mommo

Happy Halloween!

How cute is this little twin pumpkin?  This is a shot from Apple Tasting.  They have all these tiny pumpkins and the kids get to paint and decorate them.  They all look so cute, shelves and shelves of little drying pumpkins.

If anyone remembers, it was once again time for Lord of the Gourd.  I have to say that as a neighborhood function, it is a great time! We get all the neighbors to come with their pumpkins to weigh them, eat lots of food and gab the afternoon away in the front yard while all the kids get silly playing, climbing trees,getting wheelbarrow rides and trying to eat apples dangling from strings.  Plus this year the reigning two year champ brought his motorcycle and let all the kids sit on it and rev the engine. Great fun for the kids but a little noisy and nerve wracking for the moms!  For those who don't know him, my husband is the Pied Piper of Pumpkins around these parts.  He loves a little competiton, loves to get everyone together doing something fun and he loves to grow his pumpkins.  We take our pumpkins sort of seriously around here even though we have yet to have a really big one.  Here is a shot of this years vines.

  If you look toward the back you can see this guy:

The vine crawled up the neighboring hedge and this pumpkin was growing, dangling in mid air about four feet off the ground. My husband made a little perch for it so it could keep growing.  It turned out to be 60 pounds! we had to keep adding supports to it as it grew-  It was right in the front yard so it was quite a conversation starter.  Well wouldn't you know that all these years of reading pumpkin books and tending his precious vegetables finally paid off and he made out as Lord of the Gourd this year!  The crazy thing is he won by one pound!  Ours came in at 108 and a friend up the street came in at 107.  It was a nail biter those last few weeks because you could see they were neck and neck, plus we weren't sure if there were any big ones hiding in someone's back yard.  Besides bragging rights, this now sits proudly on our mantel: I found it at a garage sale this summer for a buck!  I took the weights off and put the pumpkins in their place.  If you look closely the guy has this grimacing strain on his face which is funny to me.  I didn't know we would end up with it this year- the idea being it will pass on to the winner each year.  Here he is cutting his pupkin into a jack o lantern last night.  Artwork compliments of my daughter. And check out the thickness of the wall!  One thing I will say, even with all that thickness, home grown pumpkins are nice and soft to cut into.

I hope everyone has a really great and safe Halloween!

Fairy Love

We have been quite captivated with all things fairy this summer and fall.  The kids attended a fantastic camp at a friend's house and she had them cooking up all sorts of fairy fun that just continued here.  We have a nice little pocket in the yard that is pretty heavily planted with old shrubs and trees so there are great nooks and crannies to build fairy houses in.  We also are fortunate enough to live next to a nature trail so we were able to go on a few walks and pick things up off the ground to make our houses with. We found this sort of activity so wonderfully relaxing for the whole family.  We all sat out there in our tiny forest and put our houses together. And wouldn't you know, there was glittery fairy dust sprinkled all over them in the morning so they were apparently a big hit with the fairies! This one was made with bamboo husks from our mini bamboo forest on the opposite side of the yard. Pretty clever. 

One other thing we did for fairy fun was make fairy lanterns.  The kids were given some glow sticks by their credit union where they have their savings accounts (the kind that you crack and shake and the stay glowy for a few hours).  We took empty plastic water bottles, cut the top off, put in a pipe cleaner handle and the kids decorated them by gluing bits of paper etc. on them. Not a great photo but you get the idea.  The kids really loved this because it did feel sort of glowy and magical.  We made them a bit before bed so they put them in their rooms so they could watch them glow while they went to sleep.  In the morning it was so sweet because my girl came creeping into my room holding her fairy lantern up by her head and it was still glowing.  I checked out some of the Spiderwick Chronicles thinking they would be a fun fairy read and , while they are for me, they are a bit dark for them. Any recomendations for good fairy stories?  I have a copy of that old "Gnomes" Book so that will be fun, especially now that we are hunkering down for the cold and rain.  Something fun to read while we are all snuggly under a big blanket.

Thank you Universe!

Do you ever want something and start thinking about it and then it just drops in your lap?  My hubby and I were just talking about this and then it happened!  Ever since I finished Club Little House and caught The Fever, I have been looking for a dollhouse.  I have been trolling Craig's list in hopes of finding one but the few that do come on are usually priced extremely high or snapped up or just weird.  So on one of these trolls I found a posting for that beauty up there. Only she was offering it for free!  She wanted it to have a good home and get some TLC and not end up in the dump (can you imagine?!).  So I promised to take good care of it so she said come and get it! And do you know that she lived practically around the corner from me?  How weird is that? I figured she would live in some far away suburb but no, just less than a half a mile away!  Here is the inside- isn't it just so magical? I want to shrink down and get inside! Look at this cute wallpaper There was even some furniture.  The kids about popped out of their skins and played with it last night while I dusted off each tiny shingle.  I can't wait to do some fixing up to my new dream house and get all of my Club Little House treaures in it.  It could use a new coat of paint but I love that yellow so it will probably be another coat of that. 

So thank you to the Universe and thank you to Pamela!!

Dog!!!

  Meet our new baby! Well he isn't technically a baby- he is 15 months old.  We have been looking at dogs for months.  I swear it has been torture for the kids (and me!), to go to adoption days and then leave empty handed again.   I kept telling them, when we find the right dog, it won't matter- you will be so happy this will all be worth it.  And boy was I right.  I wasn't really sure I needed a dog.  But then we met Dusty.  Dusty Thunderbolt (Ithink you can guess who named him).  I feel like he has been with us forever and it has only been a week and a half.  Isn't he so handsome, with his fringey arms and those big brown eyes?  And he looks like he has a tiny mustache.  He is a mutt- probably part cocker spaniel, part corgi and maybe some golden retriever.  We were joking that with all the new hybrid dogs in style, all the laborddodles and schnoodles, that he needed a breed of his own so we call him a golden corker.  He was a rescue dog from a great local no kill shelter.  We went to meet him and put in an application along with atleast three other families that we know about that day.  And he got to come home with us! When he gets out into the backyard he just runs laps and laps, bounding around like a little fox.  Maybe his name should have been Flash!  He does take an occasional break atop the pile of mulch to survey his kingdom and get his fringey arms as filthy as possible.  At night after the kids go to bed and we sit down on the couch, he snuggles in and just sleeps and sighs and you can tell he knows he is home.  There is something so incredible about having someone in the house who is always happy to see me.  Who always wants to snuggle and has the happiest face all of the time.  Lucky us!!  I was right- he was worth the wait!

A little recap...

So I pretty much abandoned the blog thing while summer wound down.  I just wanted to soak up as much fun kid time as I could while they were home.  Having the little one start kindergarten this year got me pretty introspective.  Thinking about how far we have come, in those young child years.  Feeling like I had to say goodbye to a time in my life that was so amazingly wonderful.  Not to say that things won't continue to be wonderful- it just seems that having babies and young children at home with you most of the time, it was such a departure from the life I had before kids.  I just want things to keep that slower closer pace as they get older and move on, out into their little individual pieces of the world.  So in a way I do feel like I am saying goodbye to a time in my life that I know I won't return to and it made me a little sentimental.  So for this year, I am happy that atleast she is in half day (though 2 and a half hours is not half of any day) and we get our afternoon time together a few times a week when I don't have to work. 

So here is a small recap in photos of a few of the things we did.

Our favorite local asian grocery store had their Hawaiian festival.  The shave ice lady knows us because we are her biggest fans. We also got to hang out at our favorite local neighborhood parade.  It is so small town and wonderful.  Here is the super cool hula hoop lady.  They also have a marching band of all 40 and ups.  60 year old lady cheerleaders. So great! All of the parade people throw candy to all the kids. It is a bit ridiculous but I had to laugh because my son brought his baseball glove to catch the candy this year.  Last year my girl was pelted in the head with a sour ball. Not good.

Here is a very cool moth that hatched on our garage door. Isn't he beautiful? We spent lots and lots of time on the garden.  These pictures are from July- you should see it now- all big dahlias and everything is so lush.  I would take a picture but it is too wet! &&%#!!#$% rain! This is one of my favorite flower buds

Oh  and lots of pie. Lots and lots of pie. On my girl's first day of school, I picked her up on the first day and we had a lunch date and then I took her to the bakery to choose something- this is what she chose. Almost too cute to eat!

There is a school in town that has an enormous chimney and it the fall, thousands and thousands of swifts fly around it in the evening, spiraling and spiraling until the sun goes down and then they all stay inside for the night.  It is something to behold- all those tiny birds moving together.

So there you have it.  I have more fun things to share this week.  And one really fun great thing in particular!