A Little Halloween

I have been so lazy about downloading my Halloween photos. Our friend Erin put hers on facebook, so I took them :)
Long story short, we rocked Halloween this year. We went to parties, parades, trick or treated at the library, then went on a Halloween Hayride in the neighborhood while the girls and their friends went trick or treating. Let's just say when daddy and his friend Joe are driving the truck that pulls the hayride there's no stopping. The kids were practically begging to quit trick or treating, but daddy and Joe were having fun! Toes eventually sat in the hay wagon with her twizzlers and ReFuSeD to get out of the wagon. The older two grudgingly agreed to keep trick or treating although E's bag (provided by Aunt Holley) was so overfull that it busted open. The down side to all this was we were TIRED! The up side? We have two rooster cookie jars and another wire rooster full of candy. If the apocalypse comes we will be eating candy till our teeth rot out, but we will be energized with sugar...
My photos will be here next week, promise!

How Columbus Came to America

by E.

According to E., Christopher Columbus came to America with his crew and soldiers on three ships:

the Nina, the Pinta, and the Sacagewea.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She told us this over dinner.

xo

k

Evie Knieval Meets Noccalula

Today is our 11th anniversary! To celebrate, DH and I thought about taking our kiddos to Chattanooga to see Rock City, Ruby Falls and the Tennessee Aquarium. Then we thought again. Maybe something closer to home - so we chose Noccalula Falls in Gadsden, AL. We had the BEST time! As you can see, we have had plenty of rainfall, so the sound of the falls was near deafening and so beautiful! We drive to Gadsden and the weather was perfect - fluffy clouds, partly cloudy, bursts of sun over the Appalachian Foothills. Gorgeous! Before we hit the highway, though, we stopped by Target where we got some snacks and spent some time in the parking lot where DH drove like a maniac. In fact, he was driving so *well* that I commented he was driving like Evil Knieval to which E. replied "only if Eviel Knieval is a really bad driver!" which we all thought was hilarious. Well, except DH.

Later, when we got to Noccalula Falls we rode the train, which was so fun! It was very cold though, much colder than I expected. The train ride took us through all the old pioneer homes and shops on the grounds. We stopped by the falls, climbed rocks, hiked to the bottom of the gorge, and then hiked back up. There is a nice petting zoo - we saw bunnies, a lion, lots of birds, goats, deer and chickens. Oh, and several BIG roosters. It was very nice and clean, and the landscaping was really beautiful. We took the girls down to the bottom of the gorge where we hiked along the riverbank and got to climb on some huge cool rocks. The waterfall was pretty, but the rapids and the rest of the river were so pretty! The trees were changing their clothes for the fall and all the leaves were BrIlLiAnT! There were some really cool rock formations too ... I would totally pay the $6 per person again, we had fun inside the park, especially on the train and in the petting zoo - so much fun, in fact, that we didn't really even get to see the covered bridge, pond, pioneer villages and some of the waterfall overlook. I couldn't believe we had never taken the girls, because it was such a nice park and so beautiful. It was also impressive because it was clean and seemed to be in great repair!

We finished our trip outside the park in the open area of the falls - there is no fee to see the headwaters. There were tons of ducks and geese swimming in the water and riding the rapids, and a nice wooden bridge over the river. We played there for a while and in the playground before heading home to Sol Azteca for margaritas and chips and salsa. While I went back for the car, DH stayed with the girls on the playground. This is what I heard when the girls got in the car, ready for snacks:

WHINE, whine, WHINE, whine ...

"Noccawuwa wouldn't tawk to me"

SOB

WHINE

"I am sad Noccawuwa would not tawk to me"

(this was all said by Toes who was red of eye and wet of face - I couldn't understand what was going on and waited for an explanation of some sort)

I passed out apples and cheese while Toes sobbed. She refused sustenance several times before she said "I will have some cheese but it's too bad Noccawuwa would not talk to me."

I say, this is a good thing. I mean, have you seen BIG? Toes could end up perpetually three years old. Or, the CEO of a huge toy conglomerate. The non talking fortune teller has REALLY upset Toes. She couldn't’ talk about anything else on the ride home.

We finished up our evening at Sol Azteca with a giant fishbowl of margarita and some cheese dip, it was perfect!

A Narrative Adventure with Toes

Here is a (sort of) narrative from Toesy

Toes: She was in my class where I was doing something and she kicked me in the leg.

She I mean she and her and he just kick me on the bottom of the weg and I didn't wike it and they did it to me again and again and Sunday they did it and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday they did it and Sunday and Monday.

Me (the Mom): So they kicked you a lot?

Toes: Yeah

Me (the Mom) Why?

Toes: B/c they invite me to their dance party and I didn't want to jump or do ice cream or cake

b/c i was ANGRY I didn't know so I didn't do anything but JUMP!

Me (the Mom): I'm sorry Toes.

Toes: B/c they said I couldn't do anything but jump.

Me (the Mom): Who was this persecuting you?

Toes: um. Sam kick me when I was in my party and he kicked me Sam my friend the big kid friend Sam the big kid friend was in the class and then he kicked me when I was in the party at school.

Me (the Mom): You sound angry.

Toes: I sound angry b/c I don't wike it in my class. I wike it at home and the beach. We can't go to the beach at our home b/c we don't know where the beach is now I don't wike it for the day of the week. mom. i wove you but don't want to stay here b/c its not my home. I want to go to my gramma's house to say there b/c I don't want you to kiss me. B/c I am going on a trip with my gramma and when I die I can't come back again.

Me (the Mom) No. No, when you die you can't come back again.

Toes: So if I die and my gramma dies with the me and she comes back with my I say thanks for buying me a present for my birthday and I kissed her but she kicked me b/c she's a baby again. But no more except I didn't want it to be something.

The End.

Bed Bugs & Ravioli

This is what we do every night:
get home
homewhirlwind ... er ... homework
dinner
baths
bedtime
Now bedtime is its own ritual and here's how it works:
E and S brush their teeth and get in their own beds for reading time. Toes either has me or DH read a story in her bed or she gets in ours, mainly because I feel like we are distracting E & S by reading out loud. After read aloud with Toesy, E & S usually get a readaloud because I'm their mom & I feel guilty.
Here's the cutest part. Every night after I tuck them in and get water and give kisses and help somebody go to the bathroom and run cats out of their room and retuck in and hand out more kisses Toesy says to me, very LOUdlY
"don't let the bug bites"
or sometimes
"don't let the bug bites bites"
it's never the right saying, but it's always the cutest.

Also DH says that yesterday Toesy told him she wanted ravi and oli for dinner. How funny is that?

Tomorrow is E's class Mass and she has a reading. Expect pictures!
xo
k

Headed In THe Right Direction!

Ran today! Almost a mile, walked the other half a mile. Yeah!

Weight still hovering around 190 - PROMISED myself I would be at 185 by my birthday :(

Also?

Swore to sis that I would be able to run the Village to Village run (8K) so MUST keep running!

Funny story about my iPod and Essie to come later.

Oh! and pics of my new skirt that lady and I made Sunday - WiThOuT a pattern, thank you very much!

xo

k

R.I.P. Challange The Third Nail In The Coffin!

So I have been on a ROLL on the R.I.P. Challenge!

Last weekend I finished The House of Lost Souls by F.G. Cottam, which was ExCeLlEnT. I really enjoyed it. This book starts out with a bang - a strange funeral, madness, and a ghostly hearse - and that's just the first chapter. It's in the second chapter that we meet our novel's protagonist, Paul Seaton, who has his own tragic and eerie past. He is charged with the task of discovering what happened to a group of students who went on a college trip to a haunted house on the Isle of Wight. Why did the group of students go? Who led them there? What did they hope to find? Paul has an idea why these things happened, because he has been to the house and witnessed its horrors. Will Paul be able to discover what happened to these students? Will he be able to save the girl who lies in a near coma, possibly possessed by a demon? The tension and the scares build throughout the novel and do not let up. The House of Lost Souls is really a great horror novel, check it out for yourself!

R.I.P. Challange The Second Nail In The Coffin!

I read The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff this weekend and I was so creeped out - it was excellent! The premise: a woman with latent psychic powers discovers her fiancé is cheating on her. She ditches her life in California for a new one in North Carolina where she will be a professor of psychology at Duke University. Within her first few weeks in her new position, she discovers the archives of a now closed parapsychology lab. Once she delves into the boxes she finds clues to a tragedy which occurred thirty years before. Before she knows it, our protagonist finds herself at a house purported to be haunted. I won’t give away much more of the story – but it’s a good one! Part thriller, part mystery, part ghost story, The Unseen will leave you feeling spooked for sure!

It's Official

Toes had the test and has this nasty bugger.

That's right, swine flu :(

This is what H1N1 looks like. Yucky, isn't it?

She stayed home from school on Thursday with a fever but NO symptoms, her fever only got worse and last night it was like a faucet had been turned on. Her little nose was running, she was sneezing, and in the middle of the night she came in our room crying and coughing like a wounded seal. Not that I have ever been around a wounded seal, but I have a good imagination. It sounded croupy, but when DH took her to the pediatrician's office her little nose swab came back positive. So. No visit to the Smokey Mtns for us :(

At first we decided that I would take E and S to the festival, but they have not been feeling their best either, and I could just imagine getting our there in a field in the rain and someone coming down with a fever. Would you want to drive for four and a half hours with a sick kid trapped in your car? Not only that, I started thinking, what if we got there and I got sick? I might not feel good enough to drive all the way home :(

So. we stayed home. I took E and S to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. I have pics to prove it (two pics, actually, of the girls in their 3D glasses). It was a really funny, cute movie and I very much enjoyed it.

Everyone's in bed now, and hopefully the fever will dissipate in the littlest of them all - and not contaminate anyone else!

later

k