'The Celebrated Vegetable of Fall'-Land

Pumpkins are the child of Fall. I would say they are in close competition with colored leaves for taking over as the official mascot. It seems to be mandatory that we visit Pumpkinland. Sadly, when we went to pick out our pumpkins this year, it was too late in the day to go into Pumpkinland. (Sneaky mom may have planned it that way.) I had already attended with one of the kids and knew that another would be going soon, so I figured it would be okay. Plus, I was planning on taking the older girls to a bigger corn maze. (Yeah, that didn't happen.)

The girls still had fun picking out their pumpkins. Although for future reference I should remember that the small pumpkins rotted before we could carve them.

And a group shot.

Daisy was the kid I got to go with to Pumpkinland. I was assigned two girls, besides Daisy, to chaperone and I brought Pearl along for good measure. There were a lot of kids there that day. I think this is some of Daisy's class.

It was nice to have only a few kids to watch over. Naturally I lost half of them in the first five minutes. My girls decided they would skip the maze and head straight to the play area. (Fine by me.) But some other mother was confused about which way to go and sadly two of my girls followed her right into the maze instead of watching me. I turned around and realized the mistake two seconds too late. So much for avoiding the maze. Now I had to go in and find my recruits. It didn't take long to find them, especially since Daisy was crying her little heart out because she was 'lost.'

But it was nothing a few cutout pictures couldn't cure. I know it is hard to see them, but here is my group.

And Pearl joined in now and then.

Cute little pumpkins.

Definitely Thing 1 and Thing 2 at our house.

I'm glad I got to spend time with Daisy.

 And next year my goal is to really make it to a large cornmaze. The girls would love it.

I Voted

Is it just me, or do my eyes look really far apart in this picture?

Well, I have done my civic duty yet again. It wasn't as easy as usual. First, I went to the wrong place. Moving has taken me out of my previous voting district. Not to worry. They were very nice at the first (wrong) place. All my information was there, but they said I should still go to the other location. Fine.

The other (right) location was not far away, so Pearl and I traveled there. (Yes, please don't think that I ever really go anywhere without a child in tow. That is scheduled for October 2014 when last child enters pre-school. What a glorious day. But I get ahead of myself.)

Upon arriving at second (right) location, they tell me that I should have voted at the first (wrong) location, because they don't have any information on me. But could I please fill out a p_______ form. (Can't remember the name of it.) And any chance that I have some verification of my address? Well, no I don't. Unless you count my neighbor who just walked in. Hello neighbor. Want to vouch that you live near me?? Awkward.

They proceeded to give me a paper that you filled in with a marker. I didn't realize they still had those? It felt like grade school when someone passes you a note asking if you like them. Please check the box. [] Yes [] No.

The worst part is that I didn't really know the candidates or their platforms. I'm assuming they would both do a good job as mayor. I mentally counted how many times I had seen their names on spam in my mailbox and chose a winner. Not really. Well, sorta.

These are the things I don't tell my neighbor because she might judge me. I judge me. I promise to be more informed on the next election day.

The best part was getting an email when I arrived home (from the city soccer people) with the name of someone they recommend for city council. Too little, too late people. Try sending the email BEFORE voting day next time. I guess we all have room for improvement. Yes, myself more than others in this scenario.

But hey, I voted.

Kids Like to Par-teh

Even after telling June that we might do a Halloween party, I wanted to repent from the statement and tell her we ran out of time. But after finding some simple ideas on the internet, I decided to just do it. Really, kids are easy to please. They just want to get together and play.

We made it a costume party and I was pleased to see that all the kids dressed up. This was good because we had a costume contest.

As everyone arrived we had them play 'Don't Eat Pete' with candy corn. You can find a template for almost any holiday on the internet.

Then we had the kids stand in a circle and each stood in turn to tell what they were dressed as. They could each vote for their three favorite costumes. (But not their own.) Tyler tallied votes while we played 'Celebrity.' Actually, I just looked up the rules for 'Celebrity' and that is NOT what we played. Apparently I need to rename the game. Basically everyone gets a slip of paper and writes down a word in a category. Our category was anything to do with Halloween. Then someone reads each paper aloud once (we read them twice to be nice) and then each person takes turns guessing who wrote which word. If they guess correctly, that person joins their team. Since they were a LOT of kids, I paired them up in twos. That way we had less words to guess and each person had someone to help them guess. We had great words like, spider on a web, costumes, boo!, skeleton, mad scientist, soul, and eyeball soup. The kids were so excited every time they guessed correctly and incorporated people onto their team.

After that game we announced the winners of the costume contest. I only got a trophy for first place, but I think all the runners-up felt special.

Honorable Mention: Vanellope didn't arrive in time for the voting, but I thought she looked really cute.

5th Place:

4th Place:

3rd Place - a tie

2nd Place:

And 1st Place:

Then we gave the kids an option. We had all the ingredients on hand for Monster Cookies. (Thanks mom for the idea!!) But we also could play 'Mafia.' It was a good split. The girls from June's class opted to play Mafia.

And Robyn and Ivory's friends (they each invited a couple people) opted for Monster Cookies. Kami and Doug were super nice to man the kitchen while I killed people in the other room.

All their creations were super cute.

Half an hour to parties end, we stopped all games and threw the kids outside to play night games.

Honestly, this was probably their favorite part. They played 'Warden.' It is like tag with a flashlight. When the warden catches someone, he puts them in jail, but other players can get them out if the warden isn't looking. If the warden catches someone three times, they are 'it.' Or, you can just change the warden every so often. I didn't supervise at all. They did their own thing and seemed to really enjoy it. As parents arrived to retrieve children, we'd yell out back or wait for kids to go running by.

I believe the evening was a success. And we only had to take four jackets back to school on Monday. I'm glad my kids have good friends.

For the record, we had pictionary and bingo that we never even got to. Planning a party for kids doesn't have to be hard. You just need to be able to handle the high decibels.

Wait, I have an Eleven Year Old?

Sure do.

I know that isn't very old, but since June is my oldest, I feel it more on her birthdays. It doesn't make me feel old. (That is what the back aches and grey hairs do.) But I do feel more responsible. Have I taught her what she needs to know by this age? Have I improved my parenting at all? I may never know (or want to know) the answers to these questions. But I do know that she will keep getting older and I will keep loving her on her birthday. (And probably the other days as well.)

Eleven balloons is a LOT of balloons. (Imagine when she is 35.)

June requested something other than cake. (Yay. I don't really love cake.) I was very happy to make cheesecake, and even happier to try raspberry swirl cheesecake.

Getting ready to blow out the candles. (I think we are singing to her here.)

Thar she blows...

Then she opened gifts. I really liked her necklace from Grandma Dargan.

She is still so easy to please.

Her big gift (for which she forwent a friend party) was to go to Cedar City and see Peter and the Starcatcher. I kinda talked her into it, because I knew she would love it. And she did. Since I had already seen it, I sent her with Tyler. I think they had some good Daddy/daughter bonding.

Then I immediately felt bad for talking her out of a friend party, since she has such good friends in school, so I offered to throw a Halloween party for her. I'm not sure I taught her anything about sacrifice this time around, but the party was fun. Let's blog about that tomorrow, shall we?

June's 11 year Gallery

One day I took some pictures of June. But it was one of those strange days when lighting was off and nothing seemed to work. Almost every picture had terrible glare on her glasses and I couldn't get it to work right. So, I scrapped that session and gave it a go another day. I was much happier with the results the second time. Oddly, we left in a hurry and June didn't even change what she was wearing, but it is the real her. Sometimes when I dress them up too much, they don't feel natural.  June sure is growing up. I think she is a beautiful girl. Enjoy the pictures.

 
There were a couple that I did like from the first shoot that I will put on here. I think they show her personality well. Plus the last one is pure JUNE.

Love my first girl. She is such a joy in my life. And very loving. She never lets me go anywhere without giving me a kiss first. And I have a scheduled amount of time I have to spend tucking her in. She keeps track and if I miss, I have to make it up. Funny girl.

Good Morning November

Let's do this thing. I already know it will be a bit tricky to blog every day, but it certainly won't be for lack of content. My goal is to be all caught up by the end of this month. Totally doable.

Today is a flashback to summer. (Amazing what I find in my picture storage.) I remember Grandma called and said she had raspberries that needed harvesting.

I don't remember if it was convenient or not, but we went up to visit. I can't even recall if we did anything else while we were there, but these pictures attest that we did pick raspberries. (Well, at least June and Ivory did.)

Moxy was underfoot as well.

It was a beautiful day. Look how content.

These two did a great job.

Look at some of the spoils.

I do know that I thought about jam, but the raspberries never got that far. They were devoured too quickly. Yum. Thanks Grandma.