Delighting in the Spooky Season

(scary face)
Noelle is getting ready for Halloween. She's been prancing around in her costume that I made by accident. I hadn't at all intended to make a costume for her and her mind was ever changing on what it was exactly that she was going to be for Halloween. First she was going to a spider, which is her go-to costume idea every year or so it seems. Then she got hooked on the idea of being a tiger. A tiger, what the? Where would I come up with a tiger costume that didn't look like she was trying to be sexy or cool. She's four, the cool factor has yet to fully set in and I'm not about to facilitate such things. I already have to put up with being told things aren't "rock n' roll" enough as it is, however I could figure out tiger if I had to. Needless to say we went to the fabric store, looking for something unrelated to Halloween costumes, and found this great green fish scale looking material. My mind went into dress-up mode and so we bought a yard.

(the wind on Halloween)

It sat in the bag until Noelle remembered we bought it and then it was turned into a skirt, cape and whipping toy for Reggie. I figured I'd better hop to it and make that dress-up mermaid fin. It was great for about two seconds until Noelle wouldn't wear the leotard with it and wanted her own set of seashells on top. So we went back to the fabric store and snatched up a few things and two Sis naps later we had a full on mermaid costume. The only problem was getting it off Noelle long enough for it not to be worn out by Halloween. Boo somehow managed to convince her to hang it in the closet until then.

In the meantime we're working on Reggie's costume and well Sis gets the hand-me-costumes that Noelle wore. Its either that or she can be a bag of jellybeans for the next five years of her life like I was.

To add to our spookiness we've done our best and adding bats to our walls and of course a ghost. This ghost project has been on my list of things to do for a couple years and I finally got around to buying all the supplies. I haven't figured out how I'm going to store Casper. Sure wish I had a basement for my junk.

October also marks the time of year for our annual family photo shoot. Stay tuned for more pics. Sis did a good job until it was time for her nap and Noelle just wanted to strike serious poses (if you can't tell from the above photos.) I might go for round two later today to see what we come up with. Happy haunting in the meantime.

Animal Class - Week 2

This week was Australia week and to be completely honest it was a little bit of a let down. Sure there was animals there that I'd probably never see that up close, but they weren't as tame as last week's brood.

There are not pictures this time, because I'm lame like that. But we saw a Blue Tongue Skink, a Sugar Glider, Brush-Tailed Bettong along with the Paca babies and a new heard of guinea pigs.

The good part = less crying when it was time to leave.
The bad part = skinks can carry salmonella. Yuck.

Next week is North America and we get to meet a skunk. Stay tuned.

Camping 101

This past weekend we went camping in the Tonto National Forest at a place called Bear Flat. It was a nice to get away from the cacti and see pine trees and other green foliage. Clearly this is a place popular for fishing as we encountered many day visitors but managed to be the only over nighters brave enough. Or maybe its stupid enough. Either way we had a nice time together and our kids seemed to also enjoy the change of scenery.

Reggie thought it was great to be able to wander in the wilderness. So much so, that he wandered off and made friends with some of the fishermen. Don't worry, because Boo already did that for you, we found him two minutes later bouncing all around the strangers doing his best to be adopted into their family.

This is pretty much the epitome of what our kids did the whole time. Noelle thought it was cool to throw the fine-grained soil into the air to make "magic." This was not especially pleasing to the dad when she would do it next to our tent and it would waft into the windows.

The water was nice and chilly. Almost take your breath away chilly.
I'm not sure what's up with this pose, but it was all she was willing to do for a picture.

It rained pretty much all night long and so we woke up to Noelle's second favorite thing to play in, mud. Sydney managed to find any sort of rock or acorn to put in her mouth. As a result she looked like so. Stinkin' cute if you ask me.

For any friends out there thinking about going camping with small children I offer up a small list of things to consider for your trip to the wilderness.

1. Take rope. It comes in handy if you need to tie up a wandering dog or a toddler that wants to play in the fire pit.

2. Setting up the tent you had to borrow in your living room the night before sounds overly ridiculous, but helps get the eye rolling out of your system when you have to do if for real.

3. Invest in an air mattress or some other sort of sleeping pad that doesn't require MacGyver skills to inflate. If you're like us it tends to be more along the lines of MacGruber.

4. Think through every scenario so that you don't forget crucial things like plates. Its very hard to prepare any meals without plates. Or clean out a fire pit without a shovel.

5. Pack a few extra clothes for your kids and let them go wild. You will both be much happier when they occupy themselves in the dirt for long periods of time.

6. If at all possible, opt out of sleeping with the baby. And better yet opt out of baby on shared air mattress. You might find yourself airborne at some point when co-sleeper gets up in the night and you find yourself trying to make sure baby doesn't roll off, or get squished in the meantime.

7. Do not let your mind wander off into any worst case scenarios. Because that sound you hear probably isn't a murderer in the woods and you don't sleep very well.

8. Pack more food than you might actually consume in a 36 hour period. You'll all be happier that way.

9. If you have to make a quick stop at RadioShack for your trip out of town, chances are you're not going to be happy. I'm just sayin'.

10. Have a tent that is large enough for two families even if you are only a four man troupe. Having space inside the tent is essential. Save that body heat business for the Himylayas.

Miracle of Miracles

After nearly 18 months of living in our house, we finally installed our microwave. Thank you Uncle Scott for coming to our house for a visit and leaving us with such a lovely looking kitchen.

(Scott and Boo making a plan)

See that metal thing on our wall? We had no idea what it was for and no instructions on how to install our microwave. We also thought for some reason that the microwave we had would be much to large for the space and would hang too close to the stove. Wrong. Then we had to change the fan so that it would blow the right direction for the set-up we have. We never would have thought to undo a few screws and flip it around.

The crookedness of this picture is funny for some reason. Maybe because I don't claim to be much of a photographer and seriously its just a picture of my stove. I keep looking for a faint image of the Holy Mother to appear so that I can confirm that it really is a miracle.

Since installation, we have had a couple of people ask us if we got new appliances. We laugh it off and just answer honestly, that we finally put our microwave where it's supposed to be.

As a side note, it also cleared off a fair amount of counter space and has made for much less clutter in the obvious places.

Animal Class

Our town does a great job at offering many different things for families and kids to do. We've taken music classes and swimming lessons and now we're doing an animal class. Its strange, but very cool at the same time.

This week we learned about animals from South America, all in the rodent family. We might as well play with the rodents that other people have, because we'll never have our own. That spotted animal is called a Paca. I hear they're kind of tasty. That crazy thing is only three days old.

Noelle fell in love with the Guinea Pigs. She cried buckets when it was time to give it back.

This is Tutu the African Crested Porcupine (See here for more information)

Sydney thought that Quinn the Patagonian Cavy was pretty spectacular. Those two followed each other around the room for a long time.

Next week we'll be learning more about animals from Australia.

One More for Good Luck

Why not discover more crafty people in the blogosphere? Another crafty friend of mine is doing a give away. She does clever things to recycle clothing, makes cute baby gifts, and she does awesome sketch work.

So in the spirit of give-a-ways Baby Night Night Boutique is giving away a hand drawn portrait to one of her lucky readers.

Go check her out and become a follower today.