A Day Of Pretend

We love Halloween at our house. There's just something fun about having weird looking food, dressing up, and getting lots of candy that makes everyone happy.  This year we had eyeball soup and haunted house brownies. It was a pretty simple fare but the kids enjoyed it. And, despite the fact that it was cold and rainy they had a great time trick or treating. Rob and I both went with them so we locked up the house and didn't pass candy out this year. Here's some pictures for you.

Hungry?

It's hard to eat when your food is looking at you

This was easy to eat!

Rob playing around with Cerah's pumpkin head

Once we got it away from him we finished it

And Cerah became the headless horseman. Both the cape and the pumpkin were homemade.

Morgan was a mummy

Hannah wanted to be spider girl

Aren't they cute?

Going to the first house

Morgan kept falling apart so we decided she was a decomposing mummy

The best part of the night - looking at all the goodies

Photographs

I've been watching the girls lately.  It's always amazing to me how fast time is going by and how quickly they are growing.  I am so thankful that I have taken so many pictures of them.  I have to look at those photographs to remember how they used to be.  All I can see now is how they are at this moment and every once in a while I panic thinking about how few years are left before they leave the house.  And so I realize that the best memories are the ones made when there was nothing special going on.  It's the every day moments that mean the most.

Making a phone from two cans and a string just to see if it works.

Cerah was surprised when it actuall did

Watching a magic show at school as a reward for reading so much this year

Playing in the backyard

Planting a garden

Pretending to be in the "doghouse"

Just hanging around

These two girls have spent every possible minute together for the last 5 weeks.  They haven't argued once and they show no signs of getting tired of each other.  In fact they are constantly coming up with new things to do together.  What one doesn't think of the other one does.  Today they thought it would be fun to climb into the tree and hang around like monkeys.  When they finished with that they had to pose together.  I am glad that they get along so well but I wonder what they will do when they are no longer living with each other.

Dancing

What do you do when you can't watch t.v., have extra energy, and the music's up loud?  You dance!

I don't know that you could call this dancing but they were having fun

80's headbanging maybe?

Or a 70's acid trip - is there something I need to know about here?

This one's not so into the dancing

But she sure loves to be a hairbrush singer

Even Cerah decided to join in a little

Until she saw the camera

 

Cabin fever

Cabin Fever has officially hit.  To combat this terrible disease the girls decided to pretend that it was warm enough to go camping.  We set up the tent for them - downstairs, of course, since it is finished! - and they got all their blankets out and made a nice bed.  Then they crawled in and played for awhile.

But being the girls they are they had to rough it while playing a girlie game.

Pink monopoly, game that keeps my children from arguing for minutes at a time, I love you.

I found this camping arrangement much more preferable to the last one we had.

Last time we were actually outside and had to stay there the whole night.  Granted, we were in our backyard since I didn't want to go far from modern conveniences, but Rob wouldn't let me cheat or give up and go back inside.  Trust me, I tried.  Every time I unzipped the sleeping bag he woke up.  Darn his light sleeping.  Any other night a train driving through the room wouldn't wake him up.  But I had my revenge.  Everyone was woken up by me bright and early at 5 A.M.  After all, if we're going to camp we are not wasting time sleeping instead of enjoying the great outdoors.  I'm thinking maybe next summer we will make it to a real campsite.  One with cabins. 

Why blog?

Dad showing Cerah where to drill the hole so the whistle makes noise
Morgan making her whistle while Dad stays close!

Dad and Hannah working on her whistle

Last weekend Robbie decided that he wanted to make a whistle. Off he went to the garage and for the next hour I neither saw nor heard him. Pretty soon he comes in the house to show me this whistle that he had made out of some wood scraps he had. The girls, of course, thought that it was the coolest thing they had ever seen and decided they each had to have one. So off to the garage he went again, but this time with three girls in tow. A few minutes later I went out to see what they were doing. They were all standing around one of the woodshop tools listening as their dad showed them what they needed to do. I quickly rushed back into the house to grab my camera so I could capture the moment and send it out in an email to the people I knew would want to see it. It struck me then that having a blog, which I had been thinking about for quite some time, would be an easier way to record and share the many moments of our life that our family and friends are missing. And so our family blog has been started. I hope you enjoy it.