2-for-1 Friday

Can you believe it? Two blog posts in one day. Guess I'm feeling chatty or inspired or something. It's been a bit since I've done a Friday Fragments post and I'm kind of missing Mrs. 4444s and all the friends I encounter via Friday Fragments so let's not waste any more time.

Halloween was fun -- how can endless flowing candy be otherwise? Robbie went as an Angry Bird (of course -- his latest obsession). Charlie went as a cereal killer. I made the hat myself with spray adhesive. I think I might be in love with spray adhesive. I'm tempted to use it to put the patches on Robbie's Cub Scout uniform.

Robbie was insistent that he carry a Nerf gun as part of his Angry Bird ensemble. Then he would walk up to the door of each house and say "Trick or treat. I'm just a Angry Bird...wif a gun." It was so funny. As we walked through the neighborhood, people would say "Look! An Angry Bird," to which Robbie would shout  while raising his hand in the air "wif a gun!"

We're 4 days into November already and I don't even have my Christmas shopping spreadsheet created yet. What's happening to me? This year instead of shopping in Cleveland, my mom, sisters and I are shopping here in Indy. I'm going to really try to make most of my purchases from independent stores and avoid the big box retailers as much as possible.

I'm still totally loving my green El Naturalista shoes. Look how nice they went with the mammogram robe I got at the breast center today! (It was the same soft, cozy robe I had last year too.) When the tech led me to the changing room, she offered hangers that I could use to hang my clothes up on. I thought it best not to say "Oh, that's ok, I just picked these clothes up off my bedroom floor 30 minutes ago."


How would you love to not have to cook Thanksgiving dinner, but still get to eat all the yummy deliciousness? FitCity Indianapolis and Avec Moi are giving away a free, healthy and still tasty Thanksgiving dinner for 8. If you're in the area and want to enter -- or if you live far away and want to enter and bring the meal to my house to eat -- visit the FitCity Facebook page.


Mike is wrapping up week 2 of the new job. He likes it, but its a transition for all of us. That's a whole 'nother blog post. So please come back to read again later. In the meantime, go visit Mrs. 4444s and all of the other Friday Fragmenters.

My love/hate relationship with Halloween

Things I hate about Halloween:

1. Gross, bloody costumes
2. People jumping out at you from the dark when you go up to their house to trick-or-treat
3. Carving pumpkins. It always sounds like fun, but it's a big mess and the kids lose interest after 10 or 15 minutes.
4. Perfect mom types who send homemade popcorn balls and cutesy little perfectly iced jack-o-lantern cookies to school
5. Those same moms who whip up elaborately sewn costumes like it's no big deal
6. Haunted houses. If I wanted to lose my breath and wet my pants, I'd drink a Biggie Diet Coke and go for a run.
7. Kids way too big for trick-or-treating ringing my doorbell anyway
8. Stupid candy like Dots and Dum Dum suckers
9. All the television channels being dominated by scary movies

Things I love about Halloween:

1. Vanilla Tootsie Rolls -- best when twisted together with the chocolate
2. Preschool Halloween songs -- "5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate..."
3. Friendly ghost and smiley witch decorations
4. Other people's fabulously carved jack-o-lanterns
5. Candy corn and peanuts or mallowcreme pumpkins all by themselves
6. The Today Show costume reveal
7. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"
8. Answering the door for trick-or-treaters (appropriately aged) 
9. Clever and creative costumes -- check out the great one below

This is a girl who goes to our church:

Can you guess what she is? 

Gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe! Isn't that great? Here's what her mom said about how they put it together:

We got the pink clothes from goodwill, and then hot glue gunned the shoe to a headband. Easy peasy. If you didn't want to buy costume giant shoes, you could blow up photos of shoes and paste them to foam core board and then hot glue those to a hat, hoodie, or headband.

A dash of this, a pinch of that

It's Friday (well, in 45 minutes it will be) and I've got all these little dashes and pinches of info floating around my head, which perfectly lend themselves to Mrs. 4444s Friday Fragments.

Carrying on with the cooking theme, you can win an e-book about once a month holiday cooking at 4tunate, a blog by a mom with 4 of the most adorable little boy quadruplets ever. I seriously should do once a month cooking because I pretty much do my big shopping just once each month. Maybe I'll add it to my list of non-resolutions for 2011.

Thank you so much to all of you who left thoughtful responses to my "Impatient Follower" post. It really meant a lot to me that you would take so much time to  respond with such understanding and compassion.

Can I just say that I am SO OVER Halloween? First, there was Annie's haunted acres debacle. You were all so kind in your responses, but I got the idea that many of you consider me a mean ol' mom for suggesting that she go back in there and harrumphing around that her deathly fear of getting dismantled by a chainsaw wielding clown was ruining my evening plans. Then Robbie caught a glimpse of a show on TV about zombies, so he's been up twice tonight crying. Hope he gets used to it b/c I'm going to be a zombie if I don't get some sleep. Finally, Charlie said he keeps trying to go to sleep, but instead keeps seeing scary people when he closes his eyes. Whatever happened to those cute, sweet Halloweens where little boys dressed up as firemen or non-bloodied football players and little girls dropped sparkly glitter from their tutus as they bounced up the steps of the porch in search of candy?

We took a little trip up the road for the kids' Fall Break and left the dog with some friends. I told them that if she gets out, just open the car door and ask if she wants to go for a ride. She got out. They opened the car door. Worked like a charm. Crazy, bad dog. 

I saw the best billboard ever today. It's an advertisement for a hospital's maternity services, but it announces the names, birthdates and birth weights of every baby born at the hospital. Isn't that genius?! Check it out here:

Note: this is just a file pic. I couldn't get a good shot from my car.

Ok. Falling asleep at the keyboard here. Guess that's as good a reason as any to sign off. Have a terrific weekend!

Who's angry now?

There's a 99-cent game on the iPhone called "Angry Birds." A bunch of green pigs tried to steal the birds' eggs and the birds are out for revenge. So they slingshot themselves (well, you slingshot them) into structures where the pigs are hiding in an attempt to get rid of the pigs once and for all. 

My boys love this game. Robbie especially is obsessed with Angry Birds. For the past month, he has been telling everyone that he's going to be an angry bird for Halloween. Specifically, he wanted to be the red angry bird. Unfortunately, despite the game's popularity -- it was the #1 downloaded app for a long time -- there is no angry bird costume in any store. 

So Mike and I thought about it and decided that we could use a red bean bag chair to create the round red body of Robbie's new favorite character. Too bad we recently got rid of one. So we bought a new giant red bean bag and after school today I went to work creating Robbie's angry bird costume. 

First, Annie helped me empty all the styrofoam pellets out of the bean bag and into a trash bag. That's how I learned that one bean bag chair can hold 39 gallons of pellets. Unfortunately, not all of those 39 gallons ended up in the garbage bag. If I had to guess, I'd say about 2-1/2 gallons spilled out onto my kitchen floor -- and quickly made their way to the dining room, the living room and who knows where else?

Once the bean bag was emptied, I cut a circle out of the base of the bag for Robbie's head. Then we slid the open zippered end of the bag over his body and popped his head through the hole I'd cut. I guestimated where to cut armholes and soon enough, he was wearing the bean bag. But the bean bag hung from Robbie's shoulders like a sack. It was time to plump it up, giving it the signature rotund look of the red angry bird.

I decided to stuff the costume with bedsheets. Six bedsheets later, Robbie looked a little like the angry bird he wanted and a whole lot like a pear-shaped apple. He wasn't at all convinced with the costume, but I told him to wait until we got his beak made. I made the beak from a yellow folder, cutting it to size and rolling it kind of like a party hat.

By the time I got the yarn taped to the beak to tie around his head, Robbie was starting to complain that the costume was too heavy, that he couldn't run in it, and that it was "too fat."

In fact, what he actually said was "Great...now I look like a fat, sad, angry bird!" 

A few minutes later, he declared that he didn't want to be an angry bird for Halloween anymore. What?! After hearing for weeks that he wanted to be an angry bird? After I tried to talk him into something a little easier to come up with ? After we spent $20 on the bean bag chair, then proceeded to cut it up so it can not  be re-used for its original purpose? 

"I think I'll just be Spiderman." 

If I'd had a mirror in front of me at that moment, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who would have looked like an angry bird.

Scary thought

Halloween is only 17 days away! Usually by now, my kids have their costumes all ready to go. This year, we're getting a little slower start.

Robbie is all set. He's going to be a pirate.

I bought the costume on ridiculous clearance last year, kept it hidden in my closet and got it out just a few days ago. It was a pretty perfect fit and he was thrilled. So one kid down.

Annie knows what she wants to be -- a ninja. But I don't have any idea what that means in terms of costume, thought I'm pretty sure a (fake) sword is involved. I know I could probably just go buy a ninja costume, but I'd much rather go the cheap route and pull it together with stuff we have as home.

Charlie isn't sure. First, he said he wanted to be Michael Jackson. Hmmm...not so sure I'm crazy about that. Wonder if we could do a humorous take on the "King of Pop?" Like make a costume out of Diet Coke boxes and stick a crown on his head. His other choice is Danny from the movie "Grease." That's a possibility. Jeans and a white t-shirt. Wonder if I could find a small black leather-ish jacket at the Goodwill?

As for me, I'll just go as a Mom. I used to have a cute little Halloween sweater that I would wear for the festivities. But it's been so blasted hot here in late October the past few years, that the mere thought of putting on the sweater made me sweat. So I gave it away.

Do your kids trick-or-treat? What are they going as this year? What do you do with all that candy?

Over at the Fit City Moms Blog, I posted details about the Great Halloween Candy Buy-Back that we've done in our house for a few years. Check it out and leave a comment there about whether or not you think your kids would go for it.

The family that is awake together...

...will probably be crabby together tomorrow. It's 12:47am and everyone but Annie and Dungy is awake. Seems like insomnia must be a genetic trait in our house.

I'm awake because I fell asleep in the bathtub earlier and got a little re-charge, until I awoke in extreme neck/shoulder pain, which is probably a good thing so I didn't drown. So now I'm finishing up some work while catching up on my DVRed shows.

Mike just emerged from the basement, where he was doing something in his office. Maybe work. Maybe watching videos recently resurrected from his high school days and uploaded to Facebook.

Charlie had a bad dream about falling off a cliff and woke up screaming. I felt bad for him -- he was really scared when I got up to him.

And Robbie is awake for some unknown reason. Maybe Charlie's screams woke him? At any rate, he's awake too, having had his own six hour re-charge.

Right now, this is feeling like a 3am night. As in that's about the time it seems I'll be shutting down for the night. This is not a new issue for me. I am generally fairly nocturnal.

Fortunately, tomorrow is Halloween, so there will be enough sugar around to keep me -- and the rest of the family -- raring to go.