committing a crime where they might find my dna/fingerprint/lip print? if so, maybe i shouldn't have a giant picture of it hanging up somewhere..."

and if you're really considering this gift, you might also want to ask yourself: "have i lost my marbles?"

cast your vote!

(a pregnancy montage from month 1 to week 33. turns out those two pregnancy tests we took didn't lie)
welp, we're coming down to the wire here people! it's started to occur to me recently that i'm probably not going to be the first woman in the history of the world to stay pregnant forever... these things really do pop out at some point!

my pregnancy has been AWESOME and with just over one month to go, we're feeling pretty ready (aka, we've thrown our hands up and taken on the mantra "we'll figure it out") to welcome lil' miss flagg into the world.

we know you're all at least as excited as us and chomping at the bit to see what in the world we've been cooking up, so we wanted to see how good your intuition is and have a little contest. the winner will get a really great prize (we haven't decided what it'll be yet, but we're thinking we could mail you her first diaper or something. a true honor) the contest has two parts:

part 1 - what will lil' miss flagg's birthday be? some information that might (but likely not) help:
- her given due date is december 30
- only 1% of babies actually come on their traditional due date. a much better due date indicator that takes into consideration a lot more factors (30% accuracy) actually says her due date will be january 9. quite a difference there
- first time momma's are known to run over their due date. which due date? we're not really sure...
- see, i told you that info likely wouldn't help

part 2 - what should we name the lil' one and why?* if we choose your name, you'll get a REALLY great prize. like the first SEVERAL diapers and maybe the first used burp rag or something fancy like that.

ready, set, go!

* according to our doctor, there is a 4% chance the baby comes out a lil' MR. flagg, so feel free to cast boy names too.. you never know. poor guy better like pink!

i didn't learn photoshop in college for nothing!

yesterday, we spent our entire evening finally decorating our front room. in real life? nah, in photoshop of course!

it started with our room - nice and bland, but don't worry, room - we've got big plans for you


we found a "seat and a half" (how funny that that's the real name of a piece of furniture?) that we liked, but it's pretty freakin huge (notice the lovely striped fabric down the front of the couch?)


so, to see just how huge it will be (we were taking very special consideration the make sure everything was sized correctly in our room... that might be a lie...), we decided to add the piano stool that we're SO excited to get from my parents this month. okay, so we're getting the piano too, but we figured it'd be the stool that would be running into our huge chair. (plus we threw a rug in for good measure)


here's the thing with the boy, though. he's not content with just a seat and a half. he needs someplace to put his feet up. like a freakin huge ottoman to match the freakin huge chair and run into the piano stool even more!


and then we figured, we may as well throw the piano in there just to see how crammed it's really going to be (i know, i know - it's a little bit 2-d and nothing's blended quite right, but you get the idea...)


and, of course, we couldn't feel good about our music room until it was fully decorated with some musical stuff on the walls


pretty cozy, huh? and to top it all off, the boy woke up this morning to tell me about the books we can put on the coffee table we get for the room... wha? coffee table in the room too? wow...

and then it occurred to us, why does anyone ever decorate their house in real life? it's such a hassle buying and moving furniture. we're just going to decorate everything in photoshop.

so, what do you think? will you come visit us in our virtual music room? is this a total and complete disgrace of any and all design skills i should have learned from you, mom? at least we got an elton john album cover up on the wall...

also, our whole evening reminded us of this video (you will be sad if you don't watch this whole thing):

halloweeng highlights. mwuah hah hah

throughout meghan's entire childhood, she called halloween "halloweeng." i'm not sure why and i'm not sure what that has to do with anything except that it's funny.

our halloweeng started off with a little banjo billy haunted house tour with red idea. now, if you've been a fence sitter about visiting boulder, banjo billy is definitely a reason to start looking into flights.


yes, it really is an old school bus with the top ripped off and replaced with a pitched roof, then covered in a fence to look like a log cabin.

and yes, the seats were really ripped out and replaced with recliners, love seats and saddles.

and yes, it takes people on daily historical (or sometimes ghost) tours around boulder. i can't believe you're still reading this and not buying an airline ticket already.

we weren't really supposed to dress up for this ghost tour and we might have been the only ones dressed up, but like that's gonna stop us. introducing:

pretty sure we look even better than the original

halloweeng continued with a morning of "family yoga" at yo mama yoga. "family yoga" on halloweeng morning means "dress up in costumes with your babies and sit them in the middle of the room to climb on top of each other while you do as much yoga as you can in your costume and while peeling your kid off the other kids." while we aren't quite in that stage yet, we were invited to come if we brought our popcorn machine. amazing the friends that come from owning that thing. i think the best part was when the baby lobster crawled on top of the baby spider and starting chewing on her head.

they also had belly painting there for those of us with bellies. here's the baby's first halloweeng costume!

and don't worry, we didn't forget our other babies. introducing yoda. do or do not. there is no try


and darth vader. the force is strong with this one.



and finally, introducing our jack-o-laterns, which we liked so much we kept inside so we could enjoy them... is that wrong? le ghost (don't judge. he's a little blurry. you try taking a picture of a ghost!)


and le cat

and instead of facing the thousands of drunkards in costumes wandering around Pearl Street, we journeyed down to hang out with the fam (err.. i mean, the ghostbusters, a posh golf club dude and g.i. jane...) to play some sweet sweet rock band. ahh. the perfect halloweeng.

snow day

one of my favorite things about having a little dog manifests itself when there's 31 inches billion (and still falling!) of snow on the ground.
it's a cruel world for dogs when their toilets are covered by more snow than they can even stand in.

he'd jump into a pile of snow, disappear for a second, try digging an area where he could at least squat, give up and jump back out. Half a dozen attempts left him doing what every dog despises doing - peeing on the patio

and when he comes back inside, he's got a nice little set of nature-made UGGs on (please ignore my lovely face).

...one of my favorite things about snow days is that it gives you the uninterrupted time to plow through your entire inbox, organize all your files, practice the guitar, read a little bit and still have time to do things like take pictures of your dog peeing outside and then blog about it.