How did our oldest son's birthday & Halloween slip by?

Eeek!  Don't feel too neglected, blog-land...I've just been directing my writing energies in a different direction, Nanowrimo.  Today, at this exact second, I am caught up so I get to backtrack to much more important things, like my kids.

First and foremost, we have survived our first official teen year, our oldest child turned 14!  He just wanted to have cake and a movie with a couple of friends...so it was an easy birthday year from the parent point of view.  Did I mention he wanted to take his friends with to a movie with his family?  He hasn't disowned us yet.  We must be doing something right.

Once we cleared that hurdle it was on to Halloween.  This had to be my biggest cheater Halloween ever.  Most of our recycled costumes were in sad-sad shape...stained, holey, missing pieces, sizes no one has worn in a while, so we sprung for new ones this year, except for above mentioned 14 year old.  He just recycled his skeleton mask & gloves sitting in our driveway handing out candy...or eating it.  Probably both.  My costume creativity was spent on the girls.  They both wanted to be Hello Kitty.  Thing is, the store costumes looked like sized down teen ones...so instead of cute little girl, they looked more like He-lloooo Kitty.  That just wasn't going to work.  So they each got some new clothes fitting the theme, a set of ears w/ bow I found at Deals!, and a tail.  I bought this infinity scarf-muff thingy at K-mart and was going to butcher it into two tails w/ scissors and duct tape.  Grandma graciously offered her sewing services instead, and the end result was soooo cute!  Or maybe it's just my daughter that's cute, but I'm biased.

Courtesy of K-mart's 1/2 price costumes, our twelve year old was a ninja, our ten year old batman, and our kindie boy spidey.




 Even though Si guy is kid # 6, he was kid number one to get me to do anything for a kindergarten party.  Sugar-hyped cat herding w/ hovering nervous parents is just not my idea of a good time...so I dropped off my monster fingers for healthy snack, and excused myself to go home and get showered and dressed.  Yeah, Halloween was that kind of morning.  At least my PJ pants and sweatshirt matched.
   


I did return to the school in the afternoon for my 4th grade room parent duties.  It was, well, an interesting experience.  These kids have soooo much energy, and I don't.  Maybe it's because there's 16 boys and only 7 girls, or maybe I've been in the 5th & 6th grade rooms a little too long.  Movie titles are just too abstract for 4th grade Pictionary.  They liked making up the story and the glow-in-the-dark eyeball bouncy balls, so all wasn't lost.  One party down, two to go.

We did trick-or-treating differently this year too.  E1 & E2 went w/ a gaggle of older kids, so I just had the youngest three.  With the wonderful weather, it was probably the longest trick-or-treat treck we've ever taken, and I didn't even have to make meaningless threats after the first block or two.  The boys seemed to be having a good time too when we crossed their paths once.  I love that we live in a friendly neighborhood with gaggles of kids.  Another note.  Buy more candy next year.  We ran out before eight.

Since Halloween, we've had our oldest's last football game, and Nutcracker rehearsals for E1, and been selling Girl Scout cookies!  Anyone want some?  Y'all know where to find me.   Signing off to take Ms. P to her troop meeting tonight.