Happy Halloween!

After all of the hype, the actual holiday finally arrived. The kids didn’t have to go to school because it was a teacher work day. Once we got past a bit of grumpiness and a few sibling squabbles in the morning, we had a great day. The kids passed the time by playing with their friends, watching movies, and playing GameCube. When Nate got home we got in our costumes and had a little photo shoot. I don’t know if we’ll ever do a family theme again for Halloween, so we had to make the most of it. Considering how reluctant Elise and Abby were to participate, the pictures turned out pretty cute.

Nate took the kids trick-or-treating around our neighborhood and I stayed home to pass out candy. When they got home, Ben and Emily wanted to go out for a while longer, so I went up the street with them. I was glad I got some one on one time with them. They were pretty funny. They just kept saying "This is the best Halloween ever" and "We've never gotten to go trick-or-treating this far before." Emily was the thank you police. Several times after people would close the door, I could hear her saying, “Ben, you forgot to say thank you again!” She was a trooper and kept reassuring me that she wasn’t tired at all. Our neighbors up the street invited us in for homemade donuts and apple juice. Ben thought that was the “awesomest” thing ever. The kids took in a haul of candy. They are planning on making it last until July. We’ll see how that goes.

The funniest part of the night for me was when I heard Ben having a little conversation with a neighbor that we have never met before. When he got to the sidewalk, I asked him what he was saying to her. He was telling her that her doorbell sounded a little like Sister Shelton’s (his piano teacher). I don’t think that boy ever has a thought that he doesn’t verbalize.

More Halloween Fun

This week has been full of more Halloween fun. Emily had her class party on Tuesday. I had signed up to help, but they changed the day at the last minute and it was my turn to teach preschool at the same time as the party. She seemed okay with it. I sent all of the stuff for the treat and she assured me “If there isn’t another mom there to help, I can just teach the kids because I already know how to do it.” She is a confident and mature little kindergartener. She had a fabulous time at her party and came home very excited to tell us all about it.

Wednesday, the Primary had a Fall Scripture Carnival. The young men and young women had set up fun, scripture themed carnival games (i.e. Armor of God-Fiery Darts Target Practice). The kids had fun playing the games and getting prizes. The most memorable part of the night was when one of the young women leaders was defrosting some donuts in the microwave and somehow filled the whole church with smoke. The carnival just kept going with the additional fun of smoke and the sound of the fire alarm.

Thursday was an ultra busy day. We started the morning with the parade at the kids’ school. I was a little confused on the time, so we were there way too early. Better early than late, right? It gave me a chance to catch up on all the latest news with my neighbors and Nate and the girls made friends with the nice elderly couple sitting next to us. Nate stayed at the school after the parade to do a game for Ben’s class party. (Ben was pretty pleased with the fact that Nate was the only dad that helped and that his game was the most fun). I came home to get everything ready for our preschool costume party. It turned out pretty fun. The events included a story and song, pin-the-nose-on-the-pumpkin, a spider toss, pumpkin bowling, a candy walk, Don’t Eat Pete, popcorn witch hands, and Halloween Bingo. With the exception of Elise’s extreme whininess and Emily crying because I didn’t let her play all of the games, it was a successful party.

After Ben got home and Abby woke up from her nap, we carved pumpkins. Pumpkin carving at this age is an interesting activity. Ben and Emily were eager to dig right in and they did 80% of the work and 100% of the design on their pumpkins. Elise, in her typical approach to work, said it was too hard and “let” me pretty much clean and carve hers. Abby woke up super grumpy and cried most of the time, but she did really well with helping me hold the knife to carve her pumpkin.

Halloween Party

We had my family over Saturday night for our annual Halloween party. It was loud and crazy and lots of fun. We ate yummy pizza with flat homemade root beer (we need to work on our root beer making skills). Then we played some fun games with the kids. The piñata was the hit of the party for the eighth year running. Ben decapitated the witch with his first swing, so we just tied her body onto the rope and the rest of the kids got to swing at a headless witch. Abby, who had been excited about the witch piñata when Nate brought it home from the store, just kept staring up at it like “What in the heck is going on?!?” After the party games, the bigger kids took the party outside for a little cousin basketball game. That was Ben’s favorite part of the night. Emily and Elise LOVED the caramel apples that Holly brought. Emily probably stood there for half an hour just dipping and eating.

Old Navy, Old Navy

Normally, a shopping trip to Old Navy isn’t blog worthy, but this might just be an exception. Nate and I had to go to Riverdale on Saturday for an appointment with the eye doctor, so we decided to run into Old Navy and pick up some $1 Halloween t-shirts for the kids. They were having a special Halloween sale, so as we went in they handed us a trick-or-treat bag with a coupon to use on our purchase. I opened mine and it said “$5 off any purchase.” Sweet. I love discounts with no minimum to buy. I was pretty stoked about getting our kids’ Halloween shirts for free. Nate opened his. It said, “You’ve won your entire purchase (up to $150).” What?!?!? We read it three times trying to figure out what it really meant. Turns out we were the grand prize winners for the day. Yippee!

It was actually a bit of a challenge for me and Nate to spend $150 all at once. We shopped for a while and then had to head to the eye doctor. We had them hold our stuff so we could come back and shop some more. We splurged and got TWO Halloween shirts for each of the kids (one for next year), plus one for each of us. That brought us to $11 towards the $155 goal. Nate got two new button up shirts for work, two long sleeved tees, a new jacket (his office is cold and he has no body fat), two new hats for him and one for Ben, and a cool glow in the dark football. I got a quality brown hoodie jacket, two super comfy turtleneck sweaters, some jeans for Abby and another $1 Old Navy shirt for each of the kids. 27 items for $3.43. The receipt was cool. They split the discount over all of the items, so the most we paid for anything was 42 cents. There were lots of 2 cent and 9 cent items. Fun! They even took Nate’s picture as we were checking out. He’s almost famous now.

Punkinaze Fieldtrip

Elise had her first preschool fieldtrip on Friday. We took the kids to the Punkinaze in West Haven. There was a corn maze, lawn games, giant slides and a huge tub of corn where they could search for candy. Nate got off work early and met us there. He had gone with both Ben and Emily when they had their Punkinaze fieldtrips in preschool, so Elise thought that it was a rule that he should go to hers. She and Abby both had lots of fun playing.

Elise did not love the giant slides. Three times down was more than enough for her. The little two foot high plastic slide was more her style. Abby, on the other hand, loved the big slides. She looked terrified on the way down, but as soon as we got to the bottom, she would run toward the stairs to go again.

The Wells Fargo Wagon

If you put this video on a loop and listen to it all day, you will get a taste of my life yesterday. We watched The Music Man again last week. The kids love the songs, but they don’t know them very well. They just sing the part they know over and over again. In this case, one line. It is funny to hear Elise explain that “I can’t stop singing. I’ve got that song stuck in my head!”

UEA Weekend

Having two no school days in a row was cause for celebration in this house. The weather was so nice that it was like we had a little encore to summer. The kids spent tons of time outside playing with the neighbors. We did all the lazy day things that we haven’t had time for lately – built puzzles, played GameCube, had a picnic, did art projects, built Lincoln Log cabins, and had some fun family outings. It was a nice break from our normal routine of school, homework, and chores. Here are a couple of the highlights:

Air Force Museum Revisited –

On Thursday, we took the kids back to the Air Force Museum. We met Nate there at noon so we had plenty of time to see all of the displays. I was glad that Nate was there to tell the kids cool things about the planes. My descriptions went something like this “That’s a big plane,” “That one goes fast,” “That’s a helicopter.” Nate was much more informative and interesting.

Haunted Dinosaur Park –

Friday night we took the kids to the dinosaur park’s Halloween event. We’ve gone for a few years and the kids have always really liked it. This year was a little disappointing. It seemed like they didn’t have quite as many cool things to see and they didn’t even light the pumpkins on the “Wall of Pumpkins.” After considering the cost-to-fun ratio, I think we will try something new next year. On the bright side, Heidi and Aaron and their boys came with us. It was fun to hang out with them even though the park wasn’t quite up to par.

Zack and Austin coincidentally matched our family’s Star Wars theme. They were pretty fascinated with mine and Nate’s lightsabers.

Ben made friends with this little boy while we were having scones and hot chocolate. They kept chasing each other around having a blaster/sword fight. I’m always a little surprised that I have such an outgoing kid.

Other Random Photos –

Abby graduated from the Mr. Pitt style of eating a banana to the full on monkey style.

The girls were so proud of their Lincoln Log tower/cabin. Emily ran up the stairs to tell me to come and see it; then she added “get the camera . . . you’ll want a picture.” When I took the picture, Ben said “make a blog of it, Mom!” I guess if they were that excited about it, I should include a picture.

Ben picked the “biggest carrot ever” from our garden. I didn’t really understand his enthusiasm until Nate pointed out that we always just buy the baby carrots at the store. With those as his frame of reference, it is no wonder that he was really impressed. There’s something about growing your own food that kids love. I’ve never seen them get so excited about a healthy snack. Okay, so Abby just kept sucking the ranch dressing off her carrot and double dipping, but it was healthy for the other kids.

True Confession –

The most exciting part of the weekend for me was that Saturday marked the end of the fall soccer season. I think that soccer is a great experience for the kids, but I am ready to reclaim our Saturdays. Our house and yard have been paying the price for our busy schedule.

Conversations with Ben

This morning Ben came into my room 7:00. He wanted to take a bath, but I convinced him that he should just stay in bed and snuggle with me. I thought I could go back to sleep for a half an hour, but Ben talked to me the whole time. It was such a typical Ben conversation that I started taking notes so I could remember what he said. It went something like this:

“The biggest ptarmigan is the Rock Ptarmigan. The smallest ptarmigan is the White Tailed Ptarmigan. The medium sized is the Willow Ptarmigan. They are brown in the spring and summer and fall, but they turn white in the winter. That is funny. It is so they can be camouflaged. In the arctic, everything is wearing white in the winter except for the walruses. Walruses are brown. Except for their tusks . . . those are white. Walruses stay close to the ice shelves. They can’t go too far out to sea or they’ll get eaten by killer whales. Killer whales eat anything, even turtles. Sometimes they even eat dolphins. Mostly they eat fish. Did you know that the smallest fish is the Marshall Island Gobi? It is only three point zero meters. (Me: “Do you mean millimeters?”, Ben: “Oh yeah, millimeters.”) It is only three point zero millimeters. The biggest fish is the whale shark, but the biggest bony fish is the Ocean Sunfish or Mola Mola. There are two kinds of fish, cartilage fish and bony fish. The biggest animal in the ocean is the blue whale, but it isn’t a fish; it is a mammal. Those are the record breakers. In my ocean eyewitness book, it says all the record breakers. Oh there’s one more, the sailfish. It is the fastest fish in the ocean. It can go faster than a cheetah. They have a sail on their back and a pointed nose like a swordfish. They can use it to fight barracudas. Barracudas . . .”

That was just five minutes worth. I had a whole half hour. I love that boy! He is hilarious to me. I’m not sure that all of his facts were right, but if I had to bet $100, I would say they were.

I like to think that I’m no dummy, but I think that Ben gets his smarts/memory for facts from his dad. I took this picture the other day. They were both just kicking back and reading some science books. I’m lucky to have the two cutest nerdy boys in the whole wide world!

Snowy Soccer Saturday

Winter arrived in our town just in time for the kids’ soccer games. It was FREEZING cold. We managed to avoid snow during their games, but it snowed before and after. The kids were so excited when it started to stick to the lawn. They played outside for a while and we had the first hot chocolate of the season. I’m hoping for six more weeks of fall, but I’ve decided it is time to bust out the electric blanket.

We had a fun day at home. Jody and Kevin stopped by to drop some things off and ended up staying for dinner and to watch last week’s Amazing Race since they had missed it. The kids had lots of fun showing off and telling them stories. When they left, Ben said “If they didn’t have dogs, they could stay here forever.” He was pretty mad that they had to go home and feed Shasta and Andre.

This is how Nate found the kids when he got out of bed on Saturday. Ben was sitting on the heater vent reading stories to his sisters. It was a sweet moment. (p.s. Our kids have drawers full of pajamas. I’m not sure why they choose to sleep in our ratty old t-shirts)

Ben has made some big improvements this year in soccer. He is starting to grasp the concept of playing positions and has become a little bit more aggressive (or at least attentive).

Emily, on the other hand, is back to her timid self when it comes to soccer. Nate mocks the number of pictures we have of her kicking off, but it is just about the only time that she is actually kicking the ball.

The snow looked so beautiful coming down in big, fat flakes. This picture doesn’t do it justice.

Three cuties.

It was a milestone day for Abby. We stepped up from the one spout hairdo to the two connected spouts. She loves to sit and get her hair done. Hopefully she still will when she actually has hair to do.