Happy Halloween!

This is the last Halloween post. I promise! Here's Clara in her Halloween getup from Aunt Linsey and Aunt Tanya. Her shirt says it all, doesn't it?



And here she is playing with play-doh in her chilly 76 degree house.



Daddy wins the Halloween photo contest. Little booger actually flashed a smile for him.



I dug one of my old costumes out of a trunk to go trick or treating in. I think this one was from 2000.



Here's Clara's first house ever to treat or treat at. Whenever someone came to the door and cracked it open, she'd open it the rest of the way and walk in like she owned the place.

This is our neighbor Eric. He was trying to get her to roar like a lion here. One neighbor came to the door dressed like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. Her costume was perfect. I should've taken a picture of her.



Inspecting the booty. We only went to 6 houses and still came home with all of this. At one of our neighbors' house, they had a ziploc full of cookies and a treat bag filled with candy ready for Clara.

Clara enjoyed Halloween and don't be surprised if she comes up to you, puts her hand out and says "Treat!" next time she sees you.



I forgot to leave you with a peek of last year's costume. She loved my costume pick.

The Evening in Pictures

Glenn, Becky and Leah came over for some dinner and caramel apple making. I tried this caramel apple recipe last year and it was awesome so I had to do it again. These aren't the unwrap-the-caramels-and-melt-them caramel apples. No sir-ee. Those kind of apples are an affront to my tastebuds. These were made with dark corn syrup, dark brown sugar, and molasses, among other things. These are the caramel apples those other "caramel" apples all want to be like.

We actually ran out of apples so I raided our refrigerator and came up with a few more. Then we went in search of more things to caramelize. It was agreed by all that anything is better dipped in caramel, although pringles kinda stuck to the wax paper and the caramel slid off the bananas.

She almost tried the dog treat. I'm surprised she didn't. She did eat her share of caramel and white chocolate this evening. Oh and birthday cake. I did a practice cake since my culinary endeavors never turn out quite as expected. Surprisingly, my cake baking and icing skills rock! She ate a ton of icing while I was decorating it. She kept holding out a finger for me to squirt some on. The girl has consumed more sugar in the past few days than she has the previous month.

The finished product. Yummmmy!

The girls and their apples. Turns out apples dipped in caramel has been Becky's craving, so she got to take home the extra caramel. Good enough to eat with a spoon.

After the apple making was over, we moved the party into the living room where the girls enjoyed the Glenn and Becky jungle gym.

And that was our evening. Good times with good friends!

Clara Things

Just thought I should jot down a few of the things that Clara's been up to lately.

-- I was trying on a brown sweatshirt in Kohl's last week and I asked her, "So, what do you think?", to which she replied, "Curious George, oo oo oo". Brutal!

-- Friday night we had dinner with Glenn and Becky. We hadn't seen Becky and Leah in almost two weeks, so when Becky came into view, Clara started running to her, arms wide shouting "Becky!" Becky squatted down, ready to embrace. Before she got to her though, Clara's BFF, Leah, stepped out of the car. Clara immediately switched gears and started running to Leah shouting "Eeah!", forgetting all about the impending hug with Becky. Man, she's a meanie.

-- While waiting to be seated at the restaraunt, Becky overheard the following conversation:
Leah: "Clara, can you say quesadilla?
Clara: "a;lkdjfopeintiafji"
Leah: "no, que-sa-di-lla"
Clara: ";lasidur;hto;ifl"
Leah: "NO, QUE-SA-DI-LLA"
Clara: "Mmmmmmmm"

-- And then during dinner, she was putting on a show for us. We told her to make a happy face and she would do her signature scrunched up nose, squinty-eyed grin. Then we told her to make a sad face and she could completely wipe the grin off of her face in one second flat and give us this hilarious frown. She could do it without cracking a smile even with everyone at the table rolling. She did it over and over and over. I wish I had it on tape because she hasn't done it as well since.

-- I think she may have said her first sentences also but they haven't been real clear, so it could very well be all in my mind. She pointed to a star on Chris' shirt and said, "Daddy has a star." I think she said "Daddy go to work" also. She's probably talking in sentences more than I realize, just not clear enough for me to be able to decipher quite yet.

-- She's been behaving better lately. Thank goodness! I'm guessing the really bad phase was just from her being sick and I think these molars are going to continue to give us trouble. She's been having problems going to bed lately and I wonder if it's the teeth also. She just cries and cries and we have to go in there 3 or 4 times to console her because she gets so worked up. Several times she's come out of her room carrying her blanket saying "blanket" and pointing at it, but I can't tell what's wrong. I tried giving her a different blanket tonight and she freaked out, kicking and screaming. Oh well, I guess she'll eventually get back to normal.

Halloween Fun

Fall is my favorite time of year. Pumpkin patches, Halloween carnivals, treak or treating, costumes, I love it all. Yesterday we partied all day. After church, we went to the Halloween carnival at Glenn's parents' church.

Clara rode a pony for the first time. I was a little surprised she wanted to since she wanted nothing to do with the carousel animals at the zoo. I was sure she'd throw a fit halfway through, but she did great. I guess she just doesn't like fake animals with their hollow stares right now. She loved the pony and neighed and said horse the entire time.

We had a hotdog for lunch and then enjoyed some cotton candy. We left not long after because we needed to get home for a nap before party number two.

Party number two was at a park with other families from church with young kids. Here's Leah the cowgirl riding Pepsi and Raggedy Ann who at this point had ditched the hair. Pepsi was a little tired.

Poor Pepsi. I don't think he wanted to go down the slide. I'm afraid he may have to be put down after all of the Halloween festivities.

Clara is munching on a chocolate covered pretzel here. This was preceded by a grape sno cone and a marshmallow covered in icing. And dinner consisted of chips, Dr. Pepper and a slice of apple. Man, I love Halloween! I think Clara's a fan, too. (In case you're wondering about the makeup, Clara did have painted on eyelashes, pink cheeks and a red triangle nose just like Raggedy Ann, but it didn't last long.)

We hung out at Glenn and Becky's for awhile and watched 1408 after we put the girls to bed. I was surprised Clara went to sleep in a crib in someone else's house while everyone else stayed up. I was the pessimist in the crowd and thought for sure it wasn't going to happen. I guess she was pretty tuckered out after all the fun.

Pumpkin Carving and Other Fun

Clara and I carved our pumpkin today. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the icky stuff inside, but she did enjoy putting Jack's hat on and off.

We also brushed Max who is in the process of blowing his coat. In case that's a new phrase for some of you, it means that he's shedding his undercoat. I've had tufts of fur all over the house for several days now, so I finally broke down and brushed him. It was nasty. The undercoat is so thin and fine that it just got caught in the wind and was stuck to Clara and I both. Here he is before. He's usually all black. The white you see is all loose fur that's stuck.

And on a completely different subject--Since Chris gets home a little later than he used to and I don't have him to watch Clara while I cook, I've started to get frustrated with her pulling on my pant leg the entire time. I like to have dinner ready when Chris gets home or else I feel like the entire evening is taken up with cooking and cleaning up. So I decided a few nights ago to let Clara help me cook to see if that kept her entertained. Lo and behold, she loves it.

I had heard that kids love to help cook and that they also are more apt to eat something that they've helped with. I thought Clara was a little too young, but apparently not. She ate two sticks of raw zuchinni, which she's never touched before and she wanted very badly to eat the onion and garlic. She kept calling the garlic clove a banana. I did give her a little taste of the oinion but needless to say, she wasn't too fond of it. The point is that she wanted to try it; normally she doesn't want to have anything to do with a new food.

She's stood on the chair and watched me cook three meals now. She plays with the peels and loves rubbing her hands in the flour. She pours things into the pot and is an awesome stirrer. And as an added bonus, I'm forced to clean up as I go so she doesn't make too much of a mess. It's a win win situation. We'll see how long the enthusiasm lasts. Here she is helping Mommy make enchiladas.

Why Do I Bother?

I thought I'd be domestic today and make some pumpkin bread to go along with the temperature drop. I had everything mixed together except for the spices. I go to add the allspice and see that I only have whole allspice that I bought last year for apple cider.

So, being the idiot that I am, I thought, "I can just grind it up really well." I did just that but won't go into specifics on the mechanics of grinding up allspice without the use of a mortar and pestle. It's a tad bit embarrassing to say the least. Anyhow, I got it pretty darn finely ground. Or so I thought. I even put less than it asked for just in case it was too much.

It came out of the oven right as dinner was ready, so we had nice, hot pumpkin bread for dessert. I took a bite and had this weird sensation on my lips. It's really hard to describe but felt a bit like when you bite into a piece of black pepper and there's a spice explosion. (Those who are not super tasters like myself may not know of this phenomenon.) Chris says that doesn't happen to him and he makes fun of me because I'm of the opionion that I'm a supertaster. Seriously, I didn't make it up, google it. There I go again, completely off topic.

It was the second bite before I figured out what the problem was. Clara and Chris were happily eating theirs without incident. Chris finally got an explosive bite, but it was awhile before Clara did. When she did though she made a pretty awesome face and then spit it out.

So I wasted an hour of my time making nasty, unedible pumpkin bread. Why didn't I just leave out the allspice? No idea. It already had nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, so I'm sure it would've been fine or at the very least, edible. Really and truly, I had absolutely no idea how potent allspice it. If you ever want a good dare to give someone, have them eat an allspice ball. Or a spoonful of cinnamon. Did you know it's impossible to eat a spoonful of cinnamon?

Morning Stroll

Clara and I decided to go for a stroll before breakfast.

Pumpkin Patch

We hit the pumpkin patch this afternoon. Chris woke up still feeling pretty icky (he's always worse in the mornings), but by afteroon he had perked up enough to join us on our pumpkin pickin' outing. By the time we got there, there were slim pickins' in the pumpkin patch, or more accurately, pumpkin piles. We ended up not getting one and plan on getting a boring old grocery store one to carve.

When we arrived, Clara made a beeline for an albino pumpkin, picked it up and was ready to go. Uh, no. We didn't just spend $6.00 to get in here for you to pick some mutant pumpkin. You need to shop around a bit more. We steered her in the direction of the piles of orange pumpkins, which by this time had been reduced to a single layer. She knew just what to do and posed like a pro.

Here we are waiting to ride the train. It was HOT! Way too hot to be in jeans. We actually caught a nice break though. When the train came in, it filled up except for one side of one car. There were probably 20 people still ahead of us in line, but no one was getting on. We figured out they were two big groups, so we got to go ahead of them. Thank goodness! I was melting.

Then we took a picture on some Turkey hay with Pooh the Pilgrim.

Then Clara spent some time looking for the perfect pumpkin. She sat on them to determine firmness, examined them up close for imperfections and rolled them, but alas, there were none that met her rigorous standards.

You expect me to pick one of these cruddy pumpkins?

But then she hit the jackpot when she came across some beauties in someone's wagon. Here she is trying to off with the good ones.

Score!!

Some creepy guy

One final posed picture for good measure.

I'll leave you with a 2006 pumpkin patch memory. Ahhh, isn't she a cutie? And look at that glorious pile.

Glutton for Punishment

I took Clara to a park on Friday to try and get some cute pictures of her. I know, I'm insane. What made me think she'd be any more compliant with my photographic requests a mere few days after our last attempt? Hope, pure and simple. I have nothing if I haven't got hope for a better tomorrow.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic. I know I'm expecting too much in terms of photo quality. I've spent a little too much time looking at real photographers' websites, longing to be able to capture such beautiful, simple pictures of my little one when the reality is, I'm not a photographer. Sigh. I wish I was, but I'm just not. And my cheapy little camera is never going to take the gorgeous pictures I so wish it would.

So...... I know these pictures aren't the terrible, horrible pictures I make them out to be. They're just not the pictures that I envision when I embark on a photoshoot. I did turn them to black and white because they don't seem as bad.

She wasn't in a smiling mood until her face was at least 75% covered up or she was swinging, like these next pictures. The last one was taken at Market Street.

Saturday, Chris woke up feeling pretty bad, so no pumpkin patch as we had planned. Instead, Clara and I loaded up the bike and trailer and hit the arboretum for a bike ride and play time at the playground. For various reasons, ok, more like one reason, I've decided I need to be more physically active. Clara loves to ride bikes, so it's the perfect venue for working up a bit of a sweat, plus now that the temps are a little more bearable, I'm enjoying it more.

Like I said, she loooves bicycles. Ours hang from the ceiling in the garage and she points up to them and says "bicycle" and "hat", which is what she calls her helmet, any time we go to get in the car. This was a much more picturesque view from the bike than our usual view of homes in our neighborhood.

And this last picture is of Clara having an apple while waiting for her lunch to be prepared. I'm not sure why she decided to eat it laying down, but the dogs sure liked the easy access. They were waiting like vultures for that apple to hit the floor rolling.

Oh, and one more thing. Heaven help us, Chris just started a blog. I'm not sure I want to post a link to it; I know his first post is making fun of me for drooling. Oh well, I can take it. It's www.juddsnuff.blogspot.com Real original, huh?