Halloween '10

Last night was our ward Trunk-or-Treat. Typically, not too many of the adults dress in costume, but I always think it's fun to see the ones who do. The last couple of years I've made more of an effort to dress up... and this year called for new wigs for Aaron & I:

It took 36 bobby pins to get all my hair to stay put under that wig! Aaron & I both got our clothes at Goodwill (two different Goodwills); we had fun with this.

All four kids wore the same costumes as last year. I made the mummy, Hermione, and cat costumes last year so I wanted to make sure they got at least one more use! The kids were fine with repeating, but they will definitely be ready for something different next year.

What are YOU going to be for Halloween?

Fun in the nosebleed seats

Last Friday night was the last home preseason game for the Suns. As soon as I realized that, I realized that this would be the least expensive chance this season for us to take all the kids with us and go to a Suns game. I'm so glad I jumped online and checked out ticket prices; for this game I was able to find 6 seats in a row and paid only $38 total for them. Once the regular season starts this week, similar seats will sell for $20-$35 a piece.

A fun bonus was that my Mom was at the game (season ticket-holder) with my niece Brooklyn, whose birthday was that day. Partway through the game they took the LONG hike up to our cheap nosebleed seats and hung out with us; easy to do since there were plenty of empty seats up there! They ended up staying with us the rest of the time, which was fun and made the whole experience more entertaining for the kids.

Here's Mom with all the girls. You can tell in this picture how close we were to the very top of the arena... just a few rows from the ceiling.

Molly & Brooklyn, no doubt discussing basketball strategy:
The view from way up there... and this was with the camera zoomed in. Zoe took this picture; she wanted to take one of Steve Nash in action. Oh, and just for fun to contrast the view from my parents' seats, click here.

Lucy was extremely excited to be there! All the kids lasted through the late hour just great... up until the candy I'd brought ran out, that is.

Me & Noah:

Zoe & Aaron:

It was a fun night!

Halloween Craft

I got this idea from my sister Jamie, who made some of these with her friends. I bought a skein of black yarn, but I already had assorted pipe cleaners and googly eyes. I made one yesterday and then each of the kids made one today.

Super easy: just wrap a bunch of yarn around your hand (or fingers), pull it off and wrap the yarn around it (perpendicular-wise) several times and tie it tight. Then snip all the loops to make your "puff ball" and trim off any longer pieces you don't like. Shove 4 pipecleaners through it (it probably would've been easier to put the pipe cleaners in place before tying it tight) and bend to resemble legs. Glue some googly eyes, or buttons, or whatever, onto the face with tacky craft glue. If you want it to be a girl spider, tie a ribbon on it.

For the kids, I did the first step of wrapping the yarn and tying it off; then they did all the loop-snipping and I helped with the legs & eye-gluing. They played with them all afternoon; their favorite trick being to hide at the top of the stairs and hang a spider down onto any unsuspecting passers-by.

Fun, easy, cheap, cute!

School pictures

I think they turned out pretty well this year!

Isn't it refreshing to see a nice, normal smile on Noah?

(pardon the glare & reflection; photographing framed pictures behind glass is never a great idea...)

Spiral Curl

Some days, I think about cutting my hair. Drastically. It has, after all, been long nearly all my life (except for the unfortunate Dorothy Hamill 'do of '85). But then other days I actually take some time to fix it all pretty, and I think it's not so bad having it long. Today is one of those days.

A little adventure

This morning, I was on my way home from taking the kids to school when on the first street in my neighborhood I saw a little dog walking along the sidewalk. There wasn't anyone around (like its owner), so I slowed down to see if it would go to somebody's front door and get safely home. It didn't. In fact, once I started driving normal-speed again, it took off running down the street. It had a collar on and was clearly somebody's pet.

I followed it for a while because I was worried about it getting hit by a car, and occasionally I pulled over to try to get it to come to me, so I could look at its tags and call the owner. In no time, it had run all the way through my neighborhood and into the adjacent one. Eventually I had it cornered in a cul-de-sac but it snarled at me and bolted away again when I got close. It seemed to be getting tired from all the running, so I left it there in the cul-de-sac (where I thought it might stay put for a few minutes) and I drove back to the original street I saw it on.

At this point, I realized I was wearing my pajamas, but I having already invested 15 minutes into this adventure I felt I had to see it through. I started knocking on doors to see if it belonged to somebody on that street. As luck would have it, I met success at the second door I tried.

"Do have a little dog with a red collar?"

"Yes, I do! Oh no! I thought she was in the other room sleeping! I TOLD my husband she would get out if he wasn't careful with the door. Where is she??"

So I drove her (Donna) over to the street where I had last seen her dog. Not unexpectedly, it hadn't bothered to say right where I left it, so we searched everywhere; it was an industrial street and she went to several businesses asking employees if they'd seen her dog. Meanwhile, I drove up and down a few other neighborhood streets nearby. After 15-20 minutes we hadn't seen any sign of the dog, but Donna had succeeded in sparking the interest of the business employees and a few of them were out searching too. And, Donna gave them all her cell phone number in case anyone found it. I drove her back home and she was quite upset about the situation; sure she would never see her dog again.

I encouraged her to make signs to put around the neighborhood, and assured her that anyone who found the dog would return it (she was SURE that anyone who found it would keep it for themselves since it was so cute). It was an 8-week-old puppy that they had just gotten, and she couldn't believe it could run so far away.

After I dropped her off, I went home and proceeded with my day.

About three hours later I went out to run some errands and on my way out I drove through the neighborhood and the adjacent one, to see if she had posted signs on lightposts or mailboxes. There were none. So I called her to see if she had found the dog.

"Hello, this is Donna."

"Hi Donna, this is Sara, from this morning..."

"Oh hi! Guess what, I found my dog!"

"Great!! Where was she?"

"Actually, it was the funniest thing; when I got home she was right there in the house! I think that a neighbor who knows what she looks like must have found her and brought her home while we were out looking for her; the front door was unlocked so I guess they just put her inside."

. . . . . . .

I'm pretty sure the dog I was chasing was NOT Donna's dog, and that Donna's dog was home the whole time, and that I worried her unnecessarily. I should've recognized the signs right off:

1. Until I notified her, she didn't think her dog was missing.

2. She said her dog had a brightly-colored cast on one foot from recently having the front door accidentally shut on it. I never noticed a cast on the dog I was chasing, brightly-colored or otherwise.

3. Donna's dog is an 8-wk-old Shih Poo. I just Googled that breed for pictures... and that is not the kind of dog I saw. It was small, but small in a full-grown-small-dog way; not in a teeny-tiny-cute-fuzzy-puppy way.

4. Donna was convinced that anyone who found the dog would keep it for themselves since it was so cute. The dog I followed was not very cute, and it snarled when I got close to it.

5. When one helpful business owner on that industrial street asked us what color the dog was, Donna said, "white" while I simultaneously said, "tan."

So. It's a bit of a mystery.

photo credit. NOT the dog I saw this morning... not even close.

Little funnies

Zoe: Hey everybody, what's your favorite kind of car?

Lucy: A Herbie car.
Molly: A limousine.
Noah: A brand new, black with flames, convertible Mustang.

(Noah had better start saving up for that one!)


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Lucy: The best day of my life was when we went to Disneyland. No wait, the best day of my life will be when I meet my husband!! Mom, was it scary to find your husband?

Me: No. Me and Daddy were friends for a long time before we knew we wanted to get married. What happens is, you grow up, you meet a lot of boys, and when you're old enough to think about getting married, you figure out which ones you like better than the others, and you go out to dinner with them and stuff.

Lucy: Yeah, and some of the boys you DON'T like. Because they're mean, and they might say something like, "Hey! Give me that chicken burrito!" and then not even pay for it.

"camping"

The kids kicked off fall break week last night with a little backyard campout. With overnight temps in the 60's, the weather was perfect! Noah and Molly slept on cots so they could see the stars, while Zoe & Lucy took the tent. They were covered with repellant but still each received a couple mosquito bites. They were asleep by 8:45 last night and they woke up at about 6:45 this morning. Before they went to bed last night we spent some time with Noah's telescope looking at the Moon's craters and the four moons of Jupiter. A great evening all around!

We don't have too much planned for this week of no school but this was a fun start.

Just because

Because I was feeling nostalgic,
Because I was just going through some old pictures,
Because they're so super cute, and
Because these two are just as good of friends now as they were then,
I just had to post this photo today.

Zoe and Lucy: twin sisters, bffs, soulmates, in December '05;

a couple weeks before their 2nd birthday.

More storm pics

We were spared some of the greater devastation that some parts of the valley received; such as huge trees being uprooted and powerlines downed. I don't know how often it hails in the Phoenix area but I would guess no more than once every two or three years. So, it's pretty big news and all anyone's been talking about around here since yesterday. Here are a few more pictures from around our house:

This hibiscus bush was nearly stripped of its leaves.

Before the storm I had a trash can out on the patio to dry, which I had just cleaned. The storm blew it into the pool and when I later went to retrieve it, this little toad had made it his temporary lily pad.

The entire street, driveway, & yard completely covered with leaves.

Our sidewalk... normally all you see is concrete here.

Aaron had the fun idea to take everyone to play at the park, which was now a swamp, for a few minutes before dinner. The kids and the dog LOVED it!

Our neighborhood park... it's normally just grass (w/o the lake).

All the insects at the park were trying to escape the water by climbing up our legs and stuff, it was gross. Here are some ants in "survival mode," clustered together by the hundreds to form little floating islands in the water.

A tree at the park that was uprooted. In the background that's Juno, and a neighbor's golden retriever.

A bunch of long skinny worms on the sidewalk.

Pretty sunset!

These two plastic patio chairs were tipped over just like this, and some particularly fierce hailstones ripped right through them.

Another shot of the sunset, this one I took about 15 minutes after the other one.


And finally a little video of playing at the park. Juno, loving water as she does, was totally in her element.

We had a little storm.

Let's see, three days ago the high for the day was 101 degrees. Today, we had this:

Thanks to status updates of friends on facebook who live northwest of me, I knew they'd gotten hail and I thought it might be headed our way. But, having no wind or rain at the moment, I decided to head out for a quick errand to the bank. Before I got out of our neighborhood, it started to sprinkle. As soon as I was 3/4 mile from our house, it was pouring. The hail soon followed. I pulled a u-turn so I could get back home to my poor Juno, who was braving the elements in the backyard by herself.

Driving that 3/4 mile home was a little sketchy; I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me and had slowed to a crawl by the time I got back home. The hail was so loud on the car I thought surely it would break a window. Thank goodness for a garage and a good solid house!

I ran inside and right to the back door to bring Juno inside. She was huddle in the back corner, actually fairly well protected since the wind/hail was blowing sideways. I had to call her a few times before she was convinced that it was a good idea to run through the still-pouring hail to get to the safety of the house.

What a storm!!