Costume Parade!!!

This year, we had a double faced train (Thomas in front and James in the back), a little tiger, and Bob the builder!


At first, Will said he wanted to be a fox hunter, but I just couldn't come up with the costuming. Then he decided on a ghost. While being "fitted" for the costume, he changed his mind and decided to be a train (again). I added the idea of using both train costumes and he liked it.


Nathan loves Bob and we already had this outfit from when Will was two. It's kinda small on him, but he loved it!


Witt didn't really like the whole dressing up thing. It was hard to get a good picture of him, but his tiger costume is just so CUTE! :)

So cute, in fact, that he took BEST costume at our congregation's trick or treating! :) We added the "Do Not Feed the Tiger" sticker to remind people of his allergies. (All went well in that department! Thankfully!)


Jeff dressed up as a tree:



And I went in all our Auburn paraphernalia. (From what I hear, Auburn could use a few good fans this season... )



Join us by entering the PERMALINK to your Halloween post below in Mr. Linky.

Please link back to the parade in your post so others can enjoy the fun!

Happy Halloween!

Truck Book with PaPaw

I Want an Alaskan Husband

Witt's (17 months) favorite word is "No."

Do you want to take a nap? No.
Do you want to eat? No.
Do you want a drink? No.

My other boys didn't start this "No business" for MANY more months. I guess it shows that having two older brothers teaches him a thing or two! AGH! :)





Nathan (3 next week!) in a bubble bath, holds up a tug boat full of bubbles and speaks for it... "Help, kaat see! Help, kaat see!" (Help, can't see!)

When putting Nathan's socks on, I asked him how many toes he has. He started to count on one foot "1, 2, 3, 4, 5". Then it was time for the second foot, "18, 13, 15, 18, 14". I replied, "Hmmm... so you have 14 toes, huh? How many toes do you have?"

"2."



After watching a cartoon, Will (6) says, "I wish we had a dog like Balto... you know, an Alaskan Husband." (Alaskan Huskie)

Will has been James or Thomas the train for several Halloweens in a row. This year I asked him what he wanted to be and he replies "James or Thomas". Easy enough for me.

Until yesterday.

"Mom, I don't want to be a train. I want to be a hunter. A fox hunter. With a trap. Not a metal trap, a plastic trap. I want the hunter's clothes from in the olden days. Like Fox and the Hound."

{Ummm.... can't sew!} Sorry... you're gonna be a train or a ghost. I can swing a ghost by Friday, but not a fox hunter with a plastic trap. Such a bad mama. :(

Fall Festival

Will's elementary school had a Fall Festival fund raising event. Will and I went for about 1 1/2 hours by ourselves while Jeff stayed with the other boys during their naps.

And of course I forgot my camera.

Will bounced and slid on blow-ups. We did a toy walk and he won 4 tiny Tonkas. He raced a little girl in a relay. We got cotton candy, pizza, and a drink.

After that, we went home to pick up the rest of the family for the remaining 30 minutes we had.

Will decided to play on the school playground. Nathan followed. I had tickets to burn, so Witt and I did the toy walk and didn't win a thing. Then I went to the cotton candy booth, asked to read the ingredients and sure enough... dairy free! I bought a stick for each boy.

This time I remembered my camera...





There's nothing better than cotton candy in the Fall! :)

No, I didn't get into the markers...

Time off

I wish I was headed here with Jeff for a nice long break, but alas, no....

I have things to do. Children to raise. A yard sale to prepare for. ET-CET-ER-A... ET-CET-ER-A... ET-CET-ER-A...

Don't know how long I'll be gone, but I'll be back.

I'll leave you with some links:

I'm still working on the Truth.
Here's how much money I've raised for ALS.
This is what I'm cooking tonight.
You'll still be able to catch me here occasionally.
Oh, and I'm a single mom until Friday.
Keep praying for Witt!
And a video:

TRUTH - Simple & Slow Fridays

The truth is: I am not prepared for today's carnival. I have lots of different ideas running through my head, ie:

• The truth about how I see myself as a mom
• The truth about who I'm going to vote for and why
• The truth that is in the Bible
• How I may tell the truth "too much"
  

but, I'm taking the day off. Jeff is out of town and Will and I are at Disney on Ice for a class field trip today. :) If you participated this week, please include your permalink below in Mr. Linky.



Join us next week for the topic of

HELPING

What's Smoother than a Smoothie?

After the fiasco with my first attempt at the Unplugged Project Smooth, Jeff came up with what now seems like an obvious project: Ice Cream Smoothies!



I do believe this is the most money I've spent on an Unplugged Project, but the whole thing was a family effort. First, we all went to the grocery store together (don't let me do that again, though!).

At home, we supervised the boys while they cut the fruit:



Will made the first smoothie. He chose vanilla ice cream, bananas and strawberries.


Nathan was next. He chose chocolate ice cream, banana, peach, strawberry and spinach. Yes, spinach. :)


(Jeff and I made some, too, in different variations.)

S M o o o o o o T H

Dairy Free Caramel Apples

This was my first attempt for this week's Unplugged Project: Smooth. It ended up being anything but a project for us to do together as I ended up rushing the kids out of the kitchen. However, I still wanted to post this because the recipe is so good and apparently extremely fool-proof for all that I did wrong... just goes to show that I Must Follow Recipes...

I got the recipe from Dog Hill Kitchen. I followed the ingredients exactly, but the instructions... not so much. It really wasn't intentional. I just didn't read really carefully and my thoughts were scattered that day.

Please, feel free to laugh as I make my way through this recipe.

I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll start with the fact that I thought I had a candy thermometer. I know I did... before we moved over two years ago. All I could find was the meat thermometer and that didn't read up to 248F.

I had already dumped everything into the skillet, though, when I realized I didn't have the correct thermometer, so I figured I'd just "guess" at the temp. {grin}


Then, after I've got it all mixed and boiling, I realize that her instructions call for at least a 4 quart capacity saucepan MINIMUM. This is where I get into real trouble. It starts boiling over. I turn down the heat to contain the caramel and then actually have enough of a thought process to realize it's not going to get hot enough if I don't have it on med-high heat as instructed. So, I turn it back up again and it overflows again. (This is where the rushing of the kids out of the kitchen comes in.)

Luckily, I had a neighbor girl with me and ask her to get out the big stock pot... it's all I had. I turn off the stove and attempt to pour this boiling hot caramel into the stock pot. Yes, I made a bigger stickier mess. The girl even tells me that I might ruin the caramel because I let it cool. True, but I'm already half way through. I'm not stopping now!! We'll just have to see...

So, now I've got it on Med-High heat and it's boiling and turning a nice shade of brown. But how hot is it? I have NO CLUE. I used the meat thermometer and it showed beyond it's highest reading. Ok, at least I had a little clue.

I let it cook for a few more minutes and decided I was done... even if it wasn't. If it didn't turn out - oh well. I'll know better next time. I poured it out onto wax paper and let it cool just a bit. See, this is where Smooth would have come in...


After it began to cool, I realized that I hadn't added the vanilla yet; so I threw it in and mixed it around in the pan.

This is when the recipe says to start coating the apples, but the neighbor girl says that she's made caramel apples before. They put the caramel in the freezer for a bit, then cut it with the wax paper and then placed it on top of the apple. She said it was easy to peel the wax paper off. Sounded good to me. I mean, how much worse could it get, right?

Well, we let it cool in the freezer and cut the caramel and placed it on the apple. The wax paper did not want to come off. The caramel was too sticky... wrong consistency. Apparently, I didn't let it get hot enough when I cooked it. {Ugh.} HOWEVER, it tasted great! So we did the best we could with what we had. Somehow we got the wax paper off, but we had globs of caramel in places and none in others.




But like I said... TASTED GREAT!!! Here are the boys with their smooth caramel apples. The only part they played in this project was the tasting.

(Yes, Witt is wet and dirty again. This happens a lot.)

We also didn't follow the instructions of eating as soon as it cools. Nathan was outside taking his time and it began to run. Not the caramel's fault, though... I still don't think I got it hot enough.



We had some left over caramel and I poured it on some popcorn. It wasn't the right consistency to make popcorn balls, but it sure did taste good just as a topping!

I will definitely try this again with the right tools. Great tasting recipe and like I said before, almost fool-proof! :) Perfect for me!

I'll have our final submission for Smooth linked up tomorrow at Unplug Your Kids.

Be sure to check out the real instructions for the caramel here: Dog Hill Kitchen: Vegan Caramel Apples

Six Random Facts about Me

MommyK at The Great Walls of Baltimore tagged me for six random facts. Here goes...

1. I like routine. No, I love routine. I have my chores laid out by the day. Mondays and Thursdays I do laundry. Tuesdays is grocery shopping. Wednesday is vacuuming... you get the picture. When I get thrown off and have to grocery shop on Wednesday, my whole week is thrown off. I like to know what's coming and even turned down a free lunch in college to a cafeteria style restaurant because I didn't know "how it worked". I know, that's crazy.

2. I was diagnosed with TMJ disorder over 10 years ago and sleep with a mouthpiece at night to keep me from clenching my jaw. It's very becoming and I speak so much more clearly when I have it in. HA! not.

3. My feet grew a 1/2 size longer with each pregnancy. Before I was a mom, I wore a size 8. I'll do the math for you... I now wear a mammoth 9 1/2.

4. Northern by birth; Southern by choice.

5. My biggest fear is drowning in a car underwater. So much so that I actually carry one of those tools that can break a window easily in my vehicle.

6. I am REALLY good at the game Taboo... especially when Jeff and I are a team. We kick butt.


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I tag:

SuperB'sMom 'cause she just posted some quirks and I want to see what else she comes up with

bekahcubed because I feel like shes just "gets me" and I wonder how similar we are

Lulu@RedefiningSanity because I want her to start blogging again. miss you!

JulieKinTaiwan because I love the fantastic projects she does with her kids and I want to learn more about her ;)

Holly@TheWeavers because she's gonna have her first baby soon and I'd like to invite her into the realm of mommy blogging and tags! :) Come play with us, Holly!

MyNameisDianna because she's got plenty of time with only four kids. The more kids the more time you have, right? LOL!