Snappies

It’s time for that inevitable end-of-the-month fill-in post with all the daily snapshots that fell through the cracks. AKA: snappies.

Favorite: golden warm fall afternoons. All month (until this week), we have had such deliciously sunny bask-worthy afternoons. PARK! We definitely skipped a few too many naps to take advantage of the last delicious sunshine of the year. Worth it.

Layne was in mulch heaven. I let her have at it, and she crawled all over the playground, destroying her white pants in the process. She sampled some mulch and eventually learned to spit it out quickly. Every now and then I picked her up and dragged her across the grass to wipe the accumulated mulch bits off of her.

The classic slide picture.

I was going for something like this relic of my own childhood:

But I didn’t have anyone to hold them at the top of the slide and down they went.

More favorites:

Sandwich hugs! (Jay: “I’m the jelly!”)

Tall tights

Giggly happy post-lunch sillies

Jay finished his farm puzzle completely by himself for the first time ever last week.

Attention-seekers

Dusty backyard playing

They call this little dusty nook their club.

Dusty kids

Sunrises.

As Anne Shirley said “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

Happy October. How is it almost November?

Carving

October is almost over already! You know what that means…FHE carving-time! Normally my tradition-bound soul craves a trip to the pumpkin patch and all the fall reveling that goes along with it. But that somehow didn’t happen this year. Plus, we had some produce of our own to use. We grew exactly one pumpkin in our garden this year. We did grow a couple vinefuls of mammoth zucchinis. So we harvested the biggest ones and went to work.

   

My minion carving had a removable eyeball because I ignored paltry pumpkin-carving rules and carved out the entire circle. Well, it was a zucchini (that turned conveniently orange) after all, so the pumpkin-carving rules didn’t completely apply, right?

Rose saw my minion pumpkin and wanted me to do one on hers too. So, Rose: 2-eyed minion-zucchini, Me: 1-eyed minion on an orange zucchini, Jay: Happy face on the only pumpkin (with help from Jeff), Jeff: creepy vampire face on the biggest greenest zucchini.

Jeff kept making faces so I soon despaired of getting a cute smiley family picture. As if that’s something new.

By the time I got Jeff to smile, Jay and Rose were done looking at the camera. Happy Halloween Week! Time to go raid our big Costco bag of trick-or-treater candy for some Reese’s (again).

Three motor stories

Cars. Engines. Zooming. Putting. Buckling. Revving. Here are our latest vehicle ventures.

1. THE STORY OF THE LITTLE BLACK CIVIC: Last Thursday, Jay, Rose, and I were driving through Prosser towards the park to meet up with friends for our weekly play group. At a 4-way stop intersection about two blocks away from the park, we were going at the same time another guy was going and there was a crunch as his bumper hit our fender. Both of us were going 10mph or less so it wasn’t a dangerous kind of crash, but IT WAS A CRASH, and I still feel slightly traumatized. Our friends came and took Jay and Rose over to the park while I dealt with the damage, and Jeff came to give me moral support (he had actually taken the day off work to catch up on grading and his online class homework). The police took about an HOUR to show up, even though the station was just around the corner. They had a communication issue, so we were standing around with one dented Civic and an undamaged small pickup truck for a lifetime. Make it end!

Finally it was all settled: the policeman gave us the option to skip the official police report so we took it. Then we gathered Jay and Rose and went home. Actually I stopped at Safeway for some milk on the way.

Over the next week, I had to explain every detail of the incident to both sides’ insurance people and we ended up being responsible for our damages (the other guy didn’t have any damages). It was stressful. I don’t recommend crashing. I’ve never even had a ticket of any kind. Boo!

Two weeks before my fender bender, my parents had generously offered to trade us their van for our car (yes, as in straight-up trade, as crazy as it sounds). When I got home from the crunchy ordeal, I called my Mom and informed her of The Issue. My parents were still game for the trade, and they kindly offered to take the Civic as-is, even with that blasted dent in the front! I felt SO LAME handing over damaged goods. I’ve had that car since 2005—almost 9 years—and never hurt the poor thing once. I feel so deeply grateful for my parents and their willing, nonchalant generosity to assist us in our vehicle needs.

2. THE STORY OF MY FIRST SOLO MOTOR SCOOTER RIDE: So, in order to legally swap vehicles, we had to change the names on both car’s titles. The fastest way to do this was for me to mail our car’s title to my parents. Then their car guy could work his magic. Friday afternoon, just as I was preparing to walk the envelope to the mailbox, Jeff came putting into the garage on his scooter. He handed me the mail and informed me that the mailman had already come that day. He then suggested eagerly that I hop on his scooter and zoom the one mile over to the post office and drop it in the mail there, which didn’t get picked up till 5pm.

In a surge of reckless abandon, I allowed Jeff to strap me into the pale pink helmet of his own choosing. He gave me a quick run-down on how to start and handle the scooter. I wheeled it into the street, started the engine, and away I went! It was terrifying! Like riding a bike without any effort, except going WAY faster. In the mile between our house and the post office, I negotiated one stop sign, one stop light, and one set of railroad tracks with various squeals, gasps, and moans.

On the journey, I went 10 miles per hour, maybe 12. I felt like I was going to tip over and scrape my elbows off on the road. I mean, I do that regularly while simply jogging on my own two feet, so on a big fast motorized scooter? (ok, it only goes 35mph) Help! At last I pulled in, mailed my letter in the blue box and started for home (right turn across “traffic!”). I got a teensy bit braver on the way home and pushed the scooter up to 15mph…then 18mph…then I decided I’d try going the speed limit—25mph—and twisted my hand grip a little more. When I hit 21mph, I had to back down to 15. I couldn’t do it. 15mph is my comfortable cruising speed when there’s nothing between my bare arms and the rough pavement.

When I passed a lady in a van pulling out of a school, she took one look at me and started cracking up. I guess my face was contorted into some exhilarated-terror-induced grimace. My pink helmet probably didn’t help my image. I felt like a teenager out for a joyride or something. Well, at last I made it home, parked the scooter in the garage, kickstand and all, clawed off my helmet (those straps and snaps are nightmares), and triumphantly entered the house. Jeff was so pleased that I had a. not killed myself and b. kind of sort of maybe had a little bit of a good time. In a terrifying sort of way.

3. THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY’S ARRIVAL: Yesterday, my Mom drove the 3 hours from her house to ours in her shiny Honda Odyssey van. Can you believe this? My Mom is a DEAR! Driving all that way to hand deliver her van to our doorstep, and then turning around 3 hours later and driving 3 more hours back home. While she was here, we chatted and read 15+ stories with Jay and Rose, ate some donuts that she brought (yum), and then traded keys. Then she drove off in our little long-lived Civic, leaving a gleaming, leather-seated, silvery GIANT in its place. Anything would feel enormous after nearly a decade of driving a Civic exclusively, but it feels LARGE, and I’ve only driven it from the driveway into the garage so far. I’m still trying to figure out what was more shocking: going from a 600 square foot apartment to a spacious house or from a Civic to an Odyssey. Right now, my vote is on the Odyssey.

The first time I pulled it into the garage, I thought for sure I was going to scrape and scratch all the shine off the sides and top! But it fit in just fine. It may take me a while to get a handle on all those enlarged blind spots though. This van looks too shiny and nice to be parked in our ramshackle ole garage with pink insulation strapped haphazardly to the old-school stiff garage doors.

All evening Jay was sorting through his feelings about trading our small car for a big one. He kept saying “Mommy, I’m happy and sad” in a slightly confused voice. I said that lots of times we do feel happy and sad when something changes, and it’s ok! He thought and thought about that. I wonder what his conclusions were. My conclusion is YAY! SPACE! Now I just need to get used to driving a vehicle with nearly the same floor space as our first apartment.

Ok, enough hemming and hawing…we need to GO SOMEWHERE!! As a final goodbye gift, one of our Civic’s back seatbelts stopped working last weekend, so all the days that Layne was over this week, we haven’t been able to go anywhere, except on foot. It’s SO time for an adventure!! I’m afraid we might have to settle for a trip to Walmart to admire the Star Wars toys for the hundredth time.

Paulvere

One of our current favorite books is the Ted Rand illustrated version of Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride. Like all of our faves, we read it a few times each week. We have fun trying to say it together because we White things enjoy a healthy memory challenge. While I was braiding Rose’s hair this morning…

I about died. Her VOICE! But I managed to grab the camera first.

WHERE THE WHITE THINGS ARE

We checked out a certain famous book from the library last week…

…and then lightning struck my brain. I neither have nor know how to use Photoshop, so bring on the improvisation! A little bit of unskilled Microsoft Word picture editing mixed with a free photo-tweaking program called Gimp plus an hour or two of experimentation yielded these beauties:

“Let the wild rumpus begin!”

The Scream Scram

We had a blast at the Howl N Scream Scram fun run yesterday. It was our third year in a row attending—one of our favorite October family traditions. Before we left, we took a quick family picture, shivering on our driveway. I managed to cram Jay’s and Rose’s costumes on top of their fleece jackets, so they looked a tad more padded than usual, but at least they were warm.

Then we loaded up the car and drove the 40 minutes to the Tri Cities for the race.

On our way to the race, we stopped at Target, where Jay used his hard-earned quarters to purchase his much-anticipated foam sword and shield. I was relieved that they still had them in stock, because he fell in love with them a few weeks ago. Jeff and I decided to give him his first jobs to earn money to buy that precious sword and shield. He Clorox wiped down 3 toilets, washed 2 windows, and cleaned 3 mirrors to pay the $3 for the sword-shield set. I tried having him sweep the crumbs under the kitchen counter, but that was too much for his limited 4-year-old coordination and we ended up with crumbs scattered far and wide. It’ll be so nice when Jay is old enough to do real CHORES like clean his own bathroom for free.

Ok, on to the race:

First came the costume judging.

Jay got a prize for his knight costume.

Then came the age 0-4 kids quarter mile out-and-back race. Jeff held Jay’s hand and I held Rose’s hand. Grandparents Dan and Leslie were our fan club.

All finishing kids got a Dum Dum lollipop and a green ribbon.

 

Then Jeff and I turned our kids over to their star Grandpa Dan and he watched them play on the playground while we ran the 5k.

I beat a bunch of kids by a few seconds. Whew! I have not been doing any speed training, just 30 minute jog-slogs with a heavy stroller a few times a week, so this speedy 5k was a bit of a shock to the system. I had shamefully inconsistent splits, even though the finishing time looked good [in case you don’t believe me, miles 1, 2, and 3.1 = 6:35, 7:24, 8:15]. But I survived, and so did Jeff, thankfully.

Running with my 5 foot long fleece braid was tricky. It had warmed up considerably outside by the time our race started at 10:15am, and all that fleece flopping around on my neck heated me UP. I held the braid bunched up in one hand for the whole race till the last 20 feet or so, when I decided to make a photo finish. I threw the braid high into the air and let it flow out behind me while I dash-gasped to the finish line. I was pleased with myself for having enough functioning brain cells to think of doing that in my oxygen-deprived state.

Jeff and I Adam and Eve’d this race: he was the first man finisher and I was the first woman finisher. A White sweep! Jeff’s official time was 17:32 and mine was 22:15.

It was a tiring morning. On the way home, we stopped by Costco for a box of those divine precooked frozen hamburgers, some hearty artisan buns, and a giant pumpkin pie. We wanted to go out to eat to complete our family fun outing, but we opted to get 6 delicious meals’ worth at Costco for less than one family meal at a restaurant. So we came home with our Costco spoils, heated up some deeply satisfying burgers with Brie cheese melting on them and then ate wedges of pumpkin pie buried in whipped cream for dessert. Laaaa!

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in post-race lethargy.

COSTUMES!

Yesterday was our favorite race of the year: the Howl n Scream Scram costume race. Yay! For the week leading up to the race, we scavenged around the house and concocted our costumes piece by piece. It was quite the project, but I enjoyed the challenge of making our costumes without buying anything. That’s how we did costumes when I was growing up—wing it! We would hunt down Dad’s old shirts and add a belt and a little face paint for a Halloween transformation.

This year Jay and Rose have really enjoyed matching with Jeff and I, so we knew what to do when it was costume time: 2 Rapunzels and 2 knights!

Like I said, I love a hearty homemade challenge. My favorite artistic medium is JUNK! For Jay’s costume, I used an old blue sheet for the tunic part and sewed the hem of an old white sheet onto the edges for the tunic’s border. I cut a shield shape out of that trusty white sheet (it’s got at least 9 lives—I used some of it to make Rose’s Princess Leia dress last year), printed a medieval dragon off of good ole Google, and traced it onto the white sheet with a permanent marker. Then I sewed the shield to the tunic and cut out a brown felt belt. Jay wore Rose’s black leggings under his tunic, and he loved them. After he took off his whole knight costume, he was running around in just the leggings and a t-shirt. His hips are SO tiny! He looked so cute and he wanted to wear them all day, but we had to explain to him that boys only wear leggings when they run or wear costumes, not with everyday clothes like girls. Plus, Rose only has so many pairs of pants and her wardrobe was compromised when Jay was using a pair of them.

The gray “chain mail” proved to be a challenge. Jay has no gray hooded sweatshirt, which would’ve been perfect and easy. SO, I checked around for some ideas and landed on this shockingly easy way to alter a big adult t-shirt down to a child’s size. This was so satisfyingly simple: just put a kid shirt on top of the XL shirt and trace the underside of the arms and down the sides of the shirt. Cut that L-shape out on each side and sew along the open edges. BOOM, kid-sized extra long shirt. I added a very badly-designed cowl-style neck-hood to Jay’s gray chain mail t-shirt, using fabric cut from the bottom of the shirt. I wrapped an ice cream bucket in a space blanket for Jay’s helmet.

As for Rose-punzel, she wore her fleece Rapunzel hat-hair and I did the same adult-shirt-shrinking technique on an old stretchy purple shirt of mine that I’ve had in the scrap box for years.

There it is, The Purple Shirt of Wonder, back in 2007. [I built a fort over our tiny bed in the Pad at SVU for fun one day]

Anyways, for Rose’s Rapunzel dress I took in the purple shirt and shortened the sleeves. I sewed the extra fabric cut from the sleeves onto the bottom of the dress to make it longer. Then I used that ever-handy white sheet to make a ruffle at the bottom. I used the last of my pretty slip lace for the cuffs and neckline lace. I kept making stupid sewing mistakes like sewing right sides to wrong sides, etc, so this project took far longer than I wanted it too. I had to spend a few days recovering from it before moving on to my own costume.

For my Rapunzel hair, we didn’t have enough yellow fleece for another hat for my head, so I improvised by sewing a strip of elastic into a headband and stitching the rest of the yellow fleece to the back, fringing it, and braiding the pieces. Then I loosely hand-sewed a few sequins to the front of the ugly white elastic to make it look like a crown.

To convert an every day running shirt into a Rapunzel-esque bodice, I zigzagged a ribbon up the front of my pink shirt and pinned it from behind (to avoid more sewing).

This plus pink shorts and my fleece “wig” = Shainapunzel.

I taped a space blanket onto Jeff’s head till it molded into a helmet shape. It made a very warm hat. I drew a picture of a unicorn (Jeff’s animal of choice) onto a shield and Jeff carefully colored it in and pinned it to his blue sheet scrap mini-tunic.

And that’s how we converted scraps and junk into our Halloween race costumes.