Post-Halloween

The festivities are now over, but the decorations are still up and costume parts are probably still scattered around. I know for sure that the treat bags are still filled to the brim with candy and toys. We were lucky enough to enjoy Trick-or-Treating with 3 of our grandchildren this year. Ron and his oldest son, Terry, came home from their annual hunting trip to join us before heading back out into the woods.

After preschool, Callie and the boys met Jaylynn, Archer and me at the duck pond to burn off a little excess energy. We let them wear their costumes, hoping to get a few pictures of them as well. (We have to be kind of sneaky about photos these days since they generally do not want to pose for us.)

We played for a while. . . a dinosaur, pumpkin and baby cat.

Then, headed down to the water to feed the ducks my leftover hot dog buns.

BabyD2 was totally enchanted by the ducks and geese and chased them all over the place, hoping to hold one. Callie narrowly saved him from the water at least three times.

At some point, he also realized that we had snuck a tail onto his costume and he wasn't exactly thrilled about that.

Toddler D, however was ALL ABOUT HALLOWEEN this year.

We trick-or-treated at the Norton Art Gallery (before the crowds got too bad, I might add)

Then the parents took the kids to houses on our block, while Ron and I joined the neighbors around the annual Halloween Fire Pit, where we pass out massive amounts of sugar to kids that stop by.

It was such fun to get to experience Halloween through the eyes of these three little goblins!

Let's Dress Up - Halloween Costumes 2017

2017 has literally flown by. Here it is, the end of October and I have not even caught up on my posts from September! One of my favorite things about fall, besides the cooler, weather, changing colors, crunching leaves . . . .  Okay, let’s be real. I love almost everything about fall! But, one of the most fun things I do is to create Halloween costumes for each of our grandkids.  And this year is no exception.

We now have six grandchildren, ranging in ages from 11 years to 16 months.  For the first time since I’ve known him, Michael picked out a store-bought “morph suit” costume and I can’t wait to see him all dressed up.  But, each of the others had special requests that I was happy to comply with. First up was Adellelyn. I received this picture in a text and knew I needed to follow up with a Facetime consultation to be sure I could capture her vision.

Adellelyn had very specific instructions for her Blue Maccaw (from RIO) costume:

·      Feathers under her arms to be her wings using the boa below

·      Light aqua blue color

·      Tulle is too scratchy

·      Soft full skirt for tail feathers 

For some reason, I can't find any photos of the outfit while working on it--I could have sworn I took some.  :-(  While she added different pants for a book character day costume, you can get a glimpse of what I created in this picture:

Archer loves dinosaurs! Last year I made a fun triceratops costume from a pattern I found online, but this year he wanted to be a T Rex.  There aren’t lots of great tutorials or patterns for a T Rex, so with old episodes of “Project Runway” playing, I channeled my inner Tim Gunn and “made it work”.  I pretty much love the way it all turned out!

Toddler D has been talking about his costume for months: a pumpkin! He went to the fabric store with me and also requested that it be very soft, so soft he gets!

For comparison's sake, here is a picture of his daddy at about the same age.  :-)

His other request was that his baby brother be his pumpkin seed. Instead, I was able to negotiate with him to carry seeds and let BabyD2 have a different costume. I made a treat bag with felt seeds on the front, but he really wanted to carry real seeds, so I added a clear plastic pocket to the front to hold his real pumpkin seeds.

Silas didn’t quite understand what picking out a costume meant, so his parents and I decided to go with one of his favorite books:  Dragons Love Tacos.  Silas will be the dragon, Jana the taco and Rob will be the jar of spicy salsa.

One of my favorite features of Silas's dragon costume is the fact that I made slits on the inside for his hands, so that when he raises his hands, his wings soar a bit.  :-)

Of course, he discovered that they still don't let him actually fly, but I think he's okay with that. 

Last, but not least, is our tiniest grandson, BabyD2. He loves dogs and cats, so a black cat seemed like the natural choice for him.

Well, Halloween is just hours (or days) away, so I'd better hit the Publish button and move on. I can't wait to see all of our little goblins decked out for the holiday!

Hill Country

Ron's work has been relentless this year, with the installation and implementation of a new software system at each of the hospitals. He has not been able to take off any days for quite some time, so with a long Labor Day weekend looming, and a slight break before the nest installation begins, he was able to take off one day to make a 4-day weekend to visit his oldest son, Terry and family. Then Hurricane Harvey hit and suddenly traveling that far became questionable because of the shortage of gasoline. At the very last minute, after phone calls back and forth and a trip to buy gas cans and gasoline, we decided to go. I didn't take my DSLR with me, so all my pictures are from my phone.

Friday morning we loaded our suitcases and full gas cans in Ron's truck and hit the road. Along the way, we passed lots of emergency sign and vehicles. We stopped for a picnic along the way and to top off our gas tank when we saw stations with gas. Once we got past Waco, gas became more scarce, with most stations closed or only offering diesel.

We stopped at one point to get a better look at  some wildflowers that we'd seen growing alongside the road. While they appeared solid white from a distance, they were actually variegated green and white and were Snow-on-the-mountain. We learned the hard way that they can cause both skin and eye irritation.  Oops!

I took Archer one of the new car play mats I had stitched and he really loved it, playing with it at dinner, through the weekend and even sleeping with it!

It was such a nice, relaxing weekend with visits to tiny Ingram, lunch at Bridgette's Baskets and a visit to Stonehenge.  Wait!!  Stonehenge??? Yep! Who knew that you could find a 60% replica of Stonehenge? A bit weird, but kind of fun, too. And it was the perfect place to let Archer run around.

Terry and Jaylynn have just moved into a new home, and are remodeling parts of it. Ron was able to help assemble Archer's new "big-boy bed", which he LOVED!!!

Jaylynn is a runner, too, and Terry has just begun running, so we headed down to their River Trail on Sunday morning. The temperatures were in the low 60', and the scenery along the trail was great! We saw a bunch of deer wandering around eating their breakfast and wished we had a similar running trail in Shreveport. Of course, we would never get any PR's if we did since we stopped to look at the deer every time we saw some.

We spent the rest of the day just relaxing and playing which was nice for all of us.

Terry put some deer corn out along the road by their house in hopes of drawing out a few more deer. It worked for one buck, and the boys sure had fun watching for them.

Even though we spent a lot of time on the road, it was such a good time. Jaylynn and Terry were wonderful hosts and it was great to spend time with them in their new home.

Archer took this group photo of us.  Not bad for a 3-year-old!