Happy Halloween

We had a great night. We teamed up with another family and went to both our neighborhoods. Then the kids traded candy back and forth until 9:30 p.m. There was some serious bargaining going on. At one point, individual Smarties became "money", and it was really being thrown around. The Jack-O-Lantern above was carved by Jon and the girls at the elementary school a few nights ago. Emma is very fond of telling everyone how Cailin did the eyes, Madelyn the nose, herself the mouth, and daddy the ears. The green glow stick was a nice effect.

Halloween already?

October has gone by so fast. Tonight was our Ward Fall Festival Chili & Cornbread Cookoff. Just moments before it was time to get my chili and cornbread into the van, my girls were running up to me with their unfinished costume needs. It was lucky for Madelyn the previous owners of our house left a bunch of long shoelaces in a closet. Her pants stayed up nicely with one used as a new drawstring. Emma was a cheerleader. We rummaged through my boxes and found a nice pink ribbon for her hair. Cailin the cat had to be content with brown whiskers - since that is the only color eyeliner I use. It was good to have a test run tonight, since the girls are wearing their costumes to school tomorrow. It should go off without a hitch.

I decided at the last minute to be Mother Nature, or Fall, with leaves taped all over my fancy Abu Dhabi outfit. Hope is a poodle named, "Fifi". She has just started to crawl up on her hands and knees from time to time, and she looked like the cutest wind-up toy in her costume. Jon was an excellent mad scientist - we missed getting his photo. And, hey - my cornbread won first place in the cookoff!

Black Cat Cookie

We made black cat cookies again. This time with candy corn because we can! I used the recipe from Taste of Home, which I think was fudgy delicious. We were going to share with our neighbors last night, but the cookies took a bit longer to put together than I had anticipated. Tonight after we celebrate Jon's birthday we'll drop off a few!

Fall Forever

Hope and I like to take long walks around our neighborhood, looking at the fall colors and crunching over fallen leaves on the sidewalk. Hope loves it as her stroller crunches over the fallen leaves. Along the way, I collect my favorites. I love the bright red ones and the orange ones highlighted in yellow. The girls and I began to press my collected leaves in the pages of my Amelia Peabody novels. I had a stack of them in the corner, waiting for a home in our shelf-less office. After a week or so, it was fun to unearth our flat dried leaves. I saw this idea from Martha, hanging dried leaves from a chandelier. So pretty!

Speedy Delivery

We met Mr. McFeely today! He was so nice, taking time to talk to everyone in the family and signing autographs for every kid.


We also made some books at the storytelling festival at the university. Cailin's book is called "Tweety Bird." She went for the pop-up variety.

Madelyn's book was called "The Rescue Bird".

Emma's book was all about bunnies. Bunnies making friends, bunnies getting married, bunnies, bunnies, bunnies.

Cheerios

While I was busy cooking dinner yesterday, Hope got into the pantry and helped herself to her Cheerios. What else is a girl to do when she needs a little snack?

Scrapbook Class

Jessica Sprague is offering a free class. I'm excited and will be signing up tomorrow!

Football Fans

We went to our first big football game today. Things started out great. The kids were enthusiastic. The crowds, the crisp fall air, the ROTC touchdown cannon, the band, the cheerleaders, the nachos, the cotton candy, and sometimes even the game thrilled them. The half time show was a hoot to boot - the band put their instruments down and danced to Thriller on the field. It was awesome!

Right about that time, things started unravelling. Emma was hungry. Cailin got hurt. Hope needed a nap. So although I would've been content to stay for the whole game, and help my girls track the ball around the field (which is quite surprising - I'm not a sports fan, but I was enjoying myself today!), we decided to call it quits early and go home. I took the 3 sad girls home and Jon and Madelyn stayed till the end. And then they got to walk home. We won, by the way. Yah!

Today

This has been the week of standardized testing at the kids' schools. Madelyn's teacher gives her students a piece of gum after each test to keep them buzzed. The kids, in turn, give Madelyn all their gum wrappers so she can use her new mad wrapper-necklace skilz. She wants to make many of them and sell them on the street.

The weather has been so pretty! We took a walk at one of the parks along the river today.

This is Jon threatening to throw Emma into the river. I think he's having a better time than she is.

Hope in all her cuteness. She will be a year old on November 5th!

A Really Big Garden

Knowing it would be getting up to 70 degrees today, we wanted to make the most of this beautiful weekend. I had read in the paper about an intriguing exhibit at the Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids. The artist, Jaume Plensa, had some interesting work here. Above is pictured a giant man made of letters.

Here is Emma inside the man of letters, Of course, by her letter E. The other favorite thing by Plensa was a hall of gongs inside an exhibit hall. The gongs were all engraved with different quotes and were available for the gonging. They made an amazing sound.

We were excited to see this sculpture by Alexander Calder. Our family recently read "The Calder Game", so it was fun to see a real-life example of his art.

The Children's Garden was huge and full and fun things. The photo above shows Emma turning a wheel connected to a large orange nose. The spinning wheel made a pleasant caramel-apple type smell flow from the nostrils. Oh, yes. We went there.

And it was good.

The Garden

With Fall rapidly taking over, I was surprised to see my little flower garden in bloom this morning.

Lots of pink and purple somethings back here.

Here is the view of the flower bed from the back door. It used to span the whole yard, making a colorful "fence" between our yard and the neighbor's. In recent years, however, the caretaker of the house mowed over half and planted grass - not wanting to take time to discriminate between weed and flower. I can understand that. I have no idea what I'm looking at. My dilemma now is, if I want to plow up the whole garden and instead plant some vegetables. The flowers are much prettier, but if I'm going to do any gardening it will be utilitarian. I'm only in it for the food. The other sides of the property get a lot of shade - so this is probably my best spot if I want to try my hand at some veggies. But the flowers! The flowers!

I'm glad I have a winter to think it over. In the meantime I will be making lots of soups, and dreaming of the vegetables I could be growing in the back yard to put in said soups. I bought this soup tureen at a yard sale this morning for $10. So pretty. Life is good when you've got a tureen on the table.

little gourds

This is one of my happy things. I love walking around the corner and seeing these gourds lined up on our stairs.

Armor

We have some wonderful sister missionaries in our ward. Every Tuesday afternoon we have been enjoying their company at dinner. My girls love it when they come for several reasons.

1. We eat at the dining room table, with a pretty table cloth, pretty dishes and glasses.
2. I usually make a dessert. Tonight it was a skookie. Last week it was a dish of tootsie rolls.
3. The sisters always share a wonderful lesson with us.

Emma always comes and whispers to me as we are finishing up our meal, "Are they going to give us a lesson?" And then I ask, "Are you going to give us a lesson?" And they respond cheerfully, "Of course!" One week they did a giant puzzle with us and explained how the restored gospel is like a puzzle with all the pieces put together. Another week they showed us how to make candy wrapper chains (those fore-mentioned tootsie rolls really came in handy), and related the linked papers to our families linked eternally through temple covenants.

Tonight they asked for a fashion designer and a model to demonstrate the putting on of the armor of God. They were very impressed with the helmet Madelyn made. Cailin was surprised at how hot her feet got with them "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace". The sisters reminded us to put our armor on each day by reading our scriptures, praying and living the gospel. It was another fun lesson. They are great examples to our girls, and we love having them over.

Pumpkin Patch

Apple cider. Kettle corn. Red wagons. Orange pumpkins. Corn Maze. Sunshine and sweaters. Nice.

Window Painting

My mom used to paint our windows at Christmas time. I remember lambs, shepherds and stars adorning our windows for many years. It was a special tradition for us, and I wanted to introduce my girls to the "art" of window painting for Halloween.

Cailin loves drawing in the Japanese anime style, so I found a cute picture of an anime girl and her faithful pumpkin sidekick. I printed it out and enlarged it with my beloved art projector. (Another treasure found in our storage items.) The girls were so excited to paint. The unveiling of the final masterpiece (removal of newspaper tracing) was fun. I'm sure we will be doing lots more window painting for the holidays. I just need to find some better quality paints - we were having trouble with opacity.

Boilers and Bread

We have a boiler in our house. It looks a little iffy to me, the way it's all taped together. Today we turned it on for the first time. The tape must be doing its job, because the chill has been lifted. I'm feeling cozy indoors, and expressed my condolences to Jon as he hopped on his bike and got ready to push through the chilly drizzle on his way to work.

The cool morning also put me in the mood for a little baking. I love my Abu Dhabi Ward Cookbook. I am smelling Holly's Banana Bread bake this very moment. I made Laura's Orange Salad and Sylvie's Quiche Lorraine a couple days ago. I make Paula's Potato Chowder nearly every week. There are so many great recipes here, and I love thinking of my Abu Dhabi friends as I create something they have loved as well. And I'm thinking of their 100-degree weather.