October Dinner Calendar

October is my very favorite month of the entire year - the air becomes crisp, it's apple picking season, and it houses my favorite holiday of all - Halloween! I love Halloween the most because it is the most amount of fun for the least amount of effort. I love the excited feeling in the air as children prepare to trick or treat. I love watching the leaves on the mountains change colors. I love watching Fall enter in earnest.

My dear sweet friend, Paula, came over and taught me a great deal about sewing, and together we made both Frankie and Adam's costumes. Frankie has an amazing witch's costume, and Adam wanted to be a character from one of his favorite computer games - Bookworm Adventures. Here's a look at the original worm:

We modified an animal costume for the body, bought a pair of gold rimmed glasses, and a red bow tie. The resulting costume is fantastic, and would be very easy to convert to a frog next year, but I don't think Adam is having any of that. Thomas will be a monkey, because absolutely nothing fits his personality better. We'll have a motley crew of trick-or-treaters, but that's just one of the things that makes Halloween so fun.

For my neighbors, I always have hot apple cider for grown ups because it's usually fairly blustery out. For the kids, we get a great assortment of both candy and Halloween type toys, because not every kid can have candy. We also have Safe-t-pops for the smallest trick-or-treaters.

Oh, the dinner calender? Right - ok, here it is:


So, enjoy -- and feel free to email or ask for recipes. I'm always happy to provide them. That's about it for now. Until next time... (when our newest addition will be - gulp - almost here).

P.S. If anybody wants to come stay with us for a couple of weeks and help out after Max is born, we are totally open and have an enormous guest room! Any takers?

The return of dinner...

Well, the return of the dinner calendar anyway. It's not like we haven't eaten dinner all summer but I haven't been as diligent with my calendars. Summer is such a great time to be flexible, and with the combo of hot out and pregnant, my willingness to eat has been fairly unpredictable.

Now that the weather is (slowly) starting to cool down, I am once again making dinner plans. Now for the hard part -- sticking to them.

Here for your perusal is our September dinner calendar. Enjoy!

Here comes the .... groom?

So, it may seem like most of our posts are about Adam, but there's a reason for that - he's very funny. Thomas doesn't really have much to say these days beyond "hi, dada, and mama," and the things that Frankie says are typical of a teenage girl and well, I don't necessarily want to repeat those things ;-)! Adam's just at a magical age where the things that pop out of his mouth are very amusing. Even so, Adam recently shared with me that he can't wait to grow up.

"Mom," he said, "I can't wait to be 21." Gulp, I thought. Does my baby already want to know what it's like to drink? It couldn't be. "Why, Adam?" I asked with some trepidation. "Ummmmm," he hesitated with an embarrassed sound in his voice (adding to my concern). "Just tell Mommy. Why can you not wait to be 21?" (Please don't let him want to drink, please don't let him want to drink). "Ummmmmm..." he hesitated again. "Adam, just tell mommy." In sotto voce he said "So I can get married."

Who knew that my seven year old wanting to get MARRIED would be a relieving thought!!!

Back to School

Frankie is so excited to be back in school - really, no joke! She loves being there with her friends, her teachers, and her principal. She thrives being on schedule and knowing what to expect. I'd say weekends are actually harder for her than weekdays for the most part. She's also enjoying being back in dance. She's added Modern to her schedule, so she's dancing four hours each week. She really enjoys Modern because it's a little more free than regimented Pointe class.

Adam and I are enjoying homeschooling. I love watching him learn. He grasps concepts very quickly and I am often amazed by the things that come out of his mouth!

Last night, I had a dream about Frankie. I was telling her that in my dream (well, nightmare actually), she had put several strange piercings all over her face. I responded to the new undesirable decorations by telling her that they were coming out and that either I was going to remove the piercings, or she was. She told me to go ahead, and I did. Adam was in the car at the time, and piped up with "Did she really let you do that?" I said "Yes, in the dream she did." He responded with "Wow, that's so out of character."

I think he's the little character!

Thomas is enjoying life, as every busy one year old should. He claps, flirts, waves hello and says "hi." We know he understands the meaning of it because he only does it when he waves and we say hello or hi to him. He's very young to have learned a concept like this, but he doesn't seem to care that he's too young and learned it anyway.

Michael and I are looking forward to a four day weekend. We plan on spending the majority of our time getting cleaned up and organized. Although I can't say I'm looking forward to the labor, I am looking forward to the result!

That's all of the early September news. (After all, it's only the 1st day). Hope all is well with each of you.

Until next time...