Halloween and such 2010

My youngest sister throws an awesome Halloween party every year and this is the creepy treat we brought: meringue bones. This is the recipe I used, but I thought I could grease the pan instead of use parchment paper as the recipe suggests. Note--parchment paper is NOT optional! (most of my meringue ended up just broken pieces and not the bones I originally piped out using a ziploc bag with the corner cut off)

My darling children

Joy and Jordan

their daughter Lily (I don't know why I don't have a picture of Sierra, but they had matching costumes)

Since I didn't wear a costume I got "punished" with this impromptu mummy getup

My brother, Eric, with his girlfriend, Ashley

My favorite costumes of Joy & Jordan's friends'--she had her ultrasound photo stuck to her stomach that you could see through the oven door and the number of days left to bake on the timer up top. The husband's apron says "bun maker"

A shot of Joy's kitchen with Jordan's brother Nate at the back

Lots of other people were there with their kids, but I don't know many of their friends, so I didn't get pictures of them :)  For dinner they did a crepe bar and then a table of Halloween themed potluck items. The delicious fillings for the mummy wraps (crepes) had cute labels such as (Scooby Doo) van-illa pudding, BAT-nana pudding,  O+  Oh, positive it's only strawberry sauce, hot cauldron o' fudge, etc.

Eric, who was Neo from the Matrix, even played the "pin the treasure chest on the pirate map" with the kids! It was lots of fun and the few of us who stayed late had a blast playing "Mafia" and watching an episode of "Supernatural."

I love that with Christian's coloring he gets such darling, rosy cheeks when it's chilly. (Wait, did I say coloring? I meant complete and utter lack of coloring :)

It started getting below freezing at night, so we thought we'd better salvage what we could that was left in our garden. We sure had fun with it!

The next three pictures are more of Buddy's photography handiwork:

(this one came out overexposed and with red eyes, but very cool for a witch)

On the 28th we went to a Halloween carnival at Faith's school.

I ran a game where the kids would try to toss a witch's hat onto a cone. It was lots of fun there were a ton of games (I think at least 15!). I loved how affordable it was--for $1 you could get a slice of pizza, a cookie, and a cup of water and the games were free! How they worked it is that every child got a wristband and each time they won a prize at a game they got an "X" on it. After three X's, they could still play the games, but they couldn't win any more prizes. Such a fun night!

On the 29th we had Ann & kids over to play and we made vampire suckers instead of the traditional ghosts. We just used some red tissue paper, black felt, silver twist ties, google eyes, and paper triangle fangs.

(Faith and Ella got fancy and added hair so theirs were vampiresses)

That night we had trunk-or-treating and homemade soup at the church.

On our way home, we passed by where a family sells the pumpkins they grow in their garden and noticed that they were clearancing out what was left for $2 each. We hadn't gotten any yet (with the exception of the puking pumpkin--see previous post below) so we got five big ones for ten bucks! We stayed up late scooping them out and making delicious toasted seeds.

Tony's maternal grandfather had passed away on the Sunday prior and we attended his funeral on the 30th. I need to get pictures from Tammy, so I'll do a separate post on that.

Halloween evening was pretty rainy.  We got ready,

then waited for sunset. In the meantime we got this beautiful double rainbow!

It was kinda cold and we needed our umbrellas, but we trekked around our neighborhood and the nearby patio homes and the kids loaded up on candy.

We trick-or-treated at my mom & dad's and got full sized candy bars!

We stopped by their neighbor's to see their awesome display with tons of creepy manequins. How would you like to store those in your basement? I think I'll pass.

Christian wouldn't even turn his back on those scary guys for the picture above. He started crying because he wanted a picture, too, so I had him stand farther away and just quickly pivot toward me for this shot.

We then headed over to Tony's parents' and met up with Tina & Zach. No chili this year because of all of Lana's time going to funeral prep :(

Check out that haul!

October happenings 2010

On October 19th Faith had crazy hair day at school. This picture hardly does it justice because in real life it was even more bizzare, sparkly and had crazy curls you could see from the back. She said that the kids in her class dubbed her hair the craziest!

It must be "fire prevention month" or something, because here are the kids with yet another fire truck. This one was at Faith's school and the kids even got to try on a helmet!

Buddy took this pic of me at the dentist on the 21st when I had a temporary crown removed and the real one installed. He thought it was really creepy that I was missing a tooth for a few minutes.

That afternoon I was going to take Christian to Black Island Farms to meet up with Joy and her girls for Sierra's preschool field trip there. Unfortunately, Lily was sick and I instead picked up Sierra to take her with us. I'm glad I got some pictures of the harvest festival, because I didn't go with both my kids this year (Tammy took them on the night of her sleepover). As usual, the slides rocked!

fun in the corn box

the train

making some music

little hay maze

We got to go on a hayride into the fields where Sierra got to pick a pumpkin. Christian seems happy with the broom corn and carrot he was given on the ride when a farm hand was explaining what they grow there.

feeding the animals

cool horsey tire swing

ropin'

After all the fun, we dropped Sierra off at home and did a little shopping at WalMart. Christian and I went all out on lunch and split a McDouble, small fry and cup of water.

Christian loves using my craft supplies in his 3D art. this paper/felt/pompom masterpiece is of "ghost Mickey." I think the incorporeal Mr. Mouse is giving it a thumbs up!

I've been doing a lesson/craft/game type thing once a month in Faith's classroom which they call "Fun Friday." A different parent does it each week and one chose "favorite authors" as a theme and another "math games." I'm not sure on the other theme, but I just chose "science" so that I could choose all kinds of topics. In September I taught about the water cycle and had a reader's theater, an experiment where we made clouds that rained in a vase (kind of like this), showed water vapor with an ultrasonic humidifyer, and played a game. It was basically "duck, duck, goose" but I had the person who was "it" say instead "evaporation, evaporation" and squirt the intended person with a spray bottle of water when they said "condensation." It was really fun! For October I decided to do a whole lesson of spooky science experiments. Faith took photos while I taught and Christian looked on.

I started with making a witch's brew by putting a block of dry ice in some water in my cauldron. I let the kids feel the water vapor created as the dry ice sublimated into gaseous carbon dioxide.

Next, I made a string scream by putting it through a disposable plastic cup and then running a wet piece of sponge down it.

Then the kids' favorite--making a jack-o-lantern barf with yeast and hydrogen peroxide making foam out of dish soap.

I made a tissue paper ghost dance with the help of a balloon and static electricity.

I taught about the unusual viscosity of a cornstarch/water mixture "ooze" by pouring like a liquid but then slapping it and showing how it acts like a solid when force is applied.

Lastly, this hand "came alive" with the help of some vinegar and baking soda in the cup.

My lesson was a huge hit! The teacher later remarked that she wished she would have filmed it to show to her class each year. I was just glad that everything worked, since I was doing some experiments for the first time, myself! I compiled all the ideas I found into this document to help me teach the kids, if you would like to be awesome like me, feel free to download and try them yourself ;)

First half of October 2010

Christian got ahold of my camera again and took lots of pictures of himself. This one may look a bit obscene, but it's just his belly button!

Soccer game on October 2nd. Faith is still loving it and doing great.

After the game we stopped by Home Depot to do the project (fire boats) and got to see Smokey!

Next we went to Gardner Village with Lana, Tammy and Tina.

Pony rides were a favorite, as usual.

The face painting was extra awesome!

We saw lots of witches, ate lunch at Archibald's and made sure to stop by the candy store. Unfortunately, Christian was still tired from the sleepover with grandparents and Tammy the night before and cried off some of his Batman mask while throwing a fit shortly before this photo.

He fell asleep on the way home and was feeling much better, as you can see, when we started his facepaint removal. He actually was in a good mood, and he LOVED how he looked "evil" with this leftover black paint!

I believe he was also in a good mood the next day when Faith took this picture at my mom and dad's. I had a whole slew of "angry" pictures of both Faith and Christian on my camera when I got it back from the kids that day.

And good thing they returned my camera because I was able to get a shot of this cool double piggyback!

Still not completely caught up on his sleep that weekend, he conked out on the floor at Tony's parents' that night. At least Crumpet was kind enough to keep an eye on him.

Some more of Christian's favorite garden outputs: SWUGS.

He quite liked the produce as well.

At the Farmers' Market on the 7th we got to hear some bagpipe music.

This Lowe's project on the 9th was a favorite: funhouse mirrors.

That afternoon we went to Frightmares again. This was inside the "Spook-A-Boo" where the kids get to trick-or-treat. Look at all the creepy things for "dinner" in this exhibit!

It was way too chilly to get wet in the fountains this day, but the kids tempted fate anyway (and luckily stayed mostly dry).

The kids love the Halloween decor.