Past Halloween Favorites

Just thought I'd share a few of my favorite costumes my kids wore in past years. When Nick was little I was very diligent in taking him to kiddie kandids to get professional pictures taken. I only had the one kid, and he was so easy.

The other kids weren't that easy when they were little. Madison has since developed a love of the camera, but Zach and especially Christopher aren't there yet. I have to settle for snapshots, some years I get a cute shot, others, not so much.
This picture is from 2003- Madison was the cutest little thing, and Nick was so into Harry Potter. Probably my favorite Halloween costume was the year Madison was The little mermaid. I had a grandiose plan to dye her hair red instead of buying a wig. When I was in High school, I had a friend who had brown hair and dyed her hair red with kool-aid, and I successfully dyed my own hair green in high school (although I was going for blue). So I mixed up a batch of cherry and orange kool-aid paste, and worked it into her hair. She was such a good sport, but she said her head itched, so we didn't keep it on that long. I think the effect was rather nice, it was a pretty auburn, but it wasn't overly noticeable. And it smelled fruity. This was a few years ago, even though Zach's favorite thing in the whole wide world was Thomas, he still hated the costume. I think he thought we were all nuts. Also, I love that in AZ little girls can dress up like Tinkerbell, and not have to worry about fitting their snowsuit on underneath their costume.

And just for fun, I can't leave out John. What a babe. I'm a lucky woman.

This Child

He's gonna be the death of me, I swear it. Tonight I came down to the kitchen to find this-

Yes, those are crayons in the jelly jar. Someone made themselves a PB&J, left out the jelly, and Christopher decided it was a good place do drop crayons. Much more messy than the usual cups or bottles of water. Not totally surprised though, I do believe I remember blogging about this awhile back-

At least if the crayons are in the jelly he can't use them to color on my couches. One couch he has recently taken both a pen and a crayon to, and today he colored on another one with a pencil. I tell him no, show him what he's done, tell him that's naughty, take away whatever he was using to decorate my furniture, and he cries and cries and cries, face down on the floor, then the next day I'll find a new surprise somewhere else. I try to keep those things out of reach, but with three older kids it's near darned impossible. I'm having a hard enough time hiding all the markers. He keeps finding more. But lately his favorite canvas is himself. And my guess is that they aren't washable, because it won't come off in the tub. Why do I own not-washable markers? I guess when they were on sale super cheap at the beginning of the school year and I stocked up, I was either not paying attention, or the washable ones weren't the ones on sale.

Speaking of confiscating things, I had to confiscate his most beloved of blankies as well yesterday. I'm not sure if he realizes it's gone yet, since he doesn't talk, but that thing was making me totally miserable. He carries it with him everywhere, including the backyard, and it took me several days to figure out why I felt like I was living with a bunch of cats. (allergies) It was the stinkin' blankie-

I'm not sure what he's doing out there, but he will just let himself out in the backyard, and please excuse our not-so-manicured-yard, John's been out of town, and his knees don't allow him to do much when he is around, and I barricade myself inside to get away from all those nasty allergens which have been hitching a ride on to my baby's blanket to come and torture me inside the house. (wow, what a run on!) Anyway, I've been catching him outside doing this-

He just sits out there in the wet grass with his blankie over his head. (what is up with that?!?)Then when I open to door to take a picture, he hears me, and pulls it off. So I finally figured out what was bothering my eyes so badly, and I threw the thing in the wash. I am not sure when it is gonna reappear.

On the one hand, I know that this too, shall pass, and someday he will be all grown up, or worse yet, an obnoxious teenager, and I will think back fondly to when he was a cute, sweet little thing, and wonder what I was so agitated about, but I gotta be honest here, some days I am counting down the days until he is not two any more. (7 more months)

A happy sort of problem

My mom called last night, I hadn't posted anything in more than 24 hours and she was wondering what was going on. The truth is there's not much going on around here. I can't decide if I'm sick or if it's just allergies, or both, so I've been taking both kinds of medicine just in case. I definitely know allergies are involved cause I really really want to claw my eyes out most of the day. Eye drops and Claritin help minimally, so I take Benadryl except that makes me drowsy. (Good painkillers like Vicodin have no affect on me, but Benadryl really knocks me on my tail.)But I think I have a cold as well, so I'm taking Sudafed, which kinda helps cancel out the drowsy effects of the Benadryl, but I still feel like doing absolutely nothing but read. So that's what I've been doing for the past couple days.

Which is fine with me, I have loads to read. In fact, for the first time ever, I am in the middle of four books at once, with tons more waiting in the wings for me to pick up, and I am generally a strictly one book at a time kind of gal, but there are extenuating circumstances. See first I started book number one- Superior Saturday, but it was a hardback, and I didn't want to take it to science camp cause who knows what could happen, so I started book number two on the bus ride up there. Book number two is a tried and true book, I've read it several times, but since most of my books are hardback, and I happen to also have this one in paperback (it's a Harry Potter book), I grabbed it. When I got back from camp, I was gonna finish number two and then go back to number one, but then a friend of mine lent me number three- Katherine. It's a really old library book with it's binding barely hanging on by a thread, and so I figured I'd read that one so I could get it back to her before the cover fell completely off. Halfway through that one (and totally enjoying it) I was talking to another friend who reminded me of book club this month, and aack! book club was in like 5 days, and I had yet to locate this book- The Book Thief. So Monday book number four was purchased and I am really enjoying that book as well.

So that's my happy sort of problem- I have too much to read. I have a stack of books waiting for me at home to get to, and every time I turn around someone else is recommending a book to me. Which I am actually happy about. It just leaves little time for blogging, or doing anything blog worthy, or baking anything blog worthy for my other blog. (sigh) However I'll have to curb my reading appetite pretty soon here with the Holidays approaching. I'm considering selling my caramels in the school boutique again this year, so that's totally time consuming, and then there's all that other Holiday stuff- shopping, cleaning, decorating, baking, etc. to do.

Believe it or not though there was a time when I had the exact opposite problem, and I wasn't happy about it at all. I used to read all the time as a kid, between the library and my mom buying books for me, I had plenty to read. But for some absurd reason, I gave up reading things I wanted to read when Nick was born. Probably something to do with the fact that anytime he caught me reading anything, he'd hand me one of his picture books to read to him, cause as long as I was in a reading mood, I might as well read something good. So fast forward several years later- like 6 or 7, when I picked up my very first Harry Potter book. (It took me several years to swallow my pride and accept that I could like a children's book) It was like the floodgates opened. I hadn't realized how much I missed reading, missed being lost between the pages of a book until I started reading again. I read all the Harry Potter books that were written to date, and I wanted more. So one day I took the kids to the public library with a mission of finding myself a new book. I set them loose in the kids section and I went wandering off by myself. I had a mission to find something great to read. I browsed shelves and displays, but I had no idea what to look for. Nothing recommended itself to me more than anything else. I picked a couple up, thumbed through the pages, then set them down, disappointed. I left empty handed and depressed.

Obviously I got over that problem. Time and friends pretty much took care of that. So in case anyone else besides my mom has been wondering where I've been these past couple days, I've been lost in 14th century England, and Nazi Germany and enjoying every minute of it.

sixes

I was tagged. The rules of this tag are you go to the 6th file on your computer, and post your 6th picture. This picture is from January 2003, and I really don't know any back story. John is reading to the kids, and Maddie is being her usual goofy self. (She was pretty silly back then) and John looks irritated at me, cause he hates it when I take his picture.

I'm supposed to tag 6 people, but I'm just gonna leave it open to anyone who wants to participate.

inside the mind of a 6 year old

Zach has been cracking me up all day today

first there's the- " I think the peanut butter and jelly are friends- that's why they taste so good together."

Then there's this picture he drew in school of his family-

me- "Great job Zach. (noticing all 6 members of our family standing on the ground next to each other) Who is this person in the tree?"

Zach- "I don't know." (zach just informed me that it is his friend in the tree- but he still doesn't know who.)

Me- "Oh. Okay" (good thing our trees are puny, otherwise I'd be checking for unknown strangers in them)

Zach- pointing to the car in the bottom right corner- "That's our car right there."

Me- "Our car? Really? Good job."

Secretly I am wondering when I traded in this car-

For this one-

Me- "What's that up there behind the airplane?"

Zach- "That's a wagon to catch the people that fall out of the sky."

somedays I envy the uninhibited creativity of children. To him it's perfectly normal to have airplanes towing Radio Flyer's behind them to catch people. I however get hung up on why people would be falling out of the sky.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I volunteered to be Nick's Art Masterpiece parent for his class this year. Crazy, I know, but I was feeling a bit of parental guilt. This is his last year of elementary school, what I am assuming is pretty much the last year of parental involvement in the educational process (beyond home work help, and driving to and from activities, and such). And I started thinking about how little I have been involved in his classrooms in the past and I came up with very little. I helped out with a Halloween party once, and, ummm, that pretty much sums up my involvement. I think I did help grade some papers once or twice too. The sad part is is that the kid just eats it up. He's so delighted to have me there. But, you know, he's the oldest, and Zach was born like 5 days into his kindergarten year, and I hate asking my friends to watch my teeny little ones cause they are so much work, and the two year olds cry when you leave them, so I'd do it as little as possible, and then I would go and have another baby. And Nick would be disappointed but understanding, cause that's the kind of kid he is.

Excuses, excuses. I figured this was my last shot to be involved so I signed up. In the 6th grade your options are pretty limited, so art masterpiece it is. Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad, it just takes a bit of dedication on my part. Once a month, every month I have to get to go into the classroom and do about a 60 minute presentation on a particular artist and a specific piece of art. Complete with some kind of activity. To add to the pressure, Nick's teacher has only had one mother show up once in three years of teaching at Spectrum.

This month was Renoir. They help you out, and provide materials and info, and art supplies, but you come up with the lesson. I prepared for a month, I even bought a book to supplement my own education, but I got Renoir and Rembrandt mixed up, and only realized this after I read the whole book.

So of course I managed to work baked goods into the lesson. I started off with a cookie analogy, and how there are many many different kinds, and how it is okay to like or dislike different cookies, but we need to be respectful other others rights to do the same. And then I compared cookies preferences to art, and at that point I passed out chocolate chip cookies.

It went surprisingly well, the kids seemed to enjoy it, they seemed to all be paying attention, and some even contributing to the lesson. These kids are far more knowledgeable about art stuff than I was at their age. But then again, we never had cool programs like art masterpiece when I was a kid. We never even had a real art teacher. Sometimes our home room teacher would trot out some construction paper and we'd make some seasonal picture to hang on the bulletin board in the hallway, but that's as good as it got. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Gilbert Unified School District kicks Granite School District's butt.

Since Renoir is an Impressionist, I made a little display of Halloween stuff, and they got to look at it for a minute or so, then I put it all away and they had to sketch what they saw from memory. Sketch their own impression of what they saw. This was the hardest part for some kids. Some started panicking cause they needed to be able to stare at it and copy detail for detail. Or they were afraid they would get something wrong, or forget one of the items, like it was a memory test or something.

Nick said that some of the kids asked when I was coming back. Apparently my panicky "I think I'm going to throw up cause I don't know what I am doing and everyone is going to see right through me" feeling before hand was another classical reaction of me over-reacting and getting more stressed out than I need to be.

The Grand Canyon

We took advantage of Fall Break and made a trek up to the Grand Canyon yesterday. We made a day of it, and when I talked to a friend of mine, her reaction was "You drove there and back IN ONE DAY?" I guess we could have stayed the night, but there were seven of us, including John's dad, and Christopher doesn't do so well with not sleeping in his own bed. I like the fact his bed has bars and so he can't get out on his own. So we limited ourselves to a day.

We were up pretty early, and tried to get out the door by 6:00, I think we left at 6:30. I think the DVD player in the car is both a blessing and a curse. It entertains the kids pretty well on long road trips, but when the older kids get a say they generally argue about what to watch "High School Musical!!" "Star Wars!!" "Cars!!" They didn't get much of a say on this trip, because Christopher's crying would drown out any movie anyway, so we all watched Blues Clues. Over, and over, and over again. I was grateful I grabbed my headphones at the last minute, and since I was sitting in the back seat with the kids out of adult conversation range, I put on my music and was able to enjoy the ride in my own little world. I know, I know, family bonding and all that, but a person can only handle so much "We are looking for Blue's Clues...." or "He's touching me!!!"

We ate breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff. The kids were all pretty hungry and all four of them ate and ate and ate. (Actually I think we all were a bit guilty of that) We lingered around outside a bit while the kids sat in the rocking chairs, and Zach beat me at a game of Checkers. Nick wanted me to buy him a rocking chair for Christmas. I told him it was either that or a Nintendo DS- he picked the DS.

When we finally made it up to Grand Canyon it was so worth it. The canyon of course it truly impressive, pictures and words never can do it justice. The weather could not have been more perfect. Blue skies, sunshine, slight breeze. The older kids totally appreciated the view, but Christopher didn't care much for it. John held him the entire time, and when he finally wanted to get down it was only to run up the stairs and as far away from the edge as he can get. We think he must be afraid of heights or something.
After a late lunch in a diner in the little town of Williams, we headed home. We made it home in time to show up really, really late to the goodbye party for some good friends and neighbors of ours. They will be really missed.

What am I?

Last night as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to overtake me, a blog post popped in my head. I'm glad I was able to recall it this morning because even in my semi-conscious state it wasn't that bad of an idea-

So here it is- What am I?

This is a Halloween costume my mother concocted for me when I was almost three years old. Maybe I spend to much time perusing other, more professional blogs with something more to say than the humble goings on of our household, but I decided to have a contest. Just for fun.

So the first person who can correctly identify my costume in the comments of this blog post,(sorry mom, even though you are one of my most faithful readers, you're out of this one) I'll send (or hand deliver) a bag of caramels. Enter as many times as you like, contest closes on Halloween, or if someone figures it out, whichever comes first. (hint- I'm not a clown)

Narnia

Since it was fall break we took the kids to see the Chronicles of Narnia exhibit at the Arizona Science Center. John's dad is in town visiting us as well, so that was another excuse to take off and do something fun. It was pretty stinkin' cool. I took my friend Alisa's advice and waited until the afternoon to go so that all the school field trip kids would be gone. We arrived just as they were leaving, so we nearly had the place to ourselves.

The exhibit itself was awesome. Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside the exhibit itself. I was sorely tempted, but I was afraid I'd get kicked out or something. At first you are standing around in a room looking at displays of CS Lewis' stuff, or recreations of period pieces from World War Two, newspapers, photos, etc, and then the large wardrobe on the far wall opens and you step through the wardrobe, you walk past the fur coats, and step into Narnia itself. Snow gently falls from a snow machine as you walk through the forest. The first thing that struck me was how Disney-esque it all was. The attention to detail was fantastic. Then I heard one of the guys mention Disney, and I asked about it, and he said that it is a Disney movie, and a Disney exhibit. They had actual costumes and props and stuff from the movies, and interactive things for the kids to play with, and the same guy that told me about it being Disney did a demonstration of the catapult for the kids, and now Zach is obsessed with catapults. He even tried to convince me to buy one for him in the gift shop. The kids each got a pencil and I got a postcard to put in my box.

I read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was younger, but re-read them this last year again, partly because the movies were coming out, partly to encourage and talk to Nick about reading the books, partly because I couldn't remember what happened in them, and partly because it was my snub to some other writer who wrote children's books. Phillip something-or-other ( I think) . He's some atheist who proudly admitted to wanting to "Kill God" in the minds of children, and he hates CS Lewis, so instead of buying his books, and seeing his movie(s?) I'd re-read CS Lewis, and go see and buy his movies, although I realize my own little personal stand doesn't mean a heck of a lot to either of them, (especially since I'm pretty sure CS Lewis is already dead) it meant something to me. Plus, I learned something pretty interesting, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were good friends. They'd hang out at cafes and talk about the books they were writing. How cool is that?

I think the exhibit is there for like ten more days then it moves on to another city. If you like the books or movies at all, it's worth a trip.

I'm an Esme!

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

I saw this on someone else's blog and couldn't help myself! - I made John take the test too, I tried to do it for him, but I thought the results might be a little off. He was a good sport about it, so I guess it was no surprise either that he's a Carlisle! I guess it was meant to be.


Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

That's the kind of mom I am

Flipping through the ol' photo albums the other day, I came across this little gem-(sorry it's a little blurry)

So what do you do when your baby girl wedges herself between the fridge and a wall, and starts screaming for help? You drop everything and run and get your camera, that's what you do.

Corn Maze

I took the older three to their very first (and my very first) corn maze the other day. We were supposed to meet up with some girl scouts, but very few showed up. Parents and siblings were welcome to come so I brought Nick and Zach too. Fortunately it worked out that everyone either made new friends or had friends there, and the kids went scattering in every direction. It was fun.

To tell you the truth I was kinda worried about going to corn mazes in the past, I had never heard of anyone getting stuck in there forever, but I figure there had to be a first time. It wasn't that bad, It took us an hour and a half to get through, (but I was following the lead of two 8 year old girls) and I'm not sure if this is how all corn mazes do it (cause I have nothing to compare it to) but they gave us this little punch card and you had to find 6 different stations in the maze and punch your card. At the station there were posted maps so you would know where you are are could kinda figure out where you want to be. Also it was day time, they are open well past dark, and I am thinking a nighttime trek would be completely different.

I love you

Christopher is still a quiet little boy. Doesn't talk much, but I figured I'm not gonna stress about it too much, since Zach was pretty quiet himself (now he can talk your ear off). Because sign language worked so well for Zach, we're working on it with Christopher. He has a few words down pretty well- please, thank you, more, and help, so yesterday I introduced "I love you."

I debated for a moment on which version to teach him- There's the single hand version-

But that can get tricky- When Zach was first learning it, he looked down at his hand, deep in concentration, then got a big smile on his face as he proudly showed me his middle finger. (I didn't ask the kids to pose for that visual)

I decided to go with the standard "Love" sign with your arms crossed over your chest-

We seem to be having some difficulty getting it down.I guess all that really matters is he's trying.

Are we there yet?

"We'll get there." That was John's mantra for the first few years of our marriage. When we were poor as church mice, living in a house we rented from my father but wishing to have a place we could call our own, driving crappy cars that were broken more often than not, going to school in the evenings, working an insane amount of overtime, never seeing each other, using WIC to help subsidize the grocery bill, and trying to make ends meet, he'd say "We'll get there."

Sometimes I secretly wondered how.

He doesn't say that so much any more, he doesn't need to, but after all these years, if he does, I don't wonder how anymore. I know better now.

Are we "There" yet? I don't know. One of the truths that I've come to believe is that it honestly doesn't matter so much any more where "there" is, as long as we are there together.

These days we have a comfortable home of our own, cars that are for the most part pretty dependable, John has a great job that makes him happy and provides for our needs, our health, our faith, and four fantastic kids. While I realize the house and the cars are just things and not vital to our happiness, I'm still grateful for them.

Everything else is just gravy.

Maybe I'll never know where "there" is, and that's okay too. I do know that we have come a long way since we were first married, and I am grateful for those trials and experiences and I know that as long as we're together, we'll get there.

One other thing- I'm really glad I didn't take my maid of honor's offer to jump in her car and run away on our wedding day. I haven't regretted that decision for a minute.

Happy Anniversary, John. I Love You.