Trick or Treat for 2 hours?!

Our town announces the trick or treating day and hours every year.  This year it was on Wednesday, Halloween from 5:30 - 7:30.

Two hours?!

The sentiment among the moms and dads I know was that during our youth we trick-or-treated for hours.  My cousin's birthday is on Halloween and I remember many times during my childhood trick-or-treating in my aunt and uncle's neighborhood.  We'd come home, unload our candy into a huge bucket, and go out again.  We ran.  For hours and hours.

Only two hours?!

Doesn't seem fair to the youth of today.

Last year my friend and I took 6 of our 7 kids trick-or-treating together.  We rang the first doorbell at 5:30 on the dot.  After what seemed like the allotted 2 hours, our kids started complaining that they were tired (and they were) and that their buckets were full and heavy (and they were) and I asked Tracey what time it was and she said 6:15.

This year we had three surprise visitors - Leath and Joby and Jim Morrison.  You have to say the whole name.  Never, ever, will any of us just call him Jim.

Anyway, I bumped into a mom and we began commiserating about the whole "only two hours" thing and the "when we were kids we trick-or-treated for hours and hours" thing and since three other adults were escorting my children I was able to stand back and watch them.  They were dragging.  Wolfie came up to me and said he was pretty much ready to go home.  Tulip staggered to one more house, Wolfie sat in the curb and I found Luna in Leath's arms.  It was 6:25.

I turned to the mom and said, "You know, I bet when we were kids we ran all around trick-or-treating until we were exhausted but I bet in the end it was only for about an hour and a half."  It was like this big light bulb went off over both of our heads and she said, "You know... I bet you're right."

Here they are, preparing for the 55 minute marathon:

Tulip asked me to draw a butterfly on her face and a heart on her nose (I took artistic liberty with that request and drew the heart where I felt it would look best) and with every stroke of the face paint crayon she whipped her face back and forth to the mirror and gasped, "Oh thank you, Mama."

I don't know what inspired this pose except that she was so into her face and must feel that this is the way to pose for pictures when your face is painted.  Oh that girl.

Fuzz on a Rock

I've noticed lately that Tulip and I are amazingly in tune with each other.  She has been finishing my sentences and speaking my thoughts out loud.

For example, last weekend was Fall Break and we had Friday through Monday off.  At dinner Thursday night, I was thinking - to myself quietly - how great it was that I didn't have to go to work the next day.  Or the next.  Or the next.  OR THE NEXT.  So I said spontaneously, "I think it's so great that..."
Tulip cut me off and said, "...we have four family days in a row!!!"

She calls Saturday and Sunday "family days" because I think her kindergarten teacher calls them that.  Maybe.  Maybe she made it up on her own but I call Saturday Saturday and Sunday Sunday so she didn't get it from me.

However, she knew exactly what I was thinking, now didn't she.

Okay and then there was today.

I was looking at this soft textile rock designed by Ronel Jordaan:

Not the best image capture but you get the idea, right?  In the background we noticed a blanket made of felted pebbles.  See it?






Tulip was looking over my shoulder and asked me what I was looking at.  I told her that this artist made a rock out of soft fabric so it is actually a cushion or pillow to sit on.  Clever, right?

The website had a magnify-by-scrolling-over feature so I began to do that and in the instant that I clicked on that feature I thought in my head, "I'll say out loud 'Let's look and see if we can notice any fuzz on that rock'" to point out that the oh-so-realistic rock art we were looking at is, in fact a soft fabric object.  But in that nearly same instant I thought, "Why would I say that out loud?"  But then Tulip giggled, "I see fuzz on that rock" as if to confirm that it is, in fact, soft.

And to confirm she read my mind.  Right?

in a week

I haven't blogged in a while.  Last weekend was warm and this weekend was just different.

Last weekend we went to Merrie Acres.  We spent an afternoon there one day last year so I suppose it has become a family tradition even though we came home without a pumpkin.  Really, the kids just want to play in that corn box and I don't blame them.  It's ingenious.  Merrie Acres is closed for the season but please keep them in mind for next year.  Gabe and I sit on rocking chairs and the kids run around and play for hours.

But that was last weekend.  What else has happened in a week:

Tulip asked me to teach her how to write her name in "cursidge" and I held her hand in mine while she held a pen and our fingers swirled around in loops on paper.

Tulip also asked me if I've ever heard of a boy named Justice Bieber.  Sigh.

Luna has the sniffles and is constantly looking for her "hanker-wiper" and I'm so grateful that she wipes her nose on something other than her sleeve.

Wolfie learned the phrase "cut the cheese" and I admit I giggled like crazy the first time he said it.  So you can imagine what an event that phrase has become.  Oh, and both his sisters say it just about as often as he does.  But he did refer to Tulip as a "beautiful girl" so he's totally off the hook for, like, forever.

After Hours

It's waaaay past Luna's bedtime but she finds me.  She wears an incredible grin and does this seductive toddler sashay with her shoulders as she makes her way towards me.

"You cannot resist my cuteness," say her eyes.  "Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle," says her pull-up.

Even if I wanted to scowl, or frown, or somehow express that I am not happy with her choice to wander around this late at night, I can't because...because...because I'm so incredibly happy to see her.

Besides, she has a peace offering.

"Here Mama, you can snuggle Foxy."  Oh, she is so pleased with herself.  So pleased.

Big Girls

Luna has been trying to convince us all that she is older than Tulip.  And Wolfie.  She wails, "But I'm the oldest!" and I just figured that this was one of her cute and quirky methods of coping with the fact that both her brother and sister now go to school all day.

This morning she tried to convince us that she should get one more gummy vitamin than her brother because she is older than him.  Then she totally appropriately used the phrase, "I realize..." in a sentence so I guess there's no slowing down that vocabulary.  Then Tulip ate a serving of scrambled eggs, two English muffins with apricot jam, a bowl of cereal and then said she was still hungry.

Oh, and this happened.  My girls are getting so big.

The Lego Monster

We have in-the-middle-of-the-night lore in our children's lives, don't we?  There's the Tooth Fairy.  There's Santa Claus.  Or maybe St. Niklaus.

We have the Lego Monster at our house.

Wolfie likes to follow the instructions and build his complicated Lego spaceships and put them on display on top of his dresser and bookcase.  He also likes to invent things with the other gazillion pieces from his smaller sets which have all been dumped into one giant tub.  But there are a few sets from a few prime collections (Star Wars, Alien Conquest, Atlantis to name a few) that he likes to keep in designated bins.  And like I said, there are a few prime spaceships that he likes to keep on display.

That is...until the Lego Monster gets them.

The Lego Monster visits Wolfie's room in the middle of the night and methodically disassembles one of his spaceships but then conveniently puts all of the pieces in a big zippered baggie.

To Wolfie's delight, he must build his favorite spaceship again.

The Lego Monster doesn't visit that often. I mean, it's not a nightly thing. But when he, I mean it, strikes, it's pretty special.

the orchard (and other things I didn't do as a kid during fall)

Okay, maybe I don't really want this to be a post about things I didn't get to do as a kid.  But that is a sentiment that struck me as I chaperoned Tulip's kindergarten class trip to County Line Orchard.  I picked apples off of trees only once in my life prior to having children.  Once.  It was a field trip and somewhere in my mother's house is a picture of me and my 5th grade class standing in front of the sign for the orchard.

We have several pictures of our own children at various orchards.  Is this something that just wasn't done in the 70's?

Also, I raked leaves when I got home to make the leaf jumping pile huger.  And then it hit me - I didn't jump in leaves as a kid either.  We had two massive, and I mean massive, pine trees in my front lawn growing up.  I don't know what variety of pine tree they were except that they shed needles that hurt your feet when you stepped on them and they dropped pine cones.  Not soft, slender, corncob shaped pine cones.  Very hard triangle shaped pine cones.  The type of pine cones that are perfect for spray paint and dipping in glitter.

Anyway, there was no raking of leaves and jumping into leaf piles when I was a kid.

But enough about me.

As parents, we prefer Garwood's.  It's a bit rough around the edges and I suppose that's why we like it. County Line Orchard is a well-oiled field trip hosting machine, let me tell you.  Here's the thing that is so brilliant about County Line Orchard (in terms of hosting field trips, that is): the gutters.

Yes.  Gutters.

When the trailer brought the class to the apple picking row of trees, we were told that all the trees were bare.  And this was true.  Then our tour guide told us that last night while we were sleeping, it rained at County Line Orchard.  It rained apples!  (Clever, right?)  And to catch all those apples falling out of the sky, they had to install gutters in the apple trees.

Yes.  Gutters!  The children were able to easily pick apples out of the gutters.  Well, not that easy.  It still had to be a bit of a challenge.  An event.

It was interesting to chit-chat with the other chaperone moms (there were dads there too, of course) and to hear them mention their favorite orchard or pumpkin patch.  Places where they have started family traditions or have been carrying on old traditions.

What's yours?