halloweens past

My mom made all my costumes.

Well, okay, there was the one year I went as a bride and she had to cut down the Southern Belle monstrosity we'd found hanging poofily at the thrift shop, but for the most part? I was an original.

I don't make all my kids costumes, though. Crafty skips generations (or so I'm finding) and they're still delighted with bits and pieces. Last year, I made my son's costume (he was a zombie) and bought a wee witch outfit for R. The year before, he was a Transformer and she was a purple cat. (I didn't get the purple paint out from under my nails for weeks!)

Tradition-wise, we've started them young (they both went out their first Halloween (in costumes) - Cass was 26 days old, and Rosey just a couple of weeks) taught them the old-school spooky thrill of scaring people, hammered into them (or at least I hope so) the importance of saying thank you when strangers give you candy, and set them free to run in the joyous gloom of Halloween night. We live in a rural enough area that the houses are in places few and far between, and we usually end up taking our car. Wherever the houses are closer, the kids (and I!) hop out, and they swoop through the dark, looking for the next house with a light on, while B trundles behind, headlights on low.

The kids also like telling spoooky stories after the great candy hunt with only the light from the fire......great for sound effects and grandiose gestures (with the occasional crackling noise from furtive wrappers) and hushed, quiet, cliff-hanger voices that grow LOUDER at plot points and character changes.

After Halloween we say goodbye to the pumpkins and the gourds and the crazy spiderwebs hung over everything, and the world looks stark and plain for a few days.

But the candy goes on and on....

click here to read about more of our traditions and hear about what candy will be at my house this year!

life underwater

One of the really beautiful, amazing things about living near a watershed is

You don't have to look up to see the sky.

kicking it with ponies

It's been an amazing week over here. Last week, Cass went to his first judo lesson, and walked out an hour later beaming. He broke a board. WITH HIS FOOT. On PURPOSE.

This month alone, he's started drama club at school, a soccer program, and judo. He's trying new things and figuring out who he wants to be, and it's fun to watch.

Today, it was riding a horse.  It was Rosey's birthday party, and nine of her good friends came out to eat cupcakes and hop up on the ponies. Most had never been on a horse before. They all did well.

Cass is very interested in riding. Rosey is too.

She's upstairs right now, wearing her brand-new Stables t-shirt, and ta-thumping her Barbie horses (and their riders) through their paces.

Welcome, horse-mad age! Welcome!

thanksgiving

That was the best, the best Thanksgiving weekend ever.

My lovely-and-wicked-smart (and they are) sisters-in-law put their heads together and came up with a fantastic way to celebrate the holiday. Bored with the usual, they hatched a plan to get us all away from home - a way to have us all relaaaaaaaax this year.

Barely an hour from home, the spot we ended up in was amazing. AMAZING. 

THIS is the view from the kitchen of our cottage.

 And this is what you saw out the front door.

 And if being tucked into a gorgeous cabin in the woods with water and myriad shades of fall leaves around didn't clear away all the cobwebs and stress, right down the road was...

the beach.

And now I have pictures of my children frolicking in the Atlantic ocean in mid-October.

 Frolicking. Swimming. Running up and down the hard-packed sand and screeching with joy like young gulls and finding treasures and swooping from the water to the sand to where the adults sat with their faces tipped to the sun and back to the water again.

This beat turkey coma all hollow. 

Magical, amazing, incredible. 

My pictures don't do justice to the beauty of the place and don't show the depth of the absolute peace there. I'm homesick, and I can't wait to go back.