Saturday, October 29, 2016

Pumpkin Day

Halloweeeeeeen I love it. I love holidays so much. I like things with TRAPPINGS, I like pomp and also circumstance, and I like Geneva running around calling things 'so sapooky' because she's still working on consonant combinations.


Anyway. Yesterday was Pumpkin Day. We had pumpkin waffles and 'whupp cream.' The girls both have pumpkins from a field trip to the pumpkin patch (about more which anon), Joel's pumpkin is from a trip to the corn maze (anon), and DO YOU REMEMBER MY RAZZLE DAZZLE PUMPKIN FROM THE APPLE ORCHARD? I bet you do. I have gotten all nine dollars worth out of that pumpkin. For a while there, it was a Cinderella coach (being driven by a shark, natch)


and when October rolled around, the bone spiders took over.


Last night I CUT INTO IT and ok on the one hand it was a mile thick.


On the other hand, it was a pretty soft-shelled pumpkin, and it took me like two minutes to carve out a giant mouth and two beady eyes.

I got the girls to gut their own pumpkins


and they were both just like, Ick


and eventually abandoned me to read this Halloween flap book with like NO WORDS so they just sit there lifting flaps and going, Ahhhhhh! AHHHHHHH! Ack!


I had misplaced the girls' smocks (and bath robes and aprons) in the move, and I knew that as soon as I found replacements, I would find the originals, but we needed painting smocks so I picked some up from the dollar store, and NO JOKE YOU GUYS TODAY I FOUND THE ORIGINAL SMOCKS but ok fine now I have back-up smocks for guests.


Everybody painted.


Everybody ate pumpkin seeds.


Everybody went to bed and then I put one entire set of fangs into my pumpkin and texted this picture to my sister like, Should I stop now? Should I show some restraint?


And she was like MORE TEETH and I had bought three packs of teeth because REASONS and omg we made such a good decision.


I'm so delighted.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Rat School

We dragged the dress-up bin out of storage at the beginning of the month, and the girls have been putting on non-stop 'shows.' The other day, the 'show' became 'Rat School.'


They had nap time!


They had snack time!


They had outside time!


Eleanor sat Geneva down and had Rat Circle Time, where she sang all the songs she could think of from her own school but incorporated the word 'Ratty' where appropriate. These kids are slaying me.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Thanksgiving!

A while ago, Eleanor found a shiny gold bead at the park, and carried it around in her shoe until it was time to go home. She kept it in her drawer of preciouses. She spent tens of minutes washing it in the sink, and I kept saying, Be careful, our sinks don't have stoppers, if it falls down the drain then it's gone and we can't get it back.

And then one day it fell down the drain.

She was devastated. And Grandma was coming to babysit that evening, so I wrote Grandma a card at Eleanor's dictation, asking that if Grandma came across a bead in her travels, would she mail it to Eleanor (we have lived far from family for so long that this is the only way Eleanor understands to get things to people).

The next morning, I got a text saying that Eleanor might have mail at the door, she should check. It was a bead.


That was weeks ago, and she still talks about it all the time.


This is the kind of thing that wouldn't have been possible in Saskatoon, both the babysitting and the next-day hand-delivery of the bead. It snowed in Saskatoon last week and I felt so nostalgic. Snow is fun; rain is garbage weather. I still miss Josie so much. But we spent this weekend hanging out with my family,


with Joel's family,


and with our own little nuclear family, which is not the only family we have anymore.


Happy Thanksgiving.