home movies

Check out that link on the right for our home movies!

We love candy!!!

The annual beg-for-sugar-and-completely-forget-how-to-say-thank-you. . . er. . . I mean the Trunk or Treat was last night at the church. Try stuffing a ward that has too many people to begin with, a bunch of tired mommies and daddies, several hundred kids hopped up on sugar, an entire branch that doesn't speak English, and dozens of plastic swords into a semi renovated ward building and put the Young Men and Young Women in charge. Send all the kids out into the unlit (?! seriously, who thought to have this in an unlit parking lot?!) parking lot to beg for sugar. Make sure the number of families handing out candy is significantly smaller than the number of kids so the kids have to wrestle like traders on wall street to get near the tail gates. Also, make sure the gym floor is being refinished so there's no choice but to go outside and huddle around the one portable fireplace. Throw in an excavator and two construction dumpsters for good measure, and see how much fun you have. I bet not as much fun as us since it rained all day first and we had 50 to 60 mph winds all night. Great fun.

Suprisingly, this costume took me the longest. Two weeks of sewing strips of muslin on by hand will give you great protectiveness over a costume. I followed Tate all night saying, "don't eat chocolate until we're home! You've got to wear that at school on Tuesday!"

Superman was so happy because he had just defeated his arch nemesis, Madame Butterfly.

This butterfly had a little too much nectar at the party. Aren't those eyelashes gorgeous?

Our coolness decreased drastically when Napolean Dynamite joined us. Especially when he started eating tater tots out of his pocket and asking for chapstick.

After I finished her wings, Lucy couldn't stop fluttering around.

Apparently M. Butterfly wasn't dead after all. She suprised him with a sneak attack and almost sent him tumbling down the stairs. His flying super power was on the fritz.

I was dressed as Barbie's mom. Jake kept telling me over and over all night how much better I'd look with long thick pink hair. Thanks honey. That makes me feel great, since tomorrow I have to go back to the short dirt colored childbirth-made-all-my-hair-fall-out-and-now-that-it's-growing-in-I-look-like-Chewbacca's -sister 'do.

My Arizona family doesn't have this problem

Lucy doesn't like to wear clothes. Ever. If she could always run wild in the buff, she would. Since I am a mostly low-key mommy at home, this isn't a problem until we leave the house. The neighbors frown on nudity (you know, the whole snooty, "this is Connecticut and we don't abide naked here") , and the wind is so cold, it'll make your nose run. I insist on the basics, but she HATES to put on her coat and I'm not real fond of the pneumonia visit to the doctor, so we fight. We yell. We compromise. She opens it up as far as she can while still having it on her shoulders. This will only work for the next few weeks until the snow starts to fall.

(outside the library right before picking Tate up from school.)

If you're having a bad day

Just in case you aren't as happy as you could be today, click here.

(yes, this is my little brother. oh the shame.)

Appearances can be deceiving

We were going to go pumpkin picking last weekend but by the time we got in the car, it was so close to dinner time we didn't want to drive the 20 minutes to the patch. We opted instead for the local church having a pumpkin sale on their lawn. I really wanted a good fall picture where we all appear to like each other and enjoy one another's company. Well, after lots of jumping and hollering and waving my arms like the Big Red Chicken and fake toot noises to induce smiles, I gave up and we got these.

Raccoons!

Look closely. Those are footprints on the OUTSIDE of our garage door about halfway up. Any idea how they got there?

Walker, Connecticut Ranger

It's official! He now walks more than he crawls. He started taking a few steps here and there about a month or two ago, (right around 9 1/2 months) but crawling was still his major means of transportation. Now he walks even when trying to make a quick escape. (like when he has a crayon and we're trying to take it before he consumes it.) Somehow being eye level with our knees is more desireable than wallowing on the floor. Or maybe he needed to learn to get away while still holding onto that crayon.
Whatever the reason, I'm sure he's going to start losing weight now. Not because he's getting more excercise, but rather because the main portion of his diet came from gunk off the floor. Now I'm going to have to start using the vacuum again. That, or get a dog.

My first pair of not-flip flops in forever

I just got a new pair of shoes! I love new shoes and how sad is this, but they make me feel like dancing around. Notice how not orange they are!

Field Trip!

We went to the Firehouse with Tate's class this morning and it was great! I haven't been on a field trip since junior high and I forgot how much fun it is. While we were there, the firefighters got a call and had to leave, which was so much more exciting than just sitting and listening. We also (when I say "we", I mean the kids and teacher because I chickened out and used my camera as excuse not to) climbed all over the fire truck and got to touch the gear.

I can't figure out who he looks like

As Tate gets older, he is beginning to look more and more like. . . somebody. I can't figure out who he resembles now, but it is definitely not his two year old self.

Hay!

Lucy, Miles, and I went to a local farm to buy mums for my front yard and we got roped into all sorts of things. They had a hay ride pulled by a noisy tractor,

they had lots of pumpkins to climb on,

and they had tons and tons of hay. Miles was less than thrilled with the adventure,


but my front porch looks very festive.

Long Hair like Anna's

Lucy covets the hair of her friend Anna. It's long and straight and white-blonde like Miley's. To enhance her own hated 'do, she puts a pair of pajama pants on her head each night and calls it her "long hair". She then goes to bed and dreams of being a princess with long lovely locks, and she sometimes ends up in the strangest positions.

Fancy Nancy strikes again

I don't know if I've written in here how much I like the book Fancy Nancy, but in it, a girl named Nancy makes every detail of her life just a little bit fancier. Lucy loves that about Nancy, and is starting to be very fancy herself. She has 4 princess Barbies and loves to carry them around. She has a lovely bag that her Nana made her, but the bag is just a little too short and the heads of the Barbies stick out. Little Miss Perfection will have none of that, so she insisted we get a bag to fit them. We went to Michaels and got a cheap-o canvas bag but Lucy stated it was too plain, so we embelished it a bit. Now all the Barbies can ride around without the indecency of exposed heads.

Jake and the Flaming Shoes

Jake left his shoes out in the rain on Saturday. He wore his other shoes to Brookfield on Sunday and left those out in the rain too. Jake now has two pairs of stinky shoes and ten very cold toes, so Jake went shopping. Alone. Let me stress here that he is not allowed to shop alone for several very good reasons, one of them being that he thinks he's still a 19 year old single guy who does funny quirky things to impress girls. He forgets that he has three kids, a wife who wants to go out and be seen with him in public occasionally, and he's almost 30. He's very pleased with his choice.

The Pink Ladies

Ever wonder what would happen if you ate a "My Little Pony"?

Bruiser

What a crazy week! I might be overstating to say the forces of evil have been working against me, but something has definitely thrown off my groove. One of them being the cancellation of our family portrait next week due to the fist fight between Lucy and the silverware drawer in our kitchen. Lucy lost.