Halloween Family Home Evening

To kick off the Halloween season, we had a special dinner and family home evening. Carston has been begging me to decorate for Halloween for the past week, so I promised we would do it together on Monday night. It was a lot of fun for me and for the kids. They were so excited to help pull out our Halloween decorations and to work on some crafts.

We had "mummy dogs" for our main course. A friend of mine started this tradition for our family. I quickly learned not to take all of my time making my own dough since the kids just peel off the bread and eat the hot dog. My favorite part is the bread, so it works out for everyone. We also had natural Cheetohs (worms) and peach Jello (it is orange so it works) that I covered in whipped cream. I scraped a jack-o-lantern into the cream to make it extra festive.

For dessert, we ate orange jack-o-lantern sugar cookies. I was planning on making pumpkin cheesecake but ran out of time, so we'll have that another night.

Carston asked what the ketchup was supposed to be in our meal, so we decided it was blood (as distasteful as that sounds). He asked for spaghetti with eye balls for dinner tomorrow night. Apparently, I am going to have to work on my repertoire of Halloween meals.

I love this picture of Jackson. He has this way of holding his mouth lately that you can see in this picture. He even does it when he smiles.

This is the beginning of a real Peyton smile. We don't see these very often on camera, so enjoy! One might note that Carston, Jackson and Peyton are still wearing their school uniforms. We went to a back to school night party last week with them still wearing their uniforms and found that they were the only kids there that hadn't changed. They don't seem to care, so I don't take the time to lay out different outfits. I'm sure that will change eventually.

Grant has kind of a sheepish look on his face because this picture was taken before the prayer. Carston was in the process of telling me that Grant had already started eating before we had the prayer. Carston is very conscientious about remembering to say a prayer before eating. It is really cute.

Benjamin started dipping everything he could think of into his ketchup. Here he is taste testing Cheetohs dipped in ketchup and gives it a thumbs up.

After baths, our family home evening lesson and a Halloween book, we worked on creating jack-o-lanterns from construction paper outlines I drew. Jackson valiantly attempted to cut his out, but finally gave up. I need to buy the poor boy some left-handed scissors! Last year at John Calvin Playschool, they told me Jackson had a lot of trouble cutting with scissors. I asked them if they were trying to get him to cut right-handed and when they answered that they were, I mentioned that he is a resolutely left-handed boy ( a fact I seem to have to reiterate over and over for people). Peyton had some trouble cutting as well, and she is definitely right-handed.

Grant, with his usual tenacity, insisted on cutting his own, but was only able to create patterns on the edges of the paper. He finally willingly gave his jack-o-lantern to me so that I could finish cutting it out. He glued the face on by himself and did a good job. He was pretty proud of it in the end, as you can see.

It was way past bedtime by the time we finished our family home evening Halloween festivities. I am not quite as quick at bedtime rituals without Mark. Oh, how we miss him! We had a fun night, though, and the kids were proud of their jack-o-lanterns. We were going to put together a skeleton as well, but will have to do it tomorrow night. We love projects at our house and there are so many good Halloween crafts to make that we might just busy ourselves each evening with one of them.
Happy Halloween season!

Welcome to Autumn in New Orleans

Welcoming Autumn has taken on a slightly different meaning since we've lived in the deep south. The cool, crisp air and the smell of smoke from controlled fires burning in fields is not part of a New Orleans autumn. I'm not complaining, it is my favorite time of year here. The heat and humidity of summer lessen to a comfortable level and so does the amount of rain. The breeze seems to reappear after hiding away from the heat of the summer. It also means that we are nearing the end of hurricane season. Today was a perfect Louisiana autumn day, sunny and warm with a pure blue sky and a slight breeze. We had to get out for a short walk after school.

Benjamin saw his older siblings looking for sunglasses before our excursion out of doors and managed to procure a pair of his own. He walked to the door adjusting his shades and I had to snap a picture.
Once we got outside, we became leaf hunters. We looked for interesting leaves on the trees around the neighborhood to collect.

Jackson and Peyton are talking about leaves in school this week and were assigned to bring a variety of leaves into school tomorrow. Here are Carston, Jackson, Peyton and Grant with their leaves. It was funny to pick the leaves off of the beautiful green trees around the neighborhood. I remember using leaves for art projects in the fall when I was little and they were always found on the ground, crispy and brown, yellow or red.

"Ball"

Like a lot of little boys, one of Benjamin's first words was "ball". He loves to throw around a ball and often catches me off guard with a particularly good throw. I love playing catch with him. He gets the funniest expressions on his face as he chucks the ball at me. My favorite is when he raises the ball above his head to give it a little extra umph and then accidentally drops it on the ground behind him. He was running around kicking his soccer ball today and once I started taking pictures he began walking and posing with the ball.

This is one of Benjamin's many expressions! Mark and I have noticed that he has a particularly expressive face and can't get enough of his different looks.

Poser!

I can't help it, I have fallen under his charms! Benjamin can brighten up my day with that smile.

Benjamin is getting into his throwing stance when I took this picture. He was ready to let me and my camera have a close up of the ball.

He is really growing up fast. I have especially noticed it over the past few weeks. He can communicate in a few short sentences and is making the sound of words when he asks for things. He has never had trouble saying the word ball, although one of his other favorite words is book and they still sound startlingly similar. What a big boy! I think he'll need all of this growing up before his baby brother arrives in January. He already thinks he is all grown up and fusses when I treat him at all like a baby. He insists on doing the things Grant does and wants me to let him walk when we are in the store etc. This can sometimes cause problems when he wants to wander the other direction, but we are working it out. The more kids we have the more I notice that the younger ones really find ways to let their will be known. There is no blending in with the crowd or allowing themselves to be forgotten. I am actually grateful for this and have to say that Benjamin lets me know when he needs something.

I love you, my sweet little ball player!

Happy Anniversary, Love!

Before Mark and I got married, I had this romantic notion that love was all about the glamorous things you see in movies or read about in books, the fireworks and dozens upon dozens of fresh flowers. Through the ten years Mark and I have been together, nine of them as a married couple, I have learned quite a bit more about love, fireworks and all.

Here we are on our way out on a date to celebrate our anniversary. I wanted to put a picture of us on our wedding day to compare to these, but all of those pictures are safely packed away from the hurricane in a box in our car. I'll save the comparisons for another day.

I treasure any alone time I get with Mark and LOVE going out on dates. It makes me feel giddy. It was pouring rain as we made our way out to the car in Tulsa, where we have evacuated as Hurricane Gustav made its way across the gulf, so we took a quick picture of each other in the car to remember the night and then put the camera away. We tried taking a few of ourselves together, but none of them worked out, so we'll have to settle for the across the car shots. Before we left, we fed the kids and got them bathed and ready for bed. My little brother, Brendan, agreed to put them to bed half an hour later for us (thanks again, Brendan!) and we were off.

Mark has been madly studying for the USMLE Step 2 and has had an especially difficult time getting anything done with the evacuation and the worry about the hurricane. Even though he needed to study, he took a short break this morning to go out and buy me flowers. We don't know Tulsa's flower shops well, so he stuck with the always beautiful and classic red roses.

I wanted to write something to express, in some small measure, how I feel about him on our anniversary:

Permit me to thank YOU (somewhat publicly), Mark, for all that you teach me and for loving me in just the right way....Thank you for all of the flowers you have given me, even though they quickly die (thus becoming a waste of money). Thank you for trying your hardest to stay awake and respond to the verbal barrage that somehow always escapes from me in the quiet darkness that accompanies bedtime. Thank you for pushing me to try new things and develop my talents. Thank you for caring about my opinion and taking time to ask me what I think and how I feel. Thank you for listening to me without judgment and not believing that I really mean it when I complain or show a lack of faith. Thank you for giving me and others around you the benefit of the doubt. Thank you for helping me laugh at myself when I get stressed or too serious. Thank you for kissing me first when you walk in the door and last before you leave. Thank you for being as excited to see me as I am to see you when you get home. Thank you for playing with our kids and taking interest in everything they wait to tell you. Thank you for singing lullabies, rocking kids to sleep and working on projects with our five little ones. Thank you for being a great dad! Thank you for always having enough faith to look past the moment to see the bigger picture. Thank you for believing in my mothering skills, even when you watch me fail. Thank you for sweeping me off of my feet, over and over again. Thank you for all of the "small things" you do everyday to bless my life like: sitting down to fold laundry with me when I get behind, taking the heavy trash bag out to the curb, calling me whenever you get a chance or cleaning the house while I am away. Thank you for giving me breaks when I am overwhelmed. Thank you for balancing your busy schedule and always putting me and our kids first. Thank you for making my life better! Thank you for choosing me.

For all of these things and many others,Thank you! It just keeps getting better. I liebe Dich fuer immer und ewig! Happy Anniversary to you.

Gustav

Shannon and I were kind of in denial over this whole evacution thing and so we spent Friday night just talking over our options. We finally came to the conclusion that, even though we didn't want to go to the trouble of packing everything up, the consequences of not leaving would have been too big. We spent all day Saturday packing up the house, putting the irreplacble things in the cars and putting everything else up above the water line from Katrina. Finally at six o'clock we pulled on to the freeway and came to a stop. This was expected. We knew we would spend hours sitting on the freeway as we have in past evacuations, so we were somewhat prepared for it and pleasantly surprised when the traffic started moving slowly.

Things slowly got better and by the time some of the traffic started peeling off on I-59, we were feeling pretty good about things. We left the Accord at the temple in Baton Rouge and converted the Van into "sleep mode" at about 8 o'clock. Everything went really smoothly until we got off of I-10 on to I-49. The traffic was awful! It took us until about 3 o'clock in the morning to make it to Marshall Texas (just over the Texas/Louisiana border) and by then the hotel had given away our room...we were not happy. There were no other rooms available anywhere (literally) so we had no choice but to push through to Tulsa. After three 40-45 min naps on the side of the road in empty parking lots and a break at a McDonalds with a playplace once the kids woke up, we pulled into the Tulsa Mission Home by noon on Sunday to stay with Shannon's parents to ride out the storm 700 miles away.

It seems that we sort of dodged a bullet with this storm. According to news reports, it came and is the final stages of leaving and the levees are still holding... We feel really blessed! We had another "moment" on Saturday like we had as we left our house before Katrina wondering if it would be there when we returned. Before Katrina, Shannon swept the floor to perfection and then stowed the broom in the closet before we walked out the door to evacuate. This time was different in that after looking around at the kitchen floor, she figured that the water might just wash the crumbs out the back door. So, instead of wasting valuable time doing minor cleaning, we lifted everything we could at least one foot above the floor and then locked the doors and left. It sounds like she will be sweeping the floor once we reach home, something she'll be more than happy to do!

School has been cancelled until next Monday so we are planning on staying here until Saturday (trying to avoid some of that re-entry traffic) and I will try to catch up on my studying. Once we get home, we will post about how the house held up.

After five hurricane seasons involving three evacuations (Ivan, Katrina and Gustav), two bullets dodged (Ivan and, hopefully, Gustav) and one flooding disaster (thanks to Katrina), we are looking forward to the END of this, OUR LAST, hurricane season!