Month: October 2006

Happy Halloween everyone. It was a cool balmy 70-ish degrees outside tonight when the fesitivities started. Julie made some great clam chowder, salad, dip, and all kinds of fun stuff. The dessert was some sort of free-for-all in the neighborhood. But I guess we made out OK.

Abigail was a cat, Grace was Dorothy, Lucy was TinkerBell, and Gwen was the old standby, the duck. Catherine, Mike and Annie, my parents, and Grandma Eslin came over to join the fun. My mother has always loved Halloween, so seeing our house decked out as it is did her heart good, I’m sure. We went Trick-or-Treating up and down the street. Lucy had some “slippers” (shoes) that were 3 sizes too big and kept falling off, so she was a little slow. I don’t think she minded much, as it just gave her yet another chance to eat a sucker. It was 9 at last count. I had to pry the bag out of her hand.

New pictures are up at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/ and to the right. Enjoy.

Tonight was the Fall Festival at the girls’ school, Marley Park. Abigail was a cat, Grace was Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz), Lucy was a different cat, and Gwenyth was the requisite duck. The PTA did all kinds of stuff for the carnival and the girls had a great time. Lucy literally ate about 8 suckers, 4 bags of M&M’s, etc. And that’s just the stuff I saw her eat. Every time I looked up, she was off begging the next person for some candy. We were kind of a side show there.

Grace won a prize for her costume. It was really cute. I’ll have some pictures up sometime after Halloween. We didn’t get any tonight. Abigail and Grace loved the cotton candy (as did Julie) and snow cones.

That’s all for now. I’m tired.

We got back tonight from a good break in Oceanside, CA. We stayed at the same place that Julie and I stayed at in June, but this time it was a 2 bedroom so we could lock the 3 girls in together. We went to the beach, had some good food, watched the sunset, went to the San Diego Zoo, played Mouse Trap, fed the fish, and all kinds of stuff. Julie’s sister, Lisa, and her family just happened to be in Oceanside at the same time — and even at the same place. I ran into Taylor at the beach the first morning we were there. So we were able to boogie board and party with them at the beach. We topped it off with an evening at Ruby’s at the end of the pier. Grace was especially excited to play with her new friend from St. George.

The weather was perfect — sunny when we needed it, and not so sunny when we didn’t. We drove all the way up to Knott’s Berry Farm on Friday. We got there around 12:30, and saw a sign that said the park closed at 5:30 for their haunted house thing. We decided against shelling out $140 or whatever it would have been for 5 hours of fun. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the rear of the van, but we all survived.

Saturday we woke up to find a lot of rain had fallen, but we headed out to the Zoo anyway. Once we got there it was nice and overcast throughout most of the day. We had a really good time. Gwenyth started feeling bad and had a fever most of the day and today on the way home.

We brought back lots of treasures from the beach. Grace got a few too many shells — some of them I found this morning had clams in them, so it was a bit of a stench when I got her collection ready to head home. The drive home wasn’t bad; we only stopped about 8 times for potty breaks. Plus Julie read to me from her “fix-your-husband” book collection. A fun trip, plus she had turned me into a kindler, gentler, more sensitive listener. Everyone wins.

New pictures are up. I’ll be labeling them when I can. http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/ It’s back to the grind tomorrow, and it should be quite a grind for the next month or so.

Happy Autumn.

Last night we met Ryan and Sheri Steele (the hip new bloggers) at Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek for some good times. If you’ve ever been out that way, it took about an hour or so to get to Rittenhouse Road, and then what seemed like another hour to get through 2 stop signs to the farm. Anyone who lives south of Rittenhouse is hurting.

Dial Corporation had their corporate party there last night, and it was the first weekend of their fall festival, so it was pretty crowded. Once we got our bearings about us and took Lucy to the bathroom 6 or 8 times things started to go well. We had a great time on all the stuff there. The swings, bees, slide, pig races, pumpkins, merry-go-round, go-carts, and everything else was fun. The food wasn’t the greatest and was a rip-off, so if you go I would do what you can to plan your meals elsewhere. Of course if you went anywhere else, you’d have to come back on Rittenhouse, so nevermind. I digress. We roasted marshmallows on the fire, got slushees, stuffed a scarecrow, and all kinds of fun stuff. The girls can’t stop talking about how much fun they had. Plus I have an as-yet faceless scarecrow on my front doorstep. They were closing down so we didn’t get a chance to paint a face on.

It was good to see Ryan and Sheri again. For whatever reason, their girls seem to love Lucy, so that takes a load off of me. She drives them crazy, I’m sure, but they’re very patient with her and she had a blast. Everyone seems to match up pretty well and they all have a good time.

We’re off to Oceanside on Wednesday, so look for those pictures in a week or so. For now, enjoy the ones from the farm.