And they're off!

They are off to collect bags and loads and wads of candy.

Here is the campfire.
Here is Gaara.
Here is Gaara's squash thingie. (Or Mr. Peanut)
Here is Hayley and her friend, the sumo wrestler.
Matt is making the rounds with two friends and Hayley is going separately with her friend. Paul is doing his weekend job--cleaning the bathroom. Other Jim is working but is done at 8. Dunno what he's doing after that. I'm handing out candy and trying not to eat what is still in the bowl. Jim is handing out pizzas to people who pay for them.

Happy Halloween!

This is the last Halloween Decoration Special Feature of the year and that leaves me a little sad. Tomorrow all the pretty pumpkins and scary skulls come down. Boo (hoo!).

I'll update later tonight with pictures of trick-or-treaters so for now I'll just leave you with the last Halloween Decoration Special Feature. It is the pumpkin dishcloth I knitted over the last few nights.

Quick five minute break

I'm in the middle of decorating for a party (not at my house. I don't do parties. No one would show up) and I'm only home because I forgot two bags of decorations.

I'm just here for a few minutes but I thought I'd provide a few updates and a quick Halloween Decoration picture while I'm eating my lunch.

Update #1: Paul's race that was supposed to be yesterday afternoon was rescheduled to this afternoon because of yesterday's pervasive rain.

Update#2: Despite the rain, Other Jim played frisbee with his friends. Someone took this picture of OJ diving for the frisbee: He caught it and then presumably plowed into the soggy grass.

Update #3: Hayley's costume pants are finally finished.

Update #4: There is no update #4.

Halloween Decoration Special Feature:

A two-fer. A spooky candle
And a glittery black pumpkin. The lighting in the picture is bad so you can't get the full glittery effect. But just try to imagine it.

Maw II: Voracious teenage appetite and the manners of a zombie

In honor of Halloween, the Shoebox Castle presents two tales so terrifying that it will make all you parents of future teenage boys gnash your teeth and send you running to chain your fridge shut with huge titanium locks. Yes, it's time for another bad horror movie title, which I haven't done in a while ("Maw"--you know cuz of "Saw." Get it?)

Today's movie tale begins with a seemingly normal teenage boy. He goes to school, he drives, he gets ok grades, he talks to girls on the phone for many hours.

And he eats.

There he was at lunch. The Halloween dance committee sponsored a dance ticket contest involving a doughnut on a string. Many teenagers lined up to compete for the prize, and our normal teenage boy was among them. He lined up with the others, hands behind his back and eyes on his doughnut. The rules said that you had to leave a small bit of doughnut hanging on the string. The fastest doughnut eater would win a free ticket to the Halloween dance. Our teenager took a deep breath as the official timer paused before starting the race. He swallowed, and a trickle of sweat wandered down his back. In the nanosecond before the judge gave them the go ahead, he could feel the monster emerge from deep inside, the voracious appetite clawing it's way up from his stomach, through his esophagus, and taking over his mouth. He flexed his jaw muscles, tight with adrenaline.

"GO!" yelled the judge

His mouth became the monster, opening wide like the unhinged jaws of a snake. He lunged at the doughnut and, eyes crazed and nearly rolling back in his head, attacked the helpless pastry. One bite was all it took and the doughnut was no more. A small arc of powdered cakiness remained on the twitching string and the beast returned to the nether world of stomach acid and digestion.

"Dangit, Other Jim," yelled the judge, as the remaining 30+ competitors still struggled to latch onto their doughnuts, "One bite! Now we're going to have to revise the rules on account of you. Next time, the competitors will have to leave a SQUARE of doughnut on the string, not an arc."

Other Jim merely smiled, took his free dance ticket, and wiped a small bit of white powdery residue from his lips.

(Yes, Other Jim demolished a powdered doughnut in ONE BITE. He was very proud of himself. He is a former Hostess Snoball champion eater too. I sighed a lot and rolled my eyes while listening to him tell me his story. Again, I told him, I am not surprised. I've seen him eat a burrito in one bite. The child's mouth is a cavernous orifice of epic proportions)

The second tale is a mere wisp of a glimpse into the twisted mind of an uncouth youth. What went wrong? Where will he end up? How will he find a wife? Can he get a job? All these questions (and more) raced through my mind when I saw this:

A young man, a runner, belly rumbling with the hunger of a veteran calorie burner, standing at the counter in the kitchen. In his hand, a half-gallon jar of unsweetened applesauce. Out of that jar, a straw poked upwards into the mouth of this expert food consumer. He was drinking the applesauce straight out of the jar with the straw, like an alcohol-free, mid-afternoon, fruity cocktail.

One wonders if he had ever heard of such things as a bowl and a spoon? He replied, "Less to wash this way, and more sanitary." More sanitary? "Yeah, more sanitary than drinking it straight out of the jar."

Commence forehead slapping.

I made him get a bowl and spoon and told him that I want him to eat like a civilized human being and a dirty bowl and spoon were a small price to pay for not being thought of as an unmannered oddball by the female half of the species. To Paul's future wife: You may thank me later--whenever you turn up will be fine.

And now for today's Halloween Decoration Special Feature: how to make candlesticks with useless junk you have around the house.
Dust off an old glass spoon jar. Set upside down. Drape with mangled cheesecloth. Top with fluted taper holder. Paw around in your junk drawer until you find the last unbroken taper. Jam it into the taper holder. Fill space with tiny plastic skulls and accent with a plastic spider. Stand back and admire the gothic-ness. Swat the kids (and zombies) away with the broken tapers.

Advancing

Last night was Matt's very last Pack meeting. He is no longer a Cub scout. It is the end of an era in the Shoebox household. Matt has one year left in Primary at church and then I will be the parent of all big kids (well, age-wise. Matt will probably never be a big-kid size-wise). No more Cub scouts!

Here he is receiving his pile of awards and pins from over the summer. The pack meeting was held at a bonfire at a park so we could hardly see or hear what was going on. I did manage one picture with the flash, but in doing so, blinded everyone at the event. Sigh. So I didn't get any pictures of him walking across the crossover bridge from Cub scout to Boy scout.

The little ceremony they had for his crossover was very nice. The Boy Scout leader was there and he involved Jim and me in changing the epaulets on Matt's shirt as he changed Matt's scout scarf. Matt is excited for Boy Scouts (aren't they all at the start?) and has grand plans for earning all the merit badges.

Here is a picture I tried to take without the flash. It looks like Matt is on fire, which is appropriate since he was wearing his Halloween costume shirt under his Scout shirt--you can see a bit of yellow peeking out.
And speaking of Halloween, this is today's Halloween Decoration Special Feature:A pumpkin pop-up card. It was easy to make. I even helped Fake Child make one. Lucky I had some Halloween paper to enhance the cuteness of the card. Directions found here. I used more than nine layers of tissue paper though. I counted wrong. Not that it matters; it still made a mighty fine pumpkin card for my half-wall.

Knitting environmental magazines with witches

I'm up early today. I decided to knit instead of going back to sleep after Fake Child arrived at 6 a.m. this morning. I am now over half way done on an orange dishcloth with a pumpkin picture on it. I started it the other night when my hands had nothing to do during a movie and I couldn't stand fidgeting anymore. I paused the movie and went upstairs to paw through my bales of yarn for something--ANYTHING--to knit. Purse? Don't have the right needles. Socks? Can't find the other ball of yarn (side note: found the yarn later. It turns out I already knitted one sock out of that particular yarn and had TOTALLY FORGOTTEN!!!) I found some orange dishcloth yarn and googled up a pumpkin pattern and--VOILA!--no more fidgeting! PS to this paragraph--I bought the needles for the purse and have started that too. Now I have a project for upstairs and one for downstairs. (The pumpkin dishcloth will be done soon)

Yesterday I bought two weird magazines: Mother Jones and The Futurist. I've never heard of either one, but I was on a hunt for a publication that featured several articles on environmental issues. Other Jim is taking AP Environmental Science this year and needs 40+ articles on environmental issues and most of them have to be articles culled from non-internet sources. We do subscribe to National Geographic, so that is a good source, but it won't fulfill the quota in even three months. So I checked out Barnes and Noble's extensive magazine display and came up with two. I'm rather interested in The Futurist. Maybe it'll spawn some sci-fi novel ideas (not that I would ever actually sit down and write a whole novel--see fidgeting above).

Today's Halloween Decoration Special Feature is a tribute to after-holiday clearance sales. I snagged these beauties at 75% off at Target one year. Jim commented the other day that he likes the polka dot stem on the tall pumpkin. I'm glad that he did NOT say, "How did you get pictures of yourself on those pumpkins?" Har.

One at a time

Today's Halloween Decoration Feature is not really a Halloween decoration at all, but a means of displaying M&Ms for as long as they last (two minutes in my house). Of course there are Halloween M&Ms available (in AUGUST!) to fill this thing so I put it out as a decoration.
It's an M&M dispenser made for me by a friend. Pull the knobs back and forth and you get one M&M at a time. When the children were younger, they'd ask for some and I would allow them to have 2. At the time, they viewed 2 M&Ms as an acceptable reward. Nowadays, they expect a few more (bags). I tell them "too bad!" I use this dispenser for Christmas too. It's an all-year-round thing, but I usually bring it out only twice a year because the "novelty" of dispensing one M&M at a time gets old really fast (I usually end up unscrewing the jar and pouring the M&Ms out into my hand, which defeats the purpose of the candy dispensing machine).

To complete yesterday's centerpiece

I have this:
It holds my Halloween napkins.

I'm a mess

All my married life I've wanted a lovely table. I'm not talking about the actual table, I'm talking about having a nice centerpiece on a clean tablecloth or runner in a clean dining room--the kind of thing you see in interior decorating magazines. Most of the years I've been married, I thought that the reason that I didn't have a nice table because I didn't have a centerpiece.

I realized now that I was wrong. The reason that I don't have a lovely table is because we are a family of messy pigs. I cannot keep a table clean for 5 minutes. I wash all the crumbs and spills off the table (once a week if we're lucky and I have the time) and change the tablecloth, and within mere minutes, someone has dirtied the table again: they've used it as a craft table and left bits of colored paper, tape, scissors, stickers, very small rocks, (etc.) out, used it as a place to dump books, school papers, and newspapers for lack of anywhere else to put them, or eaten something and spilled half of it on the table.

Sigh. How did I learn of my faulty reasoning? Because I finally have a nice centerpiece for Halloween that I've tried to keep out on the table.


The above is today's Halloween Decoration Special Feature. This picture was taken the one moment it has ever looked like it was supposed to. As I have alluded to, the tablecloth is ALWAYS food-stained, bunched up, covered with paper bits (big and small) and odd office supply implements, and generally looking like a food-spewing tornado just blew through.

My mom gave me the lovely black doily. One of her former "tenants" crocheted several for my mom, who then distributed them out to various family members, keeping one for herself of course. It looks a little like a spiderweb, which makes it perfect for Halloween decor. It goes so nicely with the table runner, the tablecloth, and my cheapo Halloween salt and pepper shakers (a Target dollar area find. I got a set for Katie so she has something Halloweeny in her apartment). Usually I have a napkin basket sitting on the doily, but I didn't use it for the picture because a) I want to save it for another Halloween Decoration Special Feature and b) I wanted to show the whole doily.

I'm trying to be better at having a clean table, but it's a long struggle that won't end until all the children are out of the house. There is nowhere else in the house to do homework, to eat, to do crafts, to read the newspaper or to fill out school-required forms. Someday, though...

The latest thing in Halloween decorations...

...is the countdown. Halloween has apparently developed a severe inferiority complex.. Christmas has always sported an "advent" (which used to be just a "four Sundays before Christmas" but has turned into a massive "count down the days until we can rest from our shopping binges for nine months") and Halloween's jealousy has prompted it to start stealing Christmas celebratory decoration ideas.
Yes, folks, I'm bringing back the Halloween Decoration Special Feature (click the link and then scroll through last year's month-long Halloween-decoration-of-the-day thing) only it's only going to be from now until Halloween. I couldn't do a whole month this year because I had Matt's party to deal with, along with a few other things. Besides, I don't have that many new or unfeatured decoration items. Guess it's time for me to get some more, right?

Anyway, these blocks allow the Halloween appreciator to countdown the whole 31 days of the month of October. I bought the set of blocks, paper, and vinyl to put together at our Super Saturday (click link and see #5) a few weeks ago (the event where, after I made the punch, I busted the punch bowl and spent an hour and a half cleaning the church kitchen stove and surrounding cupboards because there was hot punch splatter ALL. OVER. I now hate sugary drinks, especially hot ones. Do not put hot punch in a punch bowl). Even after the punch bowl disaster, I did have time to mod-podge the blocks. Now I can tell in an instant how many days left until Halloween! (After I do the subtraction necessary to adjust the block faces correctly). All 9 numbers are represented on the blocks, some (0-3) twice. I also did Christmas countdown blocks at the Super Saturday so I can continue the fun in December.

Flashback, English-class style

Last night we watched Dead Poets Society for the anniversary movie countdown. I generally don't like dramatic movies because I get restless and twitchy, especially if my hands have nothing to do. And they didn't last night because I was still waiting for the last day of the knitting pattern to show up and I didn't have any other projects started. But I do like this movie first of all because it has Robert Sean Leonard in it, who is now on a TV show called House, which I like to watch.

After watching the movie, I got to thinking about English class. I had two memorable English teachers (well, two and a half if you count Mr. Skoy as the English teacher/croquet club advisor--a whole other post), one of which was Mr. Gulner. He was my 8th grade English teacher and at first we did not get along. I don't remember why. He kicked me out of class once for making an offhand jokey comment and I broke down crying (stupid hair-trigger waterworks). We had a chat in the hallway and after that he was my favorite teacher. He was tough, though. Mr. Keating (the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society) reminds me of Mr. Gulner. He encouraged the class members to think for themselves and to use language more effectively. It also helped that he told jokes in class. He was going to be laid off at the end of my 8th grade year (so the rumor went) but he quit at the end of the third quarter and we were upset that the school district had planned to let him go and keep the other 8th grade English teacher, who every 8th grader felt was quite inferior, on the payroll. While our intent to be true to Mr. Gulner was noble, we as a class were ignominiously brutish in our treatment of the substitute teacher brought in to replace him (I'm sorry, Mrs. Sorum. We shouldn't have pelted you with spitballs that day, or done any of the other thousand stupid things we did. Our anger was misplaced and it unfortunately landed on you).

Eventually Mr. Gulner returned to the school district, but I never had him as a teacher again, but we did talk occasionally when we saw each other in the halls in the high school. I wonder where he is now?

Some Halloweenie things and the anniversary countdown

I came across some paper dolls on the interweb. I've downloaded and printed them and am cutting them out now (when I'm not actually blogging). I thought I'd share them with you, well, with those of you who have little kids. My littles are too old for paper dolls, but I would have totally printed them out for Hayley and Matt to play with had I seen them years ago. But now I have Fake Child, so I'm letting her play with them.

Boy Halloween paper doll

Girl Halloween paper doll

Check them out. Jen, your girls might like these. They do take a bit of time to cut out, but they are so cute.

As promised, here is a picture of Hayley at the sewing machine. She is working on a pair of black pants for her Halloween costume. This is her first foray into sewing and so far she is doing just fine. As for her costume, I have NO idea what it is she is going to be. Some anime character with a squash shaped backpack that apparently holds sand. WTH??!! (WTH=what the heck) She already has the squash backpack thing (and it doesn't really hold sand. It holds stuffing) and she wears it around the house and looks silly.

Anyway, I was taking pictures of her sewing and took one of her hands. I am shocked to see that these are NOT her hands! These are Katie's hands! They must have switched when Kate was visiting this summer. Really, these can't be Hayley's hands!

P.S. The first movie of the 21st Anniversary Movie countdown has been watched! Twins has a few funny lines: "Cookies! I look forward to tossing them!" (Other Jim just about busted his gut laughing at that one) and it was amusing to see the "car phones" in the Mustang and Cadillac, which at the time were cool cars. Now of course they look dated and downright boxy. Thank goodness this nearly 21-year-old marriage isn't dated or boxy. It's in pretty good shape--it looks good for its age (after all, it is 21!) and hasn't gone out of style yet.

Next up for the movie countdown: 1989 Dead Poet's Society.

My acceptance speech

Thank you to all who voted for me in the lullaby contest! All ten of you must have voted every day because I was declared the winner! Get a load of my winner's tiara there on the sidebar. Isn't it fabulous? And thanks to the person who made me enter the contest.

Here is my lullaby in its entirety (which took me all of five minutes to write 9 of the 11 lines. The other two lines required a shower to work out. It's amazing how conducive showers are to writing. To bad you CAN'T ACTUALLY WRITE IN THE SHOWER! I need a waterproof tablet and a water resistant pencil to keep in there, because memorizing what I write takes up like most of the shower time and I hate memorizing):

Mommy's lullaby (Sung to the tune of Give Said the Little Stream)

Sleep, said the mommy. Sleep
Rest your head, Sleepyhead.
Sleep said the mommy, Sleep
As she tucks you into bed.

You're small, you know,
but wherever you go
I'll be there to keep you safe.

When you wake up we will play
Morning, noon, thru all the day.
But for now sweet dreams shall be
Nighttime love from me.

Later I will post pictures of Hayley using the sewing machine for nearly the first time. She's making a Halloween costume.

It's Monday and I suppose I have to post something

The long MEA weekend is over and the kids are back in school. How did they spend their extra three days off?

Jimmy frolicked about the state with friends. OK, he only went to Mankato for part of a day. He and his friend drove down to Mankato to make caramel apples and break kitchen appliances of a friend. Sigh.

Paul camped out on some very cold and rainy days. He came back Saturday night and got mad at the weather when Sunday was nice and very near 60 degrees. Why couldn't it have been nice on the campout? he wailed. They did a 50-mile bike ride too.

Hayley did some jobs around the house for a little extra green and then spent Friday night at a friend's house.

Matt had his birthday party (you saw the birthday recap, I assume) and successfully turned 11 (I would hate for him to be unsuccessful at it). He didn't go anywhere, but hung around with me the whole weekend.

I did manage one outing with Hayley and Matt (and fake child)--we went mini golfing at the local mall. They have an 18-hole course (each hole is very short, about 10 feet long) in the arcade area. The fun thing about it is that it is all black-lit so everything is neon. The golf balls show up as glowing objects and anything white shows up as electric blue.

I cleaned the basement this weekend. It wasn't a whole-hog effort; it was half-hog. The bookcase, computer desk and entertainment center are now orderly and dusted within inches of their very lives. I moved books around, found cases for temporarily orphaned DVDs and sorted paperwork. Finally I can feel peace in the basement! (but I predict it won't last. Oh well)

Jim worked and cleaned and started cleaning on his side of the room.

End of weekend report. How was your weekend?

The Proposal

No, not the Sandra Bullock movie from earlier this year (although this does involve that movie).

Jim approached me (verbally) with a proposal last night. Our 21st anniversary is coming up in one month and three days. He suggested that over the next month we watch a movie from each year that we've been married. What a fun way to count down to November 19th! It'll be like a date each time we watch a movie from the list because it will be representing another year of marital bliss/strife/amusement (mostly bliss. And amusement. Jim has a wicked sarcastic streak. What makes him even more amusing is that he rarely lets that side of him be seen).

So we decided that I would pick movies from the even years and he would pick movies from the odd ones (no correlation between his personality and having to choose the odd years).

For some years I found it difficult to choose because of the plethora of good movies. Some years it was difficult because I didn't like very many of the movies on the list. Most on the list are ones we've seen before, but there are a few that we haven't.

This is the list we came up with:

21 movies to our anniversary
1988: Twins
1989: Dead Poet's Society
1990: Tremors
1991: Regarding Henry
1992: Sneakers
1993: So I Married an Ax Murderer
1994: Reality Bites
1995: While You Were Sleeping
1996: MST3K: The Movie
1997: The Fifth Element
1998: Ever After
1999: Forces of Nature
2000: Best in Show
2001: Ocean's Eleven
2002: Rabbit Proof Fence
2003: Big Fish
2004: Secret Window
2005: Aeon Flux
2006: For Your Consideration
2007: The Invasion
2008: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2009: The Proposal
(So now you see how the movie "The Proposal" is involved)

Yes, there are three Sandra Bullock movies on there. Jim picked them. He must like her. In fairness, I almost picked Two Week's Notice instead of Rabbit Proof Fence. And I did pick two Christopher Guest movies. I am not interested in Christopher Guest in the least except as a movie actor/director/writer. (His ability to pretend he has six fingers is UNMATCHED in Hollywood. [5 points for the name of the character he played who had six fingers])

Feel free to share your fun and novel ways of celebrating anniversaries (of any kind--living in your house for x number of years, being employed, getting a dog, hating celery, etc.) and feel free to adopt this idea to use for your celebrations.

I've requested all the movies and we have but to send back a DVD rented and viewed already to start our parade of memories and movies!

Party pooped

Never again! Freedom! The shackles of party planning have been removed forEVER!

I won't mind a request for a party consisting of a few friends and a movie or games or something, but whatever goes on will not be planned or executed by me.

I have enjoyed the parties I have planned--especially the Paul/Jimmy party where I invited the reptile guy--but after five children, I am ready to give up this part of the business of mommying.

But since it's still Matt's birthday, I will deny myself further reveling in the shedding of parental responsibility (unnecessary responsibilities, but ones I did out of my particular enjoyment of seeing my kids enjoy being with their friends).

We did some science experiments and unfortunately, I was too busy being Bill Nye the Science Guy to take pictures. But the boys loved the science fun. We used purple cabbage juice as an indicator and watched it turn different colors as we poured it into different liquids. We made a non-Newtonian liquid out of cornstarch and water. We used rubbing alcohol and Sharpie markers to create a tie-dye effect on some t-shirts.

The boys also played kickball
Cake:

Then they got out Matt's Legos and when the parents showed up, they didn't want to leave. Star Wars Legos will never go out of style among the preteen boy set.
Here is the crew with their shirts.
I managed to survive the party with the help of Jim. He wrangled the pizza and served the cake. He was also the one who suggested kickball. The boys needed to run off some energy before they wore holes in the carpet.

It was a heck of a party. Matt had a fabbo time turning 11. And that makes me happy.

Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Matt is one louder today (5 points if you know the reference).

20 minutes until seven preteen boys descend upon this house expecting candy and cookies and cake and junk and stuff. ('nother 5 points for this reference)

What have I been doing all morning?
1. Trying not to be too disappointed that the cake we bought for the party is not Cake Wreck worthy. It's perfectly normal and not at all messed up.
2. Chopping red cabbage
3. Crushing acetaminophen
4. Looking for ammonia
5. Making sugar water
6. Telling Matt over and over that he can't open his presents right now.
7. Getting nervous for the party. I am not a very good anticipator. I get hives.
8. Chopping more red cabbage
9. Pulverizing the red cabbage in distilled water
10. Filling bottles with various liquids

It's chemistry time!

I'll post pictures later.

Lullaby time and things to do

There are some swell entries in my friend's lullaby contest (including one from me). Head on over and vote (for me).

In other news, today is the conference meet for cross country. Cross your fingers (ha!) for us that the meet will not be canceled, like the last two meets. Paul really wants to run. He'll even run despite the snow that is still whitening the lawn from yesterday's flake-y weather.

I'm also busy busy busy preparing for Matt's birthday party (tomorrow!). Matt and Hayley helped me test out some science tricks that will form the bulk of the party. The best trick we managed last night was a non-Newtonian liquid made from cornstarch and water. When mixed right, it is a liquid if you drag your finger slowly through it, but it becomes a solid if you tap your finger hard and fast on it. I saw it on a TV show where they had made a bunch of it and then were able to run across it. The website I found it on says it's like quicksand. Anyway, it was really cool. Yes, I'll post pictures of the party.

After the party, I'll be focusing on my homework. I have my Scottish history research project to finish up and a Humanities midcourse exam to study for. Then it'll be Halloween. I have to find the costume Hayley wants--I have no idea what it is except that it is an anime character in brown with a duffel bag-like thing on his/her back. Matt wants to be a campfire. I have a yellow shirt all ready, we just have to paint flames on it. As an accessory, he'll have a stick with a marshmallow on it.

I have a meeting in a few minutes so I'd best go shower. Wish me luck for the party. It's my LAST ONE as the party-planning mom. NO MORE. The kids have all been cut off from mom-planned parties.

It's snow time!

Look what the weather fairy left for us during the night!Summer is truly over! Bring on winter!

To-do and To-did

To do:
1. Test all the chemistry experiments that I've planned for the very last birthday party I am EVER planning for. Matt turns 11 next week and he will be cut off from mom-planned parties. All the other children have previously been cut off. I am not sorry to see this cut-off happen. AT ALL.
2. Look up more Halloween crafts. My living room is NOT ORANGE ENOUGH!
3. Play Triple Yahtzee with Matt. It was a goal assigned by his teacher. Really.
4. Pretend to clean. Assign the children the real chores while I busy myself with things like finishing all the puzzles in my Games magazine so I can throw it away.
5. Freak out about a craft event tomorrow that I am "technically" in charge of but am afraid of doing. Make soup for it. Make punch for it. Decor? Do I HAVE to?

To did:
1. Attended Matt's parent-teacher conference (where he was assigned the goal of playing Triple Yahtzee).
2. Showered. Big accomplishment!
3. Played War and Speed with Hayley with playing cards shaped like pumpkins. They are cute, but difficult to play with. Do not try to shuffle pumpkin-shaped playing cards.
4. Wrote a lullaby for this contest. My submission is the 19th comment.
5. Wrote myself off as a loser in the above contest.

Halloween for the ears and not for the faint of heart or snobbish poets

So I was going to try to enter a lullaby-writing contest put on by a friend of mine, but when I sat down to think up some lyrics, all that came out of my brain was a Halloween-themed rhyme. I guess I'm just not the lullaby type. I'm a scare-your-children-to-death-before-bed-so-they-will-cry-for-hours type. I probably shouldn't have had kids.

Pumpkins on the Porch
(sung to the tune of "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree. If you are not familiar with this song--and really you should be--go here and listen to the tune)

I looked out the window and what did I see?

Pumpkins on the porch, staring back at me.

Fall has brought me such a spooky surprise,

Jack-o-lanterns with ghoulish eyes.

With flickering smiles and wicked tricks

They gave me a shock just to get their kicks,

I shouldn’t have been scared, but 'twas a frightful scene,

Creepy little pumpkins on Halloween!

Krafty Korner at the Shoobox Kastle

You know it's going to be a special post when I purposely misspell most of the words in the title.

So it's my favorite time of year. I love October. The weather cools down after the heat and humidity of summer. The leaves turn on their neon colors. And pumpkins pop up on porches like children waiting for a candy handout.

Halloween is coming! And I got my crafting groove on because it is my mission in life to turn my living room completely over to orange kitschy goodness during the month of October. Please ignore the eyes rolling over in the other corner of the house. Husband is rolling out his Halloween tradition of non-verbal sarcasm.

This is the result of my crafting efforts:

Like all good crafters who share their dalliances with the creative muse on the internet, I will now post the instructions for this very easy craft.

1. Convince your parents to provide you with a slightly younger sister who will grow up to have a wicked awesome sewing machine that can make these:

2. Be nice to that sister so that when she grows up to own that particular neato sewing machine, she will spontaneously send you little Halloweeny things that she made using the machine.

3. When you have collected a goodly number of webby embroiderments made out of thread in various Halloween shapes and colors, put them in a sandwich bag and let them sit in the Halloween decoration box for at least a year while you ponder ways to display them.

4. Forget you have them.

5. While decorating for Halloween a year (or two) later, find them and say out loud, "I have GOT to do something with these!"

6. Remember that you saw at your friend's house the letters "B," "O," and "O" framed in cheap black frames and that you thought it was a neat display idea.

7. Wonder if that would work for these.

8. Decide that it will.

9. (Extremely difficult step--you might find that you need to attempt this several times before you achieve success) Find a free evening and head over to the craft store to buy cheap black frames.

10. Get caught up in several displays and almost leave without the frames.

11. Go back and find frames that will fit the little Halloweeny webby things.

12. Purchase the frames and haul them home.

13. Let sit overnight and until all the children are gone to school (this step might take several years).

14. Locate white and black cardstock in the blue milk crates where you keep cardstock. (If you do not have a supply of cardstock at home, just give up and go to Target to buy premade decorations) Also locate the paper cutter underneath the pile of pieced quilts given to you by your mother. Wonder if you'll ever get to them.

15. Unearth the double stick tape.

16. Cut the cardstock to fit the frame. I used 4"x6" frames. So I cut the paper 4"x6".

17. Clean the glass for the frames. Appreciate that the craft store employees did NOT place the price sticker (complete with bar code) on the glass. Worry (for good reason) that you'll cut yourself on the glass as you clean it. Breathe a sigh of relief when you finish cleaning and realize that you did it without injury! No need to locate the Spongebob bandaids!

18. Attempt to stick the webby thing to the paper using double stick tape, centering the webby decoration in the middle of the paper.

19. Give up on the tape because IT DOES NOT STICK TO THE WEBBY THING.

20. Get out the crystal clear gluey substance purchased a few years ago from a well-known rubber stamp home sales establishment to use to adhere the webby thing to the cardstock.

21. Growl angrily because the crystal clear gluey substance is so old that it is no longer usable. Chuck the bottle in the trash. Fume.

22. Sigh. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and resort to good ol' reliable white glue with the cow on the front of the bottle.

23. Resist the urge to kiss the picture of the cow when the glue sort of works to stick the webby thing in place. Just use a little dot of glue here and there--not too much or it will get on the glass and look messy.

24. Assemble the frame with the cardstock oriented however you like.

25. Mount artfully on a wall somewhere visible where, as you pass, you can think, "Awesome!"

Easy!

What to write when I have nothing to write about

Paul's meet (second one in a row) was canceled yesterday because of excessive rain. So no cross country running report to share with you today. It rained for pretty near five days here, finally stopping last night.

I suppose I could go back to last year's October theme and write about more of my Halloween decorations.

I could write about finally being able to grow my fingernails long (I hope I don't have to scrape the bottom of THAT barrel).

I could also share with you how I avoided a certain ulcer by going to Wal of the Mart and the craft store instead of watching the Twins game (which I would surely jinx if I had watched it from the beginning). Jim texted me the score when the Twins finally pulled ahead. Then I didn't get another text from him the whole hour and a half I was gone. I assumed in this case that no news was bad news (Jenni, say it with me: "No ga-news is good ga-news with Gary Gnu") and that the game and the season were over so I got in the van to make my way back home. And I was grateful that I didn't have to get all worked up and sad over the loss. But to my surprise, the game was still on when I got home. The Twins and Tigers were tied at 5 in the twelfth inning. Five minutes later, the game was over and I was extremely pleased that I got home when I did so I could see them win. And then I spent the rest of the night jealous of two of my brothers who were actually at the game (and now have to deal with ringing ears and hoarse voices).

Maybe the Twins will get crushed by the Yankees, but we had an exciting run to the end of the regular season and provided a fitting almost-end to baseball in the Metrodome. It's been a crazy three days of sports in the HHH Teflon Marshmallow.

I wondered what direction this post would go to, since I didn't have any thought in my head when I started writing it. Now I'm all nostalgic for the 1987 and 1991 Twins World Series champions. Go Twins!

There and back again

Other Jim made it back from Iowa yesterday after staying a little longer than he said he would. Oh well, I can't be mad at him for staying longer to go to the afternoon session of conference with Rissa and her family. He got home around 8:30 p.m. and dumped all his stuff by the couch. And it sits there still. rrrrrrrrrrr He'll get to deal with that when he comes home from school today.

But he did bring home a few pictures. Here he is with his date, Rissa.

They ate dinner at this home. One of the girls made the dinner (not sure which one) and Other Jim said it was really good. He didn't know any of the other kids, but he had a good time anyway.

The kids are holding what I believe are cupcakes, each with a letter on it so that it spells out "HOMECOMING."

Macho boys.

Homecoming (out of town)

Other Jim is currently dancing the night away at Homecoming...in Iowa.

Some chick he met at EFY this summer asked him to come down to Des Moines to be her date. Other Jim just cannot do things the easy way, can he? Yes, we let him drive three hours out of state to go to a dance. Yes, we let him go by himself. Yes, we are letting him stay overnight at the girl's house (she is staying at a friend's house).

I know what you are thinking...How could we let him do that? So far, Other Jim hasn't given us much reason to distrust him. He's a good boy who is a responsible and diligent employee. He does his homework and hands it in on time. He attends church faithfully even when Jim and I were out of town last weekend and when we were in Utah. He obeys at home mostly and doesn't talk back. He's a genuinely good kid from what I can tell. He never has hours away from home that he refuses to account for. And Jim reminded me that he was driving 12 hours out of state by himself at the same age. We made Other Jim check the oil before he left and call us when he got there. I reminded him to be a good boy. He'll call when he leaves tomorrow.

But the most important responsibility I gave him was to TAKE PICTURES! Since I can't be there, the burden rests upon him to make sure there is adequate pictorial documentation of his last high school Homecoming dance. He'd better obey, otherwise I'll ground him for life.

First hot cocoa of the season

Yesterday Paul was supposed to run at a cross country meet at his school. Many of the parents were volunteering as guides to help the kids stay on the course and I was one of them. I had fake child for the afternoon too so she was going to sit with me and provide guidance as well.

However, the weather chose not to cooperate. It rained all day and the wind blew and the temperature dropped below the 50 degree mark. I got out the long underwear and bought a new umbrella (ours have disappeared. I think they've caught the socks in the laundry syndrome). I fixed hot cocoa and filled the thermos--nearly jumping with joy--I was looking forward to sitting outside in the October chill with a goodly supply of a hot beverage.

But we got there right as a lightning bolt electrified the sky and the meet was canceled. They would have let the kids run in the rain, but if there is one lick of lightning, it's off.

So I didn't get to see Paul run. But we sat at home drinking hot cocoa with marshmallows. We nearly spoiled our appetite for dinner.