Our Spooky House

The excitement over Halloween began at our house quite a while ago, even before Laura's birthday. Laura preferred counting down to Halloween rather than her birthday, and seemed momentarily disappointed on her birthday when she learned it was still over 3 weeks until Halloween (that disappointment ended once she started receiving presents). Our conversations are filled with details about Halloween-what costume she will wear (Sleeping Beauty. No, Ariel. No, Sleeping Beauty. Yes. Sleeping Beauty. Probably). How much candy she will get (lots). Which houses she will trick-or-treat at (all of them). But one crucial detail was almost overlooked.

One day while in the bath Laura casually mentioned to the Army Man that our house was going to be very spooky this year. The Army Man, who has some weird notion that I am aware of everything going on in our lives and that I have a reason for doing everything the way I do, almost didn't mention this minor detail to me. Maybe he figured I was just about to pull out all the stops and he would come home from work one day to a full-on haunted house. Thankfully, he decided to ask me about my plans for making our house spooky and I promptly began to panic. I had no idea Laura had expectations of spookiness at our house. I thought she was too young and WAY too chicken for spookiness. I had no idea how to make our house spooky!

In the end, a trip to the Halloween store was enough to convince Laura she didn't really want too much spookiness. We settled on some cobwebs and pumpkin lights. I did pretty lackluster job of putting it all up, but whether because she recognized that her mother's pathetic attempt at decorating was all she was going to get, or because she was scared by the prospect of the screaming skeletons from the store, Laura humors me and tells me on a daily basis just how spooky our house is and that it is the best house in the neighborhood.

I think that it was these pumpkins in particular that really upped our spooky factor. I bet the neighborhood kids will run screaming from our house tomorrow night. Don't be embarrassed if a small scream escapes your mouth as you look at this picture.

It is finally time for all of my hard work to pay off. I'm ready to scare some kids tomorrow.

Homework

Did you know that kids have to do homework in preschool now? I didn't, yet my child insists night after night that she has homework she MUST do. I personally have no desire to stop her on her quest to do homework, and am already using her "homework" as a diversionary tactic when she asks to watch TV. "Have you finished your homework yet? No? Okay, then you'd better do that before we can watch anything." It's quite effective! Here's Laura hard at work last night.

And her finished product. I must say, the homework is really helping!

And the aftermath of the homework session.

The Army Man and I are taking bets as to when the love of school and homework will wear off. I'm sad that someday I won't be able to convince her that she needs to go to bed on time so she is allowed to go to school the next day.

Laura the Artist

I was looking through our pictures from this summer and found this one which displays Laura's fantastic drawing abilities. Needless to say, she did not inherit my lack of skill in this area. She's gotten even better but I don't have any other recent pictures to share. This drawing features Mommy on the left, Laura in the middle, and Daddy on the right. Please notice also the rendering on the very left of "Little Bug", Laura's sometimes playmate. He appeared in human form in this picture, for reasons unknown to Laura.

I Need To Watch What I Say

A little lesson in parenting that occured a few weeks ago:

I had a painting I needed to mail to California. I went off to the UPS store only to find out that they wanted over $80 to mail it!! I think not. So I bought a box from them and figured I would mail it on my own. I had the painting with me and the UPS worker measured it and sold me the box he felt would best fit my painting. The box he sold me was HUGE!! I couldn't even get the thing in my car. I had to jump up and down on it to fold it in half so I could shove it in my car, all the while listening to helpful questions and comments from the peanut gallery. At one point I may have muttered something along the lines of, "That guy is such a loser! Why did he give me such a big box!?!?"

Laura and I made it home, took the box out of the car, taped it together and put the painting inside to see how it fit. It fit alright, with about a foot to spare. The box was way too big! Laura took one look at the painting inside the box and very matter-of-factly said, "You're right Mommy. That guy was a loser."

Mark that down as Mommy needing to watch what she says before Laura starts telling everyone in her preschool class that they are losers.

Girls Who Run-Kind Of...

On the same day I started my own blog, I was invited to contribute to another blog! So now you can read about my family life here, and read about my running life on my friend Angela's blog. I'm proud to be a part of:

Girls Who Run-Kind Of....

Angela is a great friend, a fellow running Mommy, and an all around fun girl. Check her (and me) out at:

http://angelaconnor.blogspot.com/

Laura's Field Trip

Let's try a post with a picture! This is us on Laura's first preschoool field trip last week. We went to a pumpkin patch and even got to take a hay ride. Laura wasn't very impressed with the hay ride but had so much fun picking her pumpkin and playing with her friends. Too bad I ended the trip by dropping and breaking my digital camera!

My First Post

I'm finally giving in and starting a blog. Maybe this will be just the thing for keeping in touch with friends and family. Somehow though, I doubt my life is interesting enough to entertain the general public.