Halloween

Peter's costume got finished yesterday. I made him Lightning McQueen, it's just cardboard, paint and tape. He likes it a lot. Oddly enough, I am not fussed at all about the bigger kids costumes this year. They can do what they want! I remember being that way as a kid too, my mom would make us elaborate costumes and we didn't appreciate them either. So the darlings have access to all kinds of dress up stuff and they can just go to town on it and do whatever they want.

But, since Peter has yet to not appreciate a costume I worked hard on, he gets one.

The hood lifts up to reveal a candy holding compartment of my own design. Too cool. It will likely be destroyed by the end of Halloween but that is fine with me.

Also, I don't know why the pictures are so yellow, I think there is something on the lens. . .

Sisters

Last night my sisters, Whitny, Amanda and Lindsey took me to dinner at Siam (yummy, spicy, mmm). And we had a great time. Then Linz ran away because next we went here;

And Linz said she would rather be shot. I absolutely loved it loved it! There was a full orchestra with all kinds of interesting instruments and a fabulous chorus and a boys choir too! There was a soloist, and it was lovely. Whit doctored the picture I took at intermission. Can you see who joined the audience?

Hiking

The kids have Fall Break so we went hiking this morning at Shaw Butte. Alana was mad in this picture, there always has to be one. The glasses are the girls' newest fashion accessory, they have no glass in them, they are just for the look. Weirdos.

We weren't the only ones out enjoying the lovely cool weather. We found this little rattler slithering near the trail. We watched him slither for a while then we hiked on. The kids took it as their duty after that to tell every hiker they met that 'there is a rattlesnake just ahead!'. It was pretty exciting.

greed

we had all the kids with us in the car on the way somewhere and ryan was meeting someone from craigslist to sell something. he did the hand-off and was coming back to the car, jefferson said, "look dad has $40, maybe he'll give us some! act good!"

Kiss Your Brain

So today I've been totally accomplishing stuff. I did dishes, laundry, went hiking with Pete and Tess who is home from school today, swept the pool, swam with kids, and made bread. While I was waiting for it to rise I sat down at the computer and for some reason or another went back and read old blog entries then I couldn't stop reading them. I just love that I've kept this blog up for the past three and a half years, I love the pictures and the videos and the stories that I would have absolutely forgotten about had I not written them down. But while I was reliving the past I forgot about the bread, it rose too much and now it will be all kind of flat-ish and ugly. Boo.

Tessa and Alana's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Pulido, used to have the kids "kiss their brains" when they did a good job on something. They would kiss their hand and pat their own heads. Too adorable. So today I kiss my brain for doing the blog all these years and also I kick my brain (figuratively, not enough yoga for that maneuver) for allowing me to become distracted and forgetting the bread. Argh.

Dr. Coconut

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Coconut, our new parakeet, thanks to Pat. Thanks Pat! He is very nice and the kids have enjoyed looking at him and introducing themselves to him.

Please show some respect people, he didn't attend eight years of Coconut Medical School to be called Mr. Coconut.

No More Loaners!

So last week there were a couple of fun events. Amanda took Alana home with her and Oliver after school to play one day and they stopped off at Walmart on the way home. Pretty soon I got a text from Amanda that she had broken Alana and she was returning her. Apparently the girl got into a fight with a shopping cart and lost.

There was blood, tears, a band aid and now her nickname is Scarface.

Then the very next day Ryan went over to help his brother with some roofing. A couple of hours later I got a text from Lindsey saying that Ryan had fallen off the roof but that nothing was broken. I called right away of course, all these dumb alarming texts were beginning to get on my nerves. What had happened was, it was quite warm outside and as they were finishing Ryan realized that asphalt singles heat up a lot and he was in a hurry to not be on the roof anymore, so he quickly and unsafely tried to climb down the ladder without touching anything, became unbalanced, knocked the ladder down, tried to grab hold of the roof, scraped off lots of skin and landed on his side on the ground. He is fine, just a bit scraped up.

But I told my sisters that they aren't allowed to borrow my people any more unless they can keep them in the same condition they were received.