Catching Up on Halloween and 38

Our favorite place in West Chester to get pumpkins
 

Okay, more catching up to do.  And I've got a deadline!  Miss Casey's birthday is Monday!  And we can't be having a birthday blog all mashed up into a big catching up post, which is what this is going to be. 

This is why I cannot scrapbook.  If I don't stay on top of it (and I never do with scrap booking), I fall behind.  Then it all just seems overwhelming and I end up putting it off.  And putting it off.  Then some more.  Until it's November 15th and I have to force myself to sit down with my bottle of beer and package of Skittles on a Friday night and dump memories onto my computer.  But now I have so many memories and pictures, it like sifting through the Skittles and having to pick only your favorite colors and then throwing away the rest.  Except there really aren't any bad ones.  And this analogy would be so much better if we were talking about M&M's but it's November 15th and the good Halloween candy is long gone. 

Let's pick up our little family story/blog with Halloween.  I last wrote about our trip to Myrtle Beach and it was after that that I started to not feel well.  I went from feeling awful to miserable and then almost into a semi-depression.  Turns out it was only a ovarian cyst, which on the Richter scale of medical stuff is pretty low, but left me in a state I wish never to repeat.  And it lasted for weeks.  Then I got a laryngitis, which turned into a nasty cold/flu, which turned into a sinus infection.  I actually told Tom there were times I was not certain I should have been making decisions for my kids.  I felt out of my mind with it all.  I was able to rally for Halloween and by my birthday was starting to feel like myself again.  But let's get back to Halloween.

Tom is in charge of carving pumpkins.  That's all I can say about this picture and as to why one of my kids is undressed and the other is on the table.  I'm certain they will have fond memories of this annual event with daddy :)

I always try to volunteer for the girls' class parties.  As a stay-at-home-mom, I consider helping out at school as part of my job.  The girls are still at ages where they haven't determined it's uncool for me to be there, so I'm sticking around as long as they let me.  Both of their Harvest parties (because God forbid we call a 60 minute celebration with games and snacks on October 31st a Halloween party...) were within hours of each other.  I was in charge of the craft for Emily's party and the game for Casey's party.  Both were a success and Emily and I met up with some friends for lunch in between the two parties.  A fun (and exhausting) day for sure, but the girls both gave me lots of hugs, so I assume I've got the green light to attend the winter/holiday party or whatever it's called next month.

The craft: Make jack-o-lanterns out of toilet paper rolls.  And yes, I cut out each of the shapes used of the faces and the leaves.   

Posing with their craft on their heads.  Because when your 5 or 6 that's just good fun :)

Emily is having a great kindergarten year so far!!

No joke or posing here, folks.  Any time I found these 2 at Casey's party they were hugging.  They put on a good show :)

The game for Casey's class party:  Ping pong balls decorated to look like eyeballs (yes, I illustrated each one) bounced into plastic buckets.  If you think this game was inspired by beer pong, that would be your own conclusion.  I fear someone might accuse me of this to the wrong parent or school employee, so I can only say this was a coincidence ;)  For the record, the kids loved this game! 

The forecast for trick-or-treating was for a lot of rain and wind.  And, for once, the meteorologists got it right.  Casey dressed up as a Spider Fairy and Emily was supposed to be a butterfly.  Let me interject here that for like the past 6 years I think at least one of the girls has been a princess for Halloween.  We have almost every princess dress in our dress-up bin and I am notoriously cheap when it comes to buying Halloween costumes, so it's all worked out for me.  Until this year.  This year, though, Emily clearly was telling us she wanted to be a butterfly, so I indulged the $30 (that really hurts to type that) and got her a rainbow tutu and matching wings.  But by the time trick-or-treating came around, though, it was obvious the wings would be either blown off or drowned in the weather conditions.  Casey had been begging me to dress up to go out with them and apparently sick, cranky mom wasn't what she had in mind.  So I proposed a last minute costume change to Emily, in which she and I would dress up together and make lemonade from the downpour of lemons that was the weather.  We dressed up as swimmers.  Complete with swim caps and inner tubes, and sloshed our way through the rain that night with Casey and the neighbors.  And it rained.  And rained.  And rained.  And the girls loved every bit of it.

Trunk-or-treat at Casey's school with friends.

My spider fairy

Ready for trick-or-treating in the pouring rain.  Emily is in a speedo swimsuit under her jacket and I ended up with a swim cap and thankfully there are no pictures of this!  Only my neighbors can attest to how truly ridiculous I looked.  I may, in fact, do anything for my girls.  Casey and Emily were thrilled that I dressed up.

The following week I turned 38.  Blogging helps keep how I feel about that in perspective.  I'm not going to lie, 38 is a bit of a big number to wrap my head around this year, but knowing that one day I'll look back on this blog and be like, "Sheesh! 38 was young and I wish I would have enjoyed it more"  really does keep me from feeling too old :)  I'd hate for my future self to kick my ass or anything for not appreciating good health and no gray hairs now.  Kind of like I do when I think about how I complained about my body before I had kids.  I'd so go back in time and give myself a high five for those abs and tell myself to be grateful for that body!

It is only by chance that the wine and Nyquil bottles are in this pictures.  I think this pic is a great representation of how my 37th year ended and my 38th began:  sick, slightly tipsy and feeling adored by my family :)

Tom and the girls gave me a wonderful little birthday celebration.  Casey was very proud of the gift she made me and even told me in a loud stage whisper: "Don't worry mom, it's not like from a jewelry store or anything!" in a way that said she was sure that would be just tacky. (Ha!).  Tom and the girls actually got out the mixer and made me a cake.  Honestly, this was probably the best part of my birthday - him and the girls baking.  After they decorated it and sang to me, Tom lit the candles, Emily leaned in to blow them out first, and as I made my wish, we could all smell burning hair.  Yes, Emily's hair was a bit on fire.  Not like flames, but more like when you roast a marshmallow and it starts to turn black and crinkle up.  Except this had a very distinct odor.  And it was Emily's head and not an edible puff of sugar roasting.  And that was how we celebrated my birthday.  It was perfect.    

Me and my girls.  For as much as I try to get the perfect picture of everyone looking at the camera and smiling.  It is really these that I love the most - my girls acting like my girls.  I love them so much.

And I think they'll like looking at pictures like these one day - of their mom joining in and being nuts with them.