Pumpkin Personality Profiles

We don't celebrate Halloween in this household but we've always had a party to attend. This year, we didn't have the convenience of an excuse to slip away for the evening so I broke down and allowed them all to carve pumpkins. They've always wanted to do it and, dang it, it is really fun but they were told to stick to joyful rather than ghoulish themes. I love the end result - all the pumpkins reflect their personalities in some way.

Ben's is the most complex and artistic. He couldn't justify the activity, though, without giving it a nod to the faith by carving a little cross in the bottom. Philip's is simple and all about him - I love this picture of him.

I love the long eyelashes on Girly's pumpkin - cute and girly, that's my Miriam.

Ruth decided on a flower - simple but feminine.

JT carved his initials which are very important to him since he shares them with 3 generations of fathers before him. He also went for the complex contrast by carving away the background.

David has the slasher pumpkin. If you look closely you can see where he hacked away at it with his carving tool. He is our "All Boy" boy, always slashing, hacking and fighting something.

Betsy's has a simple, well-executed face. She has a bit of the family artistic streak in her as well.

JM's is just plain goofy-cute like him. Nathancolored on his with markers then sat down and had a pout and...

Tali...well... what more could I say? Bald, bald, bald as a pumpkin, bald.

Remember This? Friday

This one's for the locals. This is Count Gore de Vol who hosted a show - on the local public television station - titled Creature Feature. He would dress up as a vampire, begin his show lying in a coffin and then climb out and introduce the movie of the evening - usually some ancient science fiction flick involving some sort of otherworldly monsters. I watched his show regularly with one of my girlfriends when we had sleepovers (and when it was appropriate for girls to have friends whom they called girlfriends). Now here's the kicker - remember our recent return to Star Trek fandom excess? Well, Count Gore was actually there - still dressed up as a vampire and still playing the same character - how pathetic is that?! He now has an on-line show of his own. Please, please, please, though, do not look him up (or Creature Feature for that matter) if you want to save yourself from some rather unsavory internet trash. (And, by the way, this post is the closest I will ever come to "celebrating" Halloween - I prefer to party with the living saints!)

Ack! Our First Teenager!

Happy Birthday to Miriam who turned THIRTEEN today! We've finally reached that point in parenting when we can say we are surviving a teenager. God is good to me by making Miriam the first of such creatures in this household. Sweetness doesn't get any sweeter than Miriam and even when she's acting teenish it just makes us giggle and love her all the more. She went for the lasagna dinner (much to Ben's chagrin who also scheduled in lasagna for his dinner next week) and shunned the traditional cake and ice cream for pumpkin pie. This doll was her favorite gift and has become a permanent accessory. These jammies were lookin' way too big and she refuses to wear them even though she asked for new feety jammies. The cookies from her little brothers were a happy hit too. Happy Birthday Girly!!

Remember This? Friday

Remember This? Friday

I adored this game. The shapes stack up in the chimney of the house, the players crank the big candy cane to eject them out the front door and match them up on the gingerbread guys. I could have played with that crank all day long except that eventually our candy cane snapped in two but it still worked. The makers of CandyLand have recently come out with a knock off of this game which is what made me think of it. This is, by the way, the only game I actually remember playing with my mother - Dad was usually the gaming parent - guess Mom got a kick out of the candy cane too. (big thanks to boardgamegeek.com for these awesome pics!)

Remember This? Friday

Which required one of these to operate.

My dad never let us leave the house without a quarter to our personhood, esp if accompanied by a young man. He was sure to inform said young man that we were duly armed with said quarter (slightly less embarrassing than my mother asking them if they had ever had a venereal disease). Not sure what a quarter would do to keep my own children safe these days...

Happy Birthday Adora!

Adora hit 22 years today! We are so blessed to have her and Nehemiah as part of the family. We shared her favorite Chinese dish - Beef and Broccoli - topped off with Flopped Cake Parfait for dessert. She has a long weekend of celebration with her friends planned. May God grant you many years Yaya!!

Cheese Laid an Egg

OR

Two Ducks In a Pear Tree

I got another call last week from our Russian friend. Sadly, she and her husband are divorcing and on Monday she flew back to Russia to get a new start on life. But before she left she had a few things to take care of - including her two ducks and some foliage. Ben, Betsy, JM and I set out Sunday evening for the hour drive after having removed most of the seats from the van. We came home with a pear tree, a plum tree, a tassle of strawberry plants (which have all since been planted), a black currant bush (which now has a new home with my sister), several boxes of misc stuff (still awaiting sorting and freecycling), a huge bag of fabric for the girls to "make doll clothes" (that's a lot of naked babies being clothed!) and two ducks complete with galvanized steel tub for swimming and tons of poultry feed. I don't know how I get myself into these things but I do. For years I have been saying that I wanted to plant a pear tree and what are the chances of someone calling me up and telling me to come get a pear tree out of her yard? It was an offer I couldn't refuse. It just so happened to come with two ducks thrown in. We named the ducks Cheese and Quackers. We were thrilled when Cheese produced the very first ever egg in our poultry history the very next morning, and has continued to produce daily since. I'm off to change my profile once again...

Remember This? Friday

And this is why my own children do not listen to the radio....

One of those days

I encouraged Adora to leave Miah at home today so she could go to The General's house to work on some financial planning without being distracted by his antics. This meant, I failed to see, that *I* would be distracted by his antics. By the time Adora had been gone only a few minutes he somehow managed to become shirtless. I left him that way knowing that any attempts to correct the situation would probably prove futile. This was to be to my benefit at lunch time. I treated him and Nathan to pretzel rods dipped in peanut butter. Nathan couldn't get enough of 'um, but apparantly Miah thought they looked more like paintbrushes than lunch. By the time I got to him he was covered head to toe in peanut butter. I wiped him down, changed his diaper and his clothes and he was now cruisin' with a shirt and pants. Meanwhile, Nathan was on outfit number two himself after a big poopy blowout (not quite as big and poopy as yesterday's big poopy incident tho....).

That settled, I asked the boys to keep an eye on Dumb and Dumber while I hid in my bedroom and nursed the baby. Once full, Tali sat up and squirted a nice bum full into her diaper. Just as I was gingerly carrying the nearly overflowing bundle to my bed for a diaper change I heard a screaming commotion coming from downstairs and then Ben burst up the stairs and into my room screaming, "Mom! Emergency! Miah got into the marshmellow fluff and now he's running around getting it everywhere!" I instructed him and JT to pin down the sticky bandits and not let them move until I could get on the scene. It took me a minute to clean up Tali and by the time I got downstairs JT and Ben had Nate and Miah securely held around their waists. Both were covered head to toe (hair included) in white goo and there was a line of white sticky footprints coming from the pantry to the dining room where they had finally been apprehended. I managed to wipe them both down, and wash the floor and the pantry walls (where they had gone in, closed the door behind them and then stood in the dark smearing fluff all over each other).

We resumed our day, working on some school work in the dining room, when some time later we heard Nathan screaming...loudly. I went into the living room where I saw this:If you look real closely you can see that there are *three* legs in one of those holes and just one leg in another and notice, also, they are both mostly naked. By the time I reached them both of them were shouting, "Duck MommyDuck!" (as in stuck with a "d" for those who don't know two-ese). It took a little doing to extricate them from this dilemma and I decided they should probably have some clothes - another futile effort since within the hour Nathan required yet another change of pants due to well, did I mention I also gave him raisins for lunch?

Of course the bouncy seat was really intended for this purpose. At least somebody in the family wasn't causing too much trouble today.