Just Like a Kid

It is easy to overlook the importance of having fun with the mundane tasks of adult life - laundry, work, grocery shopping - you name it! However, kids are the little people who help me slow down, appreciate the small but important details in life, and remember how to have fun. I am reminded of my childhood especially during holidays. Ella (and Colin too) are getting older, and we are now beginning to create and also carry on some traditions during certain holidays. We started celebrating Halloween a couple of weeks ago by making cookies and then decorating them. I fool myself into thinking that this activity is solely benefiting the kids. If I am really honest with myself (damn), then I probably enjoy and consume far more cookies than both kids combined. I am using a sugar cookie recipe that I got from my mom; it is the same one she used for baking cookies for us when my sister and I were little.

Tonight we decided to carve our pumpkins since Halloween is around the corner. The small ones came from our garden, and the big mama came from a nearby farm. Ella and Colin enjoyed scraping the pumpkin goo and seeds out, and Ella and Matt worked together to create some of the pumpkin faces. I tried to capture a piece of the experience on video. You can hopefully hear how well Colin is talking these days. He is going through a vocabulary growth spurt - he is saying at least two or more new words each day. Today he had his first telephone conversation with another girl, Eva, who is just two (perhaps his future girlfriend)!






When we were all finished carving the pumpkins, we brought them outside to light them up. This is when Matt got creative - Ansel Adams style - with the camera. I have included some of his creations below.


It certainly would have been easier and a lot cleaner to just keep the pumpkins whole, but I do hope someday that our kids will recall these times together as a family and laugh and smile. Perhaps one day they will want to continue the same tradition with their own family.

BOO!

Ella was invited to her first Halloween party this afternoon. Many of her classmates attended as well, and it was a blast! The hosts of the party did such an amazing job planning so many activities for all the kids - decorating bags, decorating cookies, hitting a pinata, and pinning the nose on the pumpkin. I admired their bravery to host so many little people!

I tried to take a video - my first one on the blog. As you can see, Ella is a zealous Tinkerbell, and Colin is a wise wizard. Ella right now is in some kind of princess / fairy zone - she dresses like a princess at home, wants to watch princess movies, wants to eat princess food, and color princess pictures! As you can imagine, I want to gag at this point. I am pooped out with the princess thing, but I am going with it these days because I don't want to squelch any of my childrens' interests. Who knows, not allowing my daughter to dress up in a princess costume could result in her being in therapy later on in life. AND, since Colin is still naive when it comes to Halloween, I decided to dress him up as a wizard. He does have a hat, magic wand, and glasses (aspiring to be Harry Potter) but those items didn't stay on for longer than one can yell, "BOO."

I will be sure to post more after our trick or treating adventures next week . . .

Definitely Slacking . . .

I know . . . I have not written since Ella's first day of school. Although I know that plenty has occurred since that day in September, I can't really recall anything specific. I always feel really terrible when family and friends ask me what I have been up to lately. I usually pause, try to scan my brain for any kind of memory, and then reply with the same old comment, "Oh, we have been up to the same old thing." Thank goodness for cameras because at least the pictures remind me of what has happened in my life.

Matt celebrated his 35th birthday at the beginning of September. Here we are celebrating -
I certainly don't feel as though I am married to an older man. It was just today that I thought to myself how fortunate I am to have Matt as my husband, friend, and father of our kids. I definitely won the lottery!

Here is Colin's funny face, along with a mouthful of cake! I should also apologize to Colin ahead of time for putting a pink bib on him with the words 'Little Princess' on the front. Sorry Colin - one of the many consequences of having an older sister.


Another event that I was so very excited about was the planning and then successful execution of my best friend's baby shower. Christy lives in California and was traveling to NH to visit her family. Her mom and I planned a surprise shower for Christy. Here she is proudly displaying her beautiful belly along with the announcement that they are having a boy! I was so grateful for the time I spent with Christy, and I am so happy that all worked out for her shower. Christy is certainly one who deserved all the wonderful treats with which she was showered!


I guess I do have another excuse for not posting in a while. I forgot my camera at Christy's parent's house and just recently got it back. Of course, I didn't have the camera to capture our trip to the apple orchard or our trip, Ella's running race, or the pumpkin festival we went to a couple of weekends ago. There - I guess I do remember some of the things we have done. This past weekend we had impeccable fall weather - cool, crisp, and still some warmth radiating from the sun. We went to a playground Saturday morning to watch Ella on the monkey bars; she can now make it across the entire row.

Here we are at the playground. It was a pretty windy morning, so you can see the red noses and cheeks!


A few of my favorite things . . .