Halloween 2009

So today, I really got into the mood of the Halloween. It has taken me a couple years, but I wanted to do up the house and have the kids really enjoy themselves, the heck with eating well today! We started the day with pumpkin chocolate pancakes. Everyone approved. Then we had baked apples and mummies for dinner...
I started to get a little lazy, we already had had some trick or treaters, the picture I saw used string mozzarella, I think if I make these next year, I will do the same, the mozzarella stays together better.

Then, we started getting a bunch of trick or treaters while we were getting the kids dressed. So we rushed through that and I didn't really get any pictures of them dressed together, like I wanted to, the natives were breaking out...

They broke out and went to our neighbor's, Nate helped himself.

Nate was really cute, I could not get him to put the candy in his bag, he would hold it and then when we got close to the next house, he would drop it on the floor. He would also say "thank you" and "bye".

Look at my sweet trick or treaters.

Nate just sat himself down to eat some candy, we'd only been to like 3 houses...but it was 80 degrees!

Walking home.

Gwen passed out some of the candy, and its a good thing she did, otherwise we would have had ALOT more candy left.

I in vain tried to get a picture of the 2 of them together, this is the best we could do. By this point Gwen was hyped up on the sugar and wouldn't look at the camera!

Can't believe it, but we miss our old neighborhood! We didn't have nearly the trick or treaters we used to have, plus we would all sit out together and chat, the only time of year we ever spoke to them other than in passing. Fortunately the kids are young, so only going to 10-15 houses was great fun. Next year we are going to have to find a better neighborhood or somewhere else to go to in conjunction. Hope ya'all had a Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins!

Last Saturday we had a pumpkin carving extravaganza! Ok, maybe not an extravaganza, but doesn't that sound fun! We found out that one of the pizza places was having a deal, so we ordered some cheap pizza, watched some Halloween related cartoons on the TV and carved a pumpkin.
Look at Gwen, not too fond of the guts!

Hard work, pulling out the guts!

My son, who eats everything but my dinner (I will continue to bring this up, until he decides to start eating my dinner, because really who would try to eat that, but not what we offer him, sure food he picks up off the floor is food he feels like he is more in control of, but seriously, do crayons taste that good? He ate the pizza with no complaints. We also had a problem with him trying to eat the raw pumpkin seeds!)

Gwen, carving...

Eric carving...

Nate carving...

Eric must have been giving some kind of lesson here, look at Gwen's expression...

Yay! The lighting of the pumpkin, exciting!

We could not decide if we wanted a happy pumpkin or a sad pumpkin, I had the bright idea we should have both, one for each side, here is the happy pumpkin!

Halloween cookies

I had a conundrum recently. Well, I don't know if it was a conundrum, but I recently went looking through my cookie cutters, and found that I have no Halloween cookie cutters, this might not seem like a terrible conundrum, more likely a predicament, which I guess it is. See, I have about 70 cookie cutters (I am not even kidding, I probably have more, see i have the whole alphabet and Easter and 2 no, 3 sets Christmas), but I had no Halloween, fall yes, but I didn't want to do football helmets. So, when I saw 4 Halloween cookie cutters for $1; I snatched them up. Gwen and I made the dough together, no pictures of that, but here I have pictures of her "helping" out with the cutting out...
ok, so I didn't actually get any pictures of her cutting out the dough, only of her playing with the flour. This recipe suggested that we put flour on the cookie sheets and then roll out the dough, so that's what we did. I asked Gwen to help me put the flour on the cookie sheet and she must have put a 1/2 cup and then she spilled it everywhere!

(I am still cleaning up flour, its been a week). Then I found her with her hands in the flour canister.

I don't know if you can see that she has flour all over her.

Then over last weekend we (well, while Nate was napping) decorated the cookies.

I think next year she is going to be really helpful. I think she might have done 5 cookies total, but it is hard to tell, because I think she might have eaten some of them. (in this photo, she is licking the sprinkles not snorting sprinkles!)

See, she just poured the sprinkles or the top and you can see that cookie where she poured the icing on the top also.

But she had fun, and I guess that is all that matters!

Sleepy

A couple nights ago, Eric and I snuck walked into the kids room, well really I did, and made Eric come in also. Holy moly did we get a laugh, our 2 kids, sleeping, snoring away! I have mentioned Gwen's new habit of carrying around a half a dozen babies with her, apparently this has spilled into her night time! She now sleeps with a half a dozen babies and assorted other things, I swear to you the rocking horse was up there for a couple days! I think I have realized why she is doing this...if she has all this junk on her bed Nate won't climb up there during the day. Now why after we put Nate in his crib she doesn't remove some of the objects, I don't know. Why also does she sleep in about 1 ft of space but when she would come into our bed she takes up the whole bed? Also, the kid needs a nap! Holy crab apples is she cranky. She doesn't listen to me, when I ask her to do something she takes about 3 hours to complete the task and I have to keep on her to complete it as she gets so distracted. I have mixed feelings about the nap, I would LOVE for her to take a nap, one that is not too long to mess up bed time, but one that is short enough to take the edge off, there appears to be no such thing! (I would also like to take a moment to apologize to my Mother for Sat mornings when I was a child, I fear that the old saying what goes around comes around and I will be in for many such Sat mornings that involve a distracted child who takes entirely too long to clean my room. I wish I could remember why I wouldn't do it, I could help focus Gwen, because let's face it we are more the same then we are different, but I digress!) This morning I took the kids out for a run jog/walk and Nate feel asleep in the stroller. I guess if he wouldn't have awakened at 5:52 he wouldn't have been so tired, I then put him down for a nap at 12:30ish and he slept until 3:30! Of course he was super cranky when he woke up also, Eric felt like he was still tired. I think he was hungry, but he won't eat what I make for dinner, won't try it, so hungry he'll be!

I have put the badge up for the November blogging, it should take you right to the site where you can sign up or maybe just look at some of the others who are participating.

FALL!

Have I mentioned yet, I love having a house! Now I might spend a lot of time cussing that the inside is too small or I don't have space, but to have the usable outdoor space, that is well, that is fabulous. We also have 2 huge trees in the front yard. These trees, also great for me. See, I grew up in FL as many of you know and I don't really understand fall on a level many do. So to have a tree, to rake up the leaves for that the kids and I can play in, awesome!
Monday after our music class, the neighbor kids came over to play in our leaves (they donated the rakes!) They showed Nate and Gwen what to do. The squeals of joy could probably be heard into the next county.

Eventually everyone had to go home and the kids got to play by themselves in the leaves.

They mostly like walking through the leaves.

This little one, here is obsessed with the leaves, she kept saying to me things like "Melanie, we need more leaves, the pile needs to be much bigger". She would have stayed all afternoon, I have told her she could come back and have been increasing the pile everyday.

Eric says we have to move the pile or it is going to kill all the grass! :( Hopefully a week or so of leaves won't do too much damage, because I get to see things like this...

I mean, who gets to see princesses raking leaves with such good form! Also when Eric came home that night we buried Eric and kids in the leaves, who knew you could do that! Nate also appears to be sick, runny nose and cranky. That's all I can report, because that's all I know!

In other news, I have again signed up for NaBloPoMo, I have not been doing very well updating this blog and hopefully this will help me keep up with it. Because last year I won a prize!!! Wohoo! Of course I won't likely win a prize again this year, but I still need to post more often.

Spooky

We've had more transitions around here, I don't know if I've mentioned it here. Gwen is not napping any more. Nate is down to one nap, Gwen is down to none...fun times! I think they both probably miss the naps they are skipping, but with Nate, I am tired of being stuck in the house all the time. We have short bursts of times where we can get out, but it is a real pain trying to meet people and do stuff. So, I have been trying to figure out a new schedule for us. We used to have a nice schedule in the sense that I had some quiet time with Gwen and some with Nate. Gwen and I would do some preschool and watch Sesame Street together. I also enjoyed some time to myself, no kids no screaming, but I had time to do my own thing and do some work around the house. Now we just have some cranky kids and I have nothing! I am still trying to institute QT for Gwen, I definitely need the break from her, or I get frustrated quickly. And she has been so whiny, and cries at the drop of a hat (about things that don't usually make her so cranky). But we will work it out. In the mean time, I have been working on things for us to do. I want to start doing more crafty things than we already do, the stuff we do is not so crafty, but I think she would like the crafts. So, I found this in one of my magazines and thought I would try it with her...all the crafts I have come up with involve food...is that crazy? I didn't any pictures of the beginning steps, but this is about halfway through...
This craft involves pretzels, marshmallow creme, powdered sugar and 8 mini chocolate chips! I figured what's not to love? (Eric thought it was too sweet!) I had mixed and kneaded the marshmallow creme and powdered sugar and then we were rolling it into balls and rolling out the discs. Then we put the balls on the pretzels, to help them stand up and stabilize.

Then we made the discs super thin and gently laid them over the pretzels and gently pressed in the eyes...

Spooky? I thought they were cute, but they were a lot of work, and were sweet...the kids and I didn't have any problems eating them though. I don't think I will be doing it again. Nate, unsure.

Gwen, no questions, just dug in (she did take out the eyes to eat first, though)

Nate trying it out.

I mean, the kid just dug in!

Nate pulled the thing apart ate the pretzel and just stared at it the rest of it, we thought he was done, and then he took another handful and keep eating. Not sure if he really was convinced he liked it, or was just watching his sister and copying.

What do you think, do these kids have the same parents?

I am going to go ahead and say we had a fun Saturday. We are finding things to do on the cheap and found that B&N had a coupon for a free hot chocolate and kids cookie, so we printed up 4 copies and went to B&N and arrived just in time for story time! We did some shopping and everyone took a nap, well not me, of course. But everyone else. I have been diligently working on completing Gwen's 1 year scrapbook, I know, a little embarrassing, since she's 3, but I am in the final stretch. I have 1 page I need pictures for, I have been vacillating on that last page, it is the "companion" page to the family tree page and I think I have decided to put in pictures of the people featured in the family tree, even if they are deceased. I have decided that the living "ancestors" are featured heavily in the book already, it might be nice to have some pictures of the ones that are deceased in there so Gwen can have them right in her book (I will do the same for Nate, maybe even the same layout!). This means I am going to have to track down grandparent and great grandparent pictures (you are warned, Mom!) and all the rest of the pages are laid out. I finished up the drafts of the journaling, so now I just have to write it all in the book and I will be done and on to Nate's 1st year! Exciting! Thank goodness I have this blog to let me know what the heck was going on in the 1st year, or I would be lost!!!!!

In the know

Sometimes as a Mother you receive stuff in the mail from people you know. Sometimes, there is no doubt who the packages come from like this dress here. Those that know us IRL, might recognize this dress, not specifically, but this dress, should remind you of someone!
I tried to get Gwen to pose, but apparently this is her "gown" and she must dance in it, by the by, she is also wearing her crown (headband).

My Mother says I should get her into dancing lessons, but I am not sure I am a dance lessons kind of Mom. I mean sure she is always dancing when she hears music, and she might love it, but, am I supposed to let her do what she wants to do?

Of course, she doesn't know about dance lessons yet, so that should buy me some time to get used to the idea of it...

I finally got her to stop briefly

so I could take these pictures.

I missed the picture right before this one, Nate was sitting on the couch and Gwen set up all her babies next to him, but he moved before I got the picture. It was pretty cute, Nate and the babies and Gwen. Gwen obliged, briefly though.

This is a new pass time for Gwen, arranging babies put them in a row.

She is now also sleeping with a bunch of things on her bed, I say things, because they are not just babies, a corn popper one day, a rocking horse. I don't know why, I don't know if this is a phase. Who knows. She is a crazy one! But, we'll keep her!

Have you guessed who the dress is from? Yes, it is Grandma! And Gwen adores it, I tried to hide it in the back of the closet for the rest of the winter, but Gwen found it.