Daily Adventures

Halloween was fun. For the first time, I actually went out with the parents and the kids to go trick-or-treating. I'd always chosen to stay at home, and this time I decided to just leave the bowl of candy on the front doorstep with a sign, and I went with John and Jet through the neighborhood.

It was fun. Especially more fun since John was back home from Seattle. We traded off weeks, and I'll write more about the gaming and convention and setup for it in another entry; but the week while John was away made me, as always, really appreciate everything single parents have to go through so much more. Especially when things break down...

( The bad and the good... )

The actual trick-or-treating started with Jet falling off a 6 foot slide and landing on his head.

Poor guy was really frightened by it. Terrified all the parents, too. John carried Jet home and deposited him, shaking, in my lap and I held him for a while as John went and called the nurse at our clinic, and she rattled off a list of things that were not happening to Jet. So no concussion, at all. Talking with him about it, he'd landed on his forehead, which is a pretty good place to land, compared to the side of the head or anything else.

So we got really, really lucky.

( Cut for length about Jet, the party, and about some adventures in getting painting stuff. )

Jet's in his pumpkin head and cardboard jet again. Jack delivering candy the fast way. He said he was too embarrassed to wear the kimono. He may well be my son. I'm not sure he's John's, now.

John... *headdesks*

He's in a black and pink satin saloon girl outfit with glittery pink lashes and fishnet stockings. It does not look nearly as good as that might sound. Uhm... I'm half afraid to put pictures up.

( I said half... )

I took a bath, last night, for the first time since probably April. Candlelight, bath salts, and plenty of hot water in the short, deep soaking tub. It's a lot like the ship's tub we'd had installed in the master bath of our Redmond house, where space was at a premium and I really wanted a bath that would take a minimal amount of water. I don't like using that much water just for my comfort and when the tub is small and narrower, but deep, I displace enough water that it takes less than if I took a shower to get a good long soak in.

I needed it, as the weather has turned cold. The leaves froze and turned their colors, and are now going brown at the tops of the trees as they die completely. The wind howled and buffeted against the walls and windows by the bath, even as I soaked in my quiet. This morning most of the trees were denuded of most of their leaves, and the front yard was filled again with leaves.

"I just vacuumed yesterday," John said ruefully as we walked back to the house after dropping Jet off at the bus. The leaves crunched underfoot and the air was sharp with cold.

No mist of our breaths, though, there's so little humidity here that it just evaporates.

( Read more... )

I hopped on my bike and rode to Jet's school this afternoon, right at 2, after swallowing a Clif Bar (dinner is going to be early tonight) and some water after riding the exercise bike in the basement, after playing Kingdom of Hearts II for quite a while as well. Shower in there so I didn't offend myself...

But then I showed up at school with a cat mom and a Princess Mom with her little princess in tow and a baby Princess in a stroller. Blink. My. I just had my Nekobus shirt on and my Cat in the Hat hat, which had people smiling at me. I would think, "Why are they smiling at me? I don't recognize them... should I be recognizing them?" and then realize that they recognized the *hat*.

Smart them.

The class was filled with Moms. Then the kids poured in one side and then out the other, and the whole school was lined up outside so that everyone could walk around the whole school and get seen by everyone else. Wow. I trotted around the outside of the whole thing, desperately attempting to get out in front to actually take pictures of people's faces instead of their backs. I was the designated "Picture Mom" and so I felt the responsibility keenly, eventhough there were three or four other moms all snapping, filming, and running alongside as well. Paparazzi, one noted, don't hold a candle to *us*.

*laughter*

( Read more... )

Hmmm... I need to make me a pumpkin icon...

John and Jet went to a farm for a field trip early in the month, and brought home 5 "free" pumpkins.  They paid an entrance fee and then could bring home as much produce as they could carry in their backpacks and between the two of them, they got five pumpkins, one for Jet, one for John and myself and one, each, for Isabel and George as we knew they were coming to visit.

The home owners association gave us a big pumpkin, leaving it on the doorstep and Jet decided that that was the "house pumpkin".

Last night, we carved all our pumpkins with the usual assortment of faces and things.  Jet's special kid knife (serrated but without an edge) was perfect for cutting just about anything anyone wanted out of a pumpkin, so when Jet started telling me what to draw on the house pumpkin I decided anything was good.   :-)  He asked for two four-paned windows for the eyes, a door for the mouth.  On the side he wanted a garage, with a roof.  On the back he wanted our backyard (luckily, a door and two trees sufficed as a representation of the yard) and on the other side he wanted a gardener and a garden.  So I put a person with a hat and an arm over a planter box with some bush tomatoes growing all over it... or, as John said, "Is that a washtub??"

Then, Jet and granny worked on making ghosts out of grocery bags and leftover peanuts.  So we have a dozen ghosts floating about the aspen trees out front.  THEN this morning, Jet and John and granny made a HUGE SPIDER out of a garbage bag stuffed with leaves or newspapers, and lots of black crepe paper for long, long legs.  They even hung it by a rope that could be pulled to make it move.

All for about 33 cents for the crepe paper.  There was a green web stuff that we had from last year in the basement and that went up with some tiny plastic spiders Jet had. 

Jet loves taking everyone down the sidewalk in front of the house for "a test walk".   And he made John practice moving the spider when people showed up.  So he's *ALL* set for Halloween.

We all went for breakfast this morning, and it suddenly struck me that Jet, while waiting for this breakfast, instead of coloring the little dogs on the kids' menu, was working over the second level puzzles in his kid Sudoku book.  Yes.  My six-year-old does Sudoku in order to wait for his food.

Sigh.