Indoor Trick-or-Treating

Since Halloween is on the Sabbath tomorrow, Pink Grandma decided to celebrate a little differently this evening.

The grown-ups took sacks of candy into the bedrooms, and Joy and Daniel got to walk up and down the hall trick-or-treating.

Here's Joy showing off her treat bag. She must have knocked on each door a half dozen times.

Thanks, Grandma!

May The Treats Be With You

It's Trunk-or-Treat time again, folks!

This year Phillip and I were a Jedi knight and Princess Leia, and the kids were a puppy and a bumblebee. Perhaps I should call them Fluffy Skywalker and Darth Bumble, to be consistent with the Star Wars theme.

Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who identified my costume as Leia. My dress differed from hers in many ways, and I didn't even have the cinnamon bun hairstyle, somehow the belt I made out of posterboard and foil allowed people to identify me instantly. Funny--they probably never took a close look at Leia's belt in their lives (I sure didn't until I tried to replicate it), but somehow they just knew who it belonged to. If you've already read about this on my bluestocking blog I'm sorry to bore you, but it really did make my night.

Ahem--now back to the pictures.

The game area had some amazing decor.

Joy had fun pumpkin bowling. She had long since discarded her doggy ears, but she still had the stuffed-sock tail on. :)

Here the young padawan receives bowling instruction from the Jedi master. Use the Force, Daniel.

Joy went fishing and caught something tasty.

Happy Halloween!

Mansion, Sweet Mansion

For our home evening activity on Monday, we borrowed an idea from a friend and made . . .

. . . graham cracker haunted mansions, decorated with cream cheese frosting and lots of candy.

OK, so we're not professional architects, but we had a lot of fun.

The next day we ate half the roof with lunch, so our mansion was downgraded to a haunted shack (or perhaps a Shrieking Shack :).

By this afternoon, it looked more like the Nauvoo Temple circa 1850, after the saints fled to Utah and a tornado took out all but the west wall.

Should you desire to make your own graham cracker edifice, we have a few words of counsel. First, the walls will hold up better if you glue two crackers together with frosting, rather than using a single cracker per wall.

Second, make sure you decorate with candy you actually like. I bought a big bag of candy corn which looked very festive, but even Daniel is sick of it now and we still have half the bag left. Bleh.

Rockets and Sharks

We headed to the California Science Center with some friends this morning. It's big, fun, and free (if you don't count the $8 parking).

Joy and Daniel both liked launching the rocket in the transportation section. Daniel giggled every time it blasted off.

Joy and Crew having a long-distance conversation.

The Center has a giant aquarium with local marine wildlife. On the roof you can peer down into the depths or watch the wave machine raise and lower the water's surface.

When we arrived on the roof we found a zone of missionaries on P-Day looking for sharks. I had a good laugh, then stooped down to have a look myself after they left.

Down on the first floor there is a clear tunnel through the tank so you can get a better look at the Garibaldis, kelp, and yes, the sharks. The flounder was cool, too (at least, I think it was a flounder). Alas I didn't get a very good picture of that part.

Either that's a really big barnacle, or Joy's tired and ready to go home.

Un-Caramel Apples

Wanna know what happens to caramel apples if you leave them in a warm kitchen overnight?

All the caramel melts off. Sigh. Not that that kept me from eating one, of course.

(The little black things are sprinkles, in case you're wondering.)

Hide and Don't Seek

MAMA RULES FOR "HIDE THE PUMPKIN":
- Go to the kitchen and count to ten while Joy hides the pumpkin.
- Look around the house until you find the pumpkin.
- Take a turn hiding it while Joy counts to ten in the kitchen.

JOY RULES FOR "HIDE THE PUMPKIN":
- Go to the kitchen and count to ten while Mama hides the pumpkin.
- Look around the house, do an obvious double-take when you spot the pumpkin.
- Keep looking everywhere except where you know the pumpkin is.
- Ask Mama for a hint.
- Get unhelpful hints like, "It's in the room where you just saw it" and "It's below the ceiling and above the floor."
- Tell Mama that since you haven't picked the pumpkin up, you haven't "found" it yet.
- Keep looking a while longer.
- Triumphantly "find" the pumpkin and hold it aloft.
- Take a turn hiding it while Mama counts to ten in the kitchen.

Which rules do YOU like better?

Underwood Family Farm

We visited Underwood Family Farms with some friends this morning.

Joy rode a pony, and she was delighted to learn its name is Bullseye, just like the horse in Toy Story 2.

Daniel's favorite activity was watching kids ride down the slide. He giggled every time one came down the chute. When I eventually took him to the top he enjoyed riding down on his own, but I think he had more fun just watching kids appear at the bottom of the tunnel.

Joy preferred watching, too, but that's because she thought the tunnel was a little intimidating. She climbed to the top, all set to ride the slide, then had second thoughts and opted to just stand there and watch all the other kids go down the dark, scary tunnel instead.

However, she had no fear at all when it came to climbing on the wooden train.

Daniel liked the train, too, but preferred lower elevations.

Our last activity was the corn maze. Now it was Daniel's turn to have misgivings. Sure enough, after a dozen twists and turns I realized that it would be wisest to go back out the entrance while we could still find it, rather than risk getting lost for an hour or two searching for the exit. We'd already had enough adventures for one day.

All Kinds of Fun

This morning we drove to a nearby park to play, and found a couple artists painting pictures of homes across the street.

Joy thought the watercolor was very interesting.

I liked it, too.

In the park proper, we spent most of our time riding the swings (Joy chose to ride sidesaddle), . . .

. . . then we headed home for some serious fun playing with the gate . . .

. . . and letting Joy's baby doll float on a leaf raft (though it looks more like Joy's practicing CPR).

During lunch Joy asked how cold the applesauce was, so we decided to have a little scientific fun and ask our thermometer. The reading went as low as 52.0 degrees, then began inching up 0.1 degree every few seconds. Given that concrete evidence that our applesauce was warming up, I decided to end the experiment and put the jar back in the fridge.

I love how every day can be full of little adventures and surprises.

A Hot Field Trip

Joy's preschool group took a field trip to a fire station today.

A few firemen gave us a tour, showing us some of their tools and explaining what they do. Joy thought it was pretty interesting . . .

. . . until one of the firemen starting putting on his big suit. She decided that was a little scary and said, "I don't like that!" so I took her to another part of the garage to carefully inspect a truck until the suit was put away.

The firemen then showed us where they live when they're on duty, and where they work out. I guess you could say they have a Stair Master Deluxe.

We also got to see one of the firemen slide down the big pole. Sweet.

Thanks for the fun tour, guys!

Witch Hats

I signed up to bring a treat today, so I decided to try a fun recipe I recently saw for witch hat cookies.

You pipe a little frosting onto a cookie (I had some cream cheese frosting on hand, but I'm sure you could use any tube bought at a store) . . .

. . . then press a Hershey's Kiss onto the frosting . . .

. . . and enjoy! :)

The Great Pumpkin

October is here, and we've started a new family tradition.

Similar to the Elf on the Shelf idea, I hide our Great Pumpkin each night, . . .

. . . and when Joy wakes up in the morning she searches for it. Once she finds it . . .

. . . she gets to add a sticker (courtesy of our pals at Trader Joe's) to our October calendar. Only twenty more days until Halloween! (But who's counting?)

Tricky

Lately Joy loves to show me all the "tricks" she can do.

I'm not sure if this one is derived from yoga or ballet.

Here's her jumping-off-the-couch trick.

Joy also has a jumping-onto-the-couch trick:

The Approach

Landing Gear Down

Touchdown!

Of course, my favorite trick is still the Help Feed Daniel trick.