Halloween

Phil and I were excited to leave work a bit early and go to Pip's school for his Halloween parade.  So cute.  Here's Mrs. Ingemi and all her hooligans.  

After the parade, we went inside for a quick Halloween song.  Pip has been practicing it for a few days and was so happy to sing it to us he could barely sing through his smile.

Still without power, we could not trick or treat on our street.  So we took Susan up on her offer to trick or treat with them.  It's getting to be such a fun tradition, I'm thinking we may never do our place at all!  But seriously ... who trick or treats with a REAL snowman in the background!  This is not Canada!

There are some VERY spooky houses around here that do it up grand.  All of our kids were troopers and went to every house.  Pip was firm on insisting the houses did not scare him at all.  To buff up his bravery, he taunted them, saying they were stupid!  I think he meant this only with respect.

This barn in the back of the main house took the cake.  Truly frightening for even me, we went through quickly, announcing to the teenagers in cages with machetes that WE HAVE SMALL KIDS HERE.  Vivie insisted the barn was her favorite part of the night, but I think this might have been some sort of defensive mechanism to convince herself that she was fine with it.  Pip did ask me later -- when we were talking about how it was pretend -- if the ones saying they could not leave were pretending.  Yes!  Pretend!  Yikes ... hope we are not paying for that in therapy later.

The haul was heavy and required a full shoulder effort.

Candy!

Snow!

The predictions were true.  We got about 4 inches of heavy wet snow on the night of Oct 29th!  It was a beautiful winter wonderland.  Until all the tree branches came crashing down due to the weight on their still leaf-filled boughs.  We lost power just after putting the kids down after the MOS party.  Assuming it would be back on quickly, we did not panic.

Pip, Phil, and Vivie we up early the next day throwing snowballs and making snowmen.

Me and Meg bundled up in 3 solid layer and our hats.  Actually the first day was not to bad, but by Monday the power was still out (and at Biogen too!)  ... so by then it was nearing 52 at night and warming in the sun during the day.  I don't like 52 degrees!

Regardless of her layers, Meg worked on her crawling.  She's getting very good.  Here's a look at her progress lately.  This was a few days ago:

And here she is now:

Pip and Vivie really didn't mind the power outage all that much.  Although it took them a while to be convinced that I wasn't lying ... they really could NOT watch a video!  Or play Wii!  They just bundled up and played other things.  Here Pip entertained Meg with his laughing.  It's contagious!

By Monday morning, after returning from work unsuccessful, Phil was forced to make a fire and warm us up.  We were lucky that both the Goddard and Wood End had power, so the kids could go to school.  I called on Susan for a shower and joined the hoards at Starbucks to log in and work via their WiFi.  

Meg ... all bundled up!

Museum of Science Halloween Party

This year Katie and Jon graciously invited us to join them at the Museum of Science's Halloween party.  Phil and I removed our costumes (which figures .. would have been fine here ... lots of parents dressed up) and ignored the warnings of snow and the late hour.  We all rallied like champs and has a blast.

Pip was very excited to do the running lights, even though they have nothing to do with ghouls or ghosts!

Meg wore her turtle and checked out the scene.

Connor was the cutest Dalmation (to Chase's Fireman) you ever did see.

We made glow sticks!

And assembled skeletons using Pip was a guide.

And carefully held dry ice vapor bubbles!

And make glowing green glop.

And Pip even managed to smooth talk his way into getting an awesome piggy bank at the end of the night.

Thanks to Katie and Jon for the invite.  LOTS of fun ... and the benefit of going out with the kids is they are tuckered out and go right to bed and you are still home and done with everything by 9pm!

In costume!

Ok, so I really never get dressed up for Halloween these days.  But I always see lots of parents who do and I think to myself, we should really do that.  So this year we got an invite for a Halloween party through a family at Pip's kindergarten.  The invite was very encouraging to wear your costume, so much so that I assumed adults would be in costume too.

Nope.  Not even the hosts dressed up.

But I did.  And I made Phil dress up too.  All I can say was that being the guy from Up was a better choice than the Japanese geisha I was planning to be, before I become concerned that it was racially insensitive.  Phil was dressed up as a rugby player, so while he was clearly in costume, I think he felt kinda at home with the black eye.

Once I got over -- or rather, forced myself to ignore -- my embarrassment, I was able to have some fun.  Here I am with the kids doing the hokey pokey!

Meg thought I was pretty funny in those glasses and kept staring me down!

Biogen Idec Halloween Party

Biogen Idec always puts on a very nice family Halloween party.  We were excited to get dressed up and head over Thursday afternoon.  This is my friend and co-worker Phal, and her baby Mahi (the lady bug) with me and Meg.  Mahi was born only two days after Meg!

A family photo at the event!  Me and Phil are smiling nicely, not so much for the chilins.

Vivie very bravely went through the spooky room with Phil.  Pip was thinking about it but chickened out at the last minute and stayed with me.  We waited for them at the exit door ... where Pip pulled it open and when he saw Vivie, urged her to GET OUT VIVIE!  As soon as she saw the exit she came scurrying out as fast as those princess feet would take her!

Here's a good selection of the folks I work with and their kids!

Pip and Viv both enjoyed decorating their own cookies.  Black icing.  Nice.

Pumpkin Painting

To get a bit more life out of our pumpkins this year we decided to paint them rather than just carve them.  This turned out to be a good idea because we didn't have power the weekend of Halloween and were not in any state to undertake carving enterprises.

The painting was a two-day effort, started with me and finished with Phil later.  Pip worked carefully on a vampire motif, complete with two bats on either side of the main vampire.  He wanted to write "VAMPIRE PUMPKIN" on the top, but we didn't get that far.

Vivie's pumpkin was awash with thick layers of every color imaginable.  She wanted to write "MOST BEAUTIFUL HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN" on hers.  Also didn't get to do that either ... pumpkin was way to wet to allow for wording at the end of either painting night.

Last fire on the deck ...

Most likely this was the last time this season the chimenea will get used.  Pip had been eager for a long time to build a fire but when the opportunity would come, it seemed it was always just after a rain and our wood would be wet.  This evening we knew it would be a nice night for it and Pip had accumulated a good store of kindling and pine cones for the event.

Meg and I needed to be bundled up despite the warm flames.

Pip is the official overseer of the fire and takes every chance to throw in another pine cone and light his poke stick.  There were several close calls where the fun was nearly shut down due to lack of appropriate fire safety on his part.

Viv was smart enough to mostly keep her distance and eat her hot dog a few feet back.

Relaxing bubbles

This is not generally the sound I associate with bubbles.

http://youtu.be/3oYzNIOt4oY

Choices

With Meg about to crawl it's a whole new level of vigilance required around here.  Today's choice:  deadly scissors or deadly legos?

http://youtu.be/dZKZXgq7aGQ

Frat party or Five year olds?

You be the judge.

Dragon Meg

Halloween practice.

Paper is my favorite food

I'm not sure it's on the menu's of the Best of Boston restaurants yet, but Meg thinks paper is about the most fabulous entree.  I left her along for two seconds with Pip's goodie bag from Chase's birthday party and she was spitting up green tissue paper the rest of the day.

Uninterrupted

I think it is worth a blogpost to note that last night not one of my children woke for any reason in the night.  Not one.  Silent until 7:15 am when they all decided to get up simultaneously.  This never happens.  Karma Gods were with me.

Happy Birthday Chase

What a great party at the Children's Museum today.  Chase turned 3 this week and we were very happy to celebrate with him.  I was a bit nervous to go with all three kids and no Phil, but everything went just fine.  Perhaps getting lost multiple times at the Harvest Fair knocked some sense into Pip and Viv because they did not wander away from me and stuck to the room we were in until we agreed to leave as a group.

We got there a couple hours early to take advantage of the free admission.  Pip helped Vivie master the huge climber in the lobby.  She was so excited and we were all proud of her.  

We explored some more and even broke for a calm snack/lunch just before the party.  I emphasize calm.  Pip and Viv chose fruit and milk and I got a wrap.  They sat still and ate it like humans while Meg slept in the stroller.  I actually enjoyed my food.  This is no lie!!

It was time for the party and we braved face painting (so far, no swelling on Pip's part).  Viv got an ice cream come and a butterfly and Pip got a dragon and a snake.

The birthday boy!

 After the party we hung out in Peep's world for a long time.  Definitely their favorite place.  Vivie made low calorie water brownies:

http://youtu.be/ZAXwZg-ZFU8

And they both chipped in to make sand cookies:

http://youtu.be/hm1uiNQwh6A

Pip found this cool vest and kept trying to allude my attempts to get a picture!  To fast here!

Almost!

Gotcha!