Bo Bo Bonus Post.

This morning my nephew Chase called to wish me Happy Birthday, which was very sweet! He told me he was going to be Bo Bo Fett for Halloween. I told my kids and they all cracked up because it sounded funny and none of us knew what Bo Bo Fett was! I googled it and it's a character from Star Wars movies. Lots of people spell it Bo Bo Fett just like I thought it was. It's really spelled Boba Fett and it just cracks me up to even say it! Boba Fett is actually a really tough looking dude that I wouldn't want to mess with. I know my nephew is going to be an awesome Boba Fett and I can't wait to see a picture of him as Boba Fett.

Boba Fett. Boba Fett. Hee hee. One day soon we will netflix a Star Wars movie, I think I saw the first one back in the day. I'd really like to see it again.

Bonus October post! I am so on a roll! It just blows that I picked today to notice how dirty my house is, and even worse, that I have the energy and determination to do something about it! How about that? Cleaning house on my birthday, go figure! I do have friends on the way [yay!] and some happy kiddos coming home from school soon and a good man who might bring dinner home!

Look how much fun Wyatt and I had yesterday when he got home from school.

He was crazy for my birthday card from his cousins Bella, Rafi, and Mia. Thanks Miriam, hope to see you and your beautiful family soon!

Sad to see good 'ol October go, but hello sweet November!

Boo!

Happy Halloween Eve! Wowza, two posts in one week, I'm on fire! Thursday afternoon means we're snuggling in closer to Friday, and that means I'm loaded with anticipation and generally pretty blissful. No big plans on the menu, just regular odds and bits of fun and joy.

Tony's family brings these to us, they call them limas. They look like a cross between a lemon and a lime and these two eat them like candy. Sometimes my kids have this much fun with them:



Today was Eva's Halloween party day at her school and I it just happened to be my day to help out at the school, so I was able to get a few cute pictures. Look at her with the other Snow White, aren't they sweet?



I made pumpkin muffins because it was also my day to bring snack. The schedule for my assigned snack said "pumpkin muffins, make at home."
I had to buy the canned pumpkin, but I had everything else on hand and it was super easy. Here is the recipe I used, all I did was cut the ginger in half, reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup and make bigger muffins, two batches gave me forty [nearly] full size muffins. They were actually quite good, very pumpkin-y! They would surely be a good Thanksgiving snack too.

I hope your Halloween and your weekend is spooky and wonderful, in that order! They say we may have rain, I say fine with me bring that rain...not so happy for the trick or treaters though. Depending on which way you look at it, my life can be sweet or spooky [or both together!] any old day of the year, just obviously and especially so tomorrow. Happy Birthday to me and you go have fun being spooked!

Girl Scout Camp '08

It was a great weekend at camp. Not as cold as in the past couple of years. My favorite part of the weekend was when Emily and I were off together retrieving something from her cabin and she said to me, "I'm so glad we're here, I love the outdoors." It reminds me that she is forming ideas about the world and good memories are born that she will always have. My girls also get plenty of the whole slumber party atmosphere too, being in a small cabin with 10-15 other giddy girls for the two nights. We don't do sleepovers, it's just our policy, so I can at least have a little something to help them get over it when they fuss about it later.

This year's theme was Tribal Tribute, all about native Americans. Wouldn't my Dad be proud? As a fifth grader, Emily has already studied native Americans in school, so she's proudly loaded with Indian info now. The girls made art, an Indian purse, a dream catcher and a talking stick complete with an ornamental arrowhead. They even threw spears!

We hiked to the Pinecrest Dam again, the bigger girls like Emily went even further, but not all the way around the lake like last year. Notice how Emily proudly wears her Tennessee shirt I brought back from my trip for her? It's her favorite piece of clothing, she even wore it for her school picture!

The one excitement that we had not experienced in prior years is the true wildlife encounter. No, luckily not bears, but big aggressive raccoons [I thought raccoons were cute and cuddly, and much smaller than they actually are]. They came out just as night fell to scavenge the trash cans and freak us out. Some of the girls were scared, but most were intrigued. Sometimes, all you could see were these little red eyes peering at you from the trees. Oooooh, spooky!

The campfire, the smores, the songs and skits are sort of the culmination/highlight of the weekend for the group. Each year, my girls become more comfortable getting up on stage to sing and dance and be goofy with their girl scout buddies. That part is so much fun to watch!

Hey Fall, What's Up?

Wher've ya been? I've missed ya. [Is wher've a word?]

Love, love, love it! Fall is my favorite. The hot stuff heat is gone and now we can give the sun a break, let it get dark early and relax a little more, or when soccer season is over we will!

Just look at my my early birthday present to myself. It's instant downloadable happiness for me today! And it's a Wednesday, just when I need the lift!

I don't know about you but I am now ready for the elections to be over. I finally made up my mind about who I will vote for, so my goal is to have my ballot in the mail by tomorrow. I have seen some strange things around town lately. Yesterday when I was driving my kids and my other carpool kids to school, I saw a motherly woman [someone who looked somewhat like me] carrying a mangled up sign like this one as she ran down a busy residential street. It got me so curious about her situation. Was she retrieving her sign? Was she taking someones sign? Is she for it or against it? Where was she going in such a hurry? What did she have for breakfast? I was so intrigued with this woman...I wanted to know her story, I wanted to follow her, but I didn't.

Eva is such a funny girl. She can't resist any costume. I have been trying to photograph each one, can you believe how many she gets her hands on?

I have not even been able photograph them all, this is only a sampling! Fall is probably her favorite season too, the costume bin comes down from lofty heights and she is free to be. That last one is just in her pj's, she likes it when her hair is wet and it looks long, when it dries and curls up close to her head she asks me "where is my long hair Mommy?"

What else have we been up to? Well let me tell you! We received some much appreciated grandmotherly love when my Mom came and stayed two nights with us last week. We have made time for and dined with good friends, we have seen an adult movie [the Brad Pitt, George Clooney one, funny but I cannot recommend it to you]. We have seen a play at the university which included my friend Nena's sister Kelly who was awesome in it.

My two big girls and I are packing up for another year of Girl Scout camp. I am hoping that our cabin is close to the bathroom, or even better that I will not have to get up in the middle of the night to go there! It does get cold in the mountains you know, there is nothing worse for me than getting my toasty toes out of a warm sleeping bag for that!

I definitely won't let so much time pass before posting again. I am really looking forward to Halloween this year, it's more fun on Friday, yay! Oye como va!

Peace to you and happy happy voting!

Little E is Three!

We celebrated our September birthday girls on Sunday.

Just a nice quiet simple celebration, not nearly as crazy as usual. I loved having Renee, Sydney, Allison and Sam here, it was fun.

Wednesday is a beast. It truly lives up to its name, tomorrow we are over the hump and on the slide down toward the weekend. But our weekends have not been slow, they've been hectic. I need a slow one pretty soon.

October is finally here! I hope we get some relief from all the hot weather soon because I am so over summer. I want to be cold for a while! This morning me and Eva went for a walk and then I pulled down the fall/Halloween boxes. Eva has been dressing up [she is currently a witch but is asking to be a bat] and playing with plastic pumpkins and Halloween cookie cutters for a while, she's happy, she's 3! My baby is 3, wow!

Emily is now also playing cello, taking her lessons at school. She is giving piano lessons to Wyatt and Sarah, they are on a schedule and everything. If she can keep her patience in check, she can be a wonderful piano teacher to them, plus I don't have to pay for lessons for all of them just yet!

I'm exhausted already. Like I said, Wednesday is the beast of my week, I have a couple more hours then we're off on the hump-day marathon that breaks me down every time. Maybe today will be different, I can't lose hope! Hope, hope, hope.