OCD? Nah!

When she got started, I was a little worried that Holly was a bit OCD. But, as you can see, she started mixing up the colors a little.

 Cute, funny girl.

Sailing Away

Damon's been working on a new project, and it required the purchase of a remote-controlled sailboat.  Yes, required. I try not to get in the way. He does dishes. He bakes bread. He comes home from work at a very decent hour. And, as he reminds me, he "could be out drinking in some bar." So, if he wants to buy a sailboat every once in awhile, I'll be supportive.* 

The first Saturday in November was a lovely day with a light breeze, so he found a local park with a lake and we sent the boat out on its maiden McMillan voyage. (Maiden for McMillans since it is a used boat.)

Everyone got a turn steering.

We liked chasing the ducks.

After my turn (no photo of Mom, of course), I enjoyed sitting on a blanket on the shore, but the kids started wading in that chilly water. Adah didn't stop until she had built a little stick-and-rock fortress and was wet up to her bum.

Gunnar was pretty well soaked up to his waist, I believe. 

I don't know when I'll finally learn that if we go visit a body of water, my children WILL get wet. I should just bring extra clothes, no matter how cold it is or what other activities are on the agenda. They'll get wet.  I wasn't too happy about it, but they didn't mind, so I guess I shouldn't have either. I'm trying to mellow out and go with the flow...of water.

*If you really want to know more about Damon's latest endeavor, email or call him and ask about the Kinticky Project.

Halloween Costumes, Carnivals, and Candy

We had several opportunities to dress up for Halloween this year as there were parties at the children's school AND at our church. Add that to Halloween night and a grown-ups-only party another night, and we were just a bunch of Halloween party animals....

Well, there were two animals. One tiger:

And one pink kitty:

There was also one paper doll,

one hula dancer,

and a witch.

Damon finally and reluctantly agreed to wear a costume. He donned Adah's jellyfish hat from last year. It didn't seem to slow him down in the Jedi training course at our church Halloween carnival. He and Gunnar loved their "light saber" fight.

All the kids loved "bobbing" for donuts.

Adah got very good at it. She could pretty much just grab on and then wiggle the donut into her mouth all in one piece. I hate to think how many donuts she must have eaten to master that trick.

This was probably my favorite costume. You have to have seen the movie Cast Away for this excellent couple costume to make sense. 

After dinner and games inside the church, there was a Trunk-or-Treat in the parking lot where the kids got quite a haul of candy, resulting in this first round of floor candy sorting and swapping.

Round 2 came several nights later on the actual night of Halloween. Holly was tired out before the other kids were ready to finish, so she had her own sorting session in the living room with me while Damon finished Trick-or-Treating with the other kids. After having him away in Hawaii for Halloween last year, I was so happy to have him at home to help with costumes and Trick-or-Treating. (It also helped that I only had to attend one school's Halloween costume parade this year.)

Here are the girls with one of Adah's friends, who joined them for Trick-or-Treating. Gunnar was across the street at the neighbors' house for a little party at this point. I stayed home listening to Pandora's Halloween Family radio station and answering the door, while Damon and the kids Trick-or-Treated through the neighborhood, running into friends here and there. After last year's bust of a neighborhood Trick-or-Treating experience, this year was so much more fun.

Our final costume occasion was for an "After Life" post-Halloween party (on November 2nd). It was just for adults and "undead" dress was encouraged. Damon and I have fun coming up with clever costumes, and the scary part of Halloween has never really been our thing, so we didn't really want to dress up as zombies to go to this party. So....we got a little creative. Mummies are dead. Egyptians sometimes mummified their cats. 

Hence, Egyptian Cat Mummies:

Most of the people at the party got it...eventually. It usually took a little guessing. We thought our costumes were pretty great. Way more fun than zombies.

Happy Halloween!---just two months late.

Halloween Prep

Jack-o-Lantern Time!

We considered going to a pumpkin patch one weekend, but in our Silicon Valley location, that would have involved a bit of a drive. Instead we opted for a lazy Saturday afternoon at home and supermarket pumpkins.

Holly chose the "Cinderella" variety and the inside stuff stained our hands orange!

Maggie was a very serious pumpkin carver. She attempted a spider web and spider, but it didn't turn out as she wanted. You can see the rejected design in this photo as she works on the new Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc.) on the other side.

I don't have very many Halloween decorations--a few pumpkins, a witch, a cross stitch--so Gunnar took it upon himself to add to the decor. He drew a whole bunch of Halloween-themed pictures and hung his "museum" on the mantle. 

A Jack-o-Lantern and Frankenstein:

A black cat and a spider hanging from its web:

A ghost (saying "boo") and a gravestone:

A skeleton and his name decorated with spider webs:

Gunnar did such a great job on his drawings, and I thought it was so funny to see how he came up with all of the things to draw. He really covered the subject matter well, don't you think?

Paper Airplane Target Practice

We brought back one of our favorite family night activities a little while ago. Basically, everyone makes a paper airplane (little ones get help) and then gets one minute to throw their plane into the tunnel as many times as they can.

What follows is 6 minutes of crazy airplane throwing and retrieving and lots of laughing!

 

 

At least Holly kept her feet behind the line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now Showing: 11-Year-Old Adah

Somehow we now have an eleven-year-old in the house. She's made a great start to fifth grade in a new school and had a nice group of fun girls to invite over for her birthday party. 

She chose to repeat the movie-themed birthday party of a few years ago, but this time with a more "grown-up" movie than Tinkerbell. We borrowed a projector and set up the family room for true big-screen viewing of "Mirror Mirror."

The concessions stand was supplemented by pizza, carrots, apple slices, and drinks in the kitchen.

Adah really wanted a root beer cake for her birthday. She'd had root beer cookies and had heard of a root beer cake, but none of us had ever had one, and I'd certainly never made one. I asked advice of a friend (the source of the root beer cookies), scoured the Internet for recipes, and finally settled on a root-beer-extract-heavy (versus using actual root beer, as some recipes called for) concoction. The only way to make the brown cake fit the cinema theme was to make it the foundation for a "movie screen" with birthday wishes.

 

 

It turns out that Adah and I were about the only ones that liked the root beer cake. We think that most of the party guests were sugared out by the concessions stand, but even post-party, Damon declared the cake "weird" and opted to not eat it. Adah thought it was "awesome," so I guess that's what really counts.

Adah's birthday was on a Tuesday this year, and since she's now a big 5th grader and has homework every night, we had her party on the Saturday before the actual day so that everyone could really kick back and relax. That means that when Tuesday rolled around, it was time for more celebrating!!

We usually make the kids get all ready for school before opening presents, but Adah did get to open one early since I gave her this blue shirt and wanted her to be able to wear it. Then, after everyone was dressed and ready to go, we let Adah open her other gifts, which included a book and pens & pencils from Nana and Gumpin* and a little pillow sewn by Maggie. Then we sent her on a brief treasure hunt with directional clues through the house...

 

. . . until she found her NEW BIKE in the garage!! She was getting too tall for her old bike and now she's got her first bike with multiple gears and hand brakes, which have taken a little adjustment, but provide a much-improved ride.

Adah is a great daughter. We're so happy to have her as the big sister in our family since she has become very responsible and helpful. She can do dishes and clean up the whole kitchen (and willingly chooses that job when there's a list of chores to be done), cook spaghetti, get herself to and from piano lessons, make her own breakfast, and always gets her homework finished without being asked.  She's growing in her understanding and testimony of the gospel and it's so wonderful to see her insight when we discuss the scriptures or to hear her share something that she's prayed about.

We're proud of the young lady she's becoming. She's really growing up. One of the first things she said on the morning of her birthday was, "Only one year until I go to Young Women!!"**

*Grandma and Grandpa were at our house earlier in the month and brought presents then. They gave her a painting of a horse and a drawing book.

**Young Women is our church's program for girls aged 12-18.