It's Autumn Again

We are already two and a half months deep into first grade! Which means...Halloween costume conspiracies are thick and heated. A few months ago the twins were definitely going to be Star Wars characters. But now they are obsessed with Harry Potter. Teddy's biggest obsession to date has been garbage trucks, so we were thinking of making him into a garbage truck. Though just today he climbed into an oatmeal box and called himself a train, so I think we'll go with making Teddy a train costume from old cardboard. He also loves water fountains, which might be more straightforward.
We only have a little over a week, but I think we'll pull something together.

Just as a recap of Halloweens past, here are some of our former Halloween costume links for you to enjoy:

That time I made the boys into ceiling fans
When they were astronauts
The epic dinosaur costumes

Here are some other fall-ish things we've been up to around here.

Cubs baseball

Our fall baseball team this year is the Cubs! It's perfect because the real Chicago Cubs are in the playoffs right now. In fact, they are currently in the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets (who I am still mad at for beating the Nationals), and last weekend our Little Cubs played the Little Mets, which was cute.

Teddy preps the field

Good game, Cubs and Mets!

Snack time: the highlight of the experience

Outside time

We've had marvelous fall weather and have been able to spend quite a bit of time outside, doing predictably fall activities like collecting leaves and acorns, and the less common feeding of Sun Chips to fish, and casting spells on everyone with our Harry Potter wands that we made from chopsticks and hot glue.

My grand plan was to have the boys paint acorns and put them in a glass vase and use them to decorate the mantle. We didn't quite get to the painting phase, but we did have a spirited acorn-collecting competition and I put the best ones in a vase on the mantle. I'm sure it is just a matter of hours before they are blasted off the mantle and scattered all over the living room, but for now they feel festive to me.

We've been to our favorite local spot to enjoy nature, Popcorn Ponds. It's just down our street. We collected leaves, saw a giant toad, turtles, and spiders, threw countless seedpods into the water, and fed chips to an exuberant school of fish.

Tree ate Ted's shoe

Biking

Cal and Clark have been biking. We'd always felt deficient as parents when we watched them try to pedal bikes of any sort. We just don't have the space to store bikes and we don't live in a place that is conducive to learning to ride a bike. But my sister is a bike gal, having worked at a bike shop for quite awhile, and she helped us find good quality second hand bikes, and my in-laws generously are letting us store them in their garage a few miles away. The boys are already riding them! Instead of training wheels they rode around on bikes that were too small for them for a few days and then tackled the big ones. No sweat. Bikers. Bam. Just like that.

More outside fun...

This is probably the first selfie I've pulled off with all of our faces in it.

Pumpkin-getting

Our fall would not be complete without a visit to Hartland Orchards, our favorite farm ever, to get pumpkins and eat caramel apples and kettle corn. We went last weekend.

Out of the whole pumpkin field, Teddy found the one little
green one, and that's what he wanted more than anything else.

We got some normal ones too.

Watching the caramel apples being made...

Just add nuts

We got to bring Aunt Bean this year!

Teddy was not into the whole caramel apple idea.

Cal gets Clark's feet in his face when he tries to catch him going down the
slide.

Teddy went down as many times as we let him and all by himself.

A good day for us all

Drink-making

On Brian's birthday I made caramel apple martinis as well as butter beer, which, I trust all of you know, is from Harry Potter. I found various recipes on Pinterest and sort of combined them. Both drinks were extremely sweet, but amazing. I made a version of the martini not so sweet by using half regular vodka and half caramel vodka.

Here's the butter beer.

Butter beer: I didn't exactly measure it, but I put a bunch of ice cream in the blender with a bunch of cream soda, a couple squirts of butterscotch topping, and some ice. Put it in a cold glass from the freezer to make it seem especially Hogsmeade-ish. 

Tip: Make sure you don't fill the blender too full and be sure to give the mixture air as it mixes so the cream soda doesn't explode the lid off. I have good reason to believe it will. To give it some over-21-kick add a couple ounces of butterscotch schnapps.

The boys drank all the butter beer they could get their hands on.

Caramel Apple Martini: 2 oz. apple cider, 2 oz. caramel vodka,

1 oz butterscotch schnapps, shake with ice, pour glass rimmed 

with caramel sauce, garnish with apple slice.

Pretty!

Fall Snack Experimenting

Today I made apple pie granola bars. I have a recipe that I've used for straight-up granola bars with brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla. But, being inspired by fall flavors and such, this time I decreased the sugar and honey and added applesauce, caramel dip, all-spice, nutmeg, and finely chopped and peeled apples. They turned out well, though I doubt anyone would call them apple pie flavored unless they knew the ingredients. They also didn't harden as well as I hoped, but they will be a staple of the lunch boxes this week.

Cutting straight and/or even lines: not in my skill set

Reading

Brian has been reading Harry Potter to the boys and they are beyond obsessed with the books. They are always talking about the books or acting out scenes from the books and their own scenes, loosely based on the books. We have to draw a line and cut them off from Harry Potter talk occasionally. The boys have started real homework! So they're reading even more than usual these days, which is great.

We've read a bunch of fall and Halloween-inspired books as well, but as this post is getting long and tedious already, I'll save my book reviews for the next entry-- which I promise will be soon.

Until then...go play in the leaves or something.

Clark, in full hockey gear, reading to Teddy

Ms. Sandra

Our area was prepared to be hit by Hurricane Sandy, and we were. There were some power outages and some flooding, but overall, from where I’m sitting, we weren’t affected as much as many thought we would be. Schools and a lot of businesses shut down. Public transportation shut down. The government shut down. Everyone hunkered. (I found it comforting to hear the word hunkered so often yesterday.)

Compared to all the coastal towns and New York City, we have very minor damage. I can only imagine what it would be like to live in one of the washed-away towns. It was an odd day. A bit of a boring day for me (thankfully). I was anxious and couldn't focus on the million productive things I could be doing with my time. We were trapped inside with the TV on, flashing images and speculations and measurements and important people jabbering on prettily.

We had moved everything from our balcony inside, including the Jack O’ Lantern, painted pumpkins, the slimy bubble toys still lingering from summer, and to my chagrin, several stink bugs. Outside the wind chime sang. Inside, our fridge and freezer sat full of ice and water. Our bread and non-perishables waited at attention outside the fridge. Brian worked on his latest computer project and I considered folding the laundry. The boys raced and tumbled, too often on my feet. I tried a craft with them that occupied them for awhile. I did a reading lesson with them, which, thinking back on it, was the best thing I did all day. We looked at their trick or treat candy and they both picked out identical lollipops to eat. I think I saw a white shoe fly past the dining room window.

When all was said and done, the boys went to bed and Brian and I lay on the couch watching, you guessed it, more pictures of the hurricane as the trees scratched and the wind yelled outside. One time the lights flickered. I woke up on the couch at 2am after having a dream about a large squirrel, and scuttled to bed to do some more hunkering down.

Today we went out a bit—for a walk to survey our surroundings and sip hot chocolate, and then to run some errands. Turns out the best time to go to Costco is the day after a hurricane. Not only were the customers few, but Costco employees had food samples out! Good ones too, not the diet energy drinks or cardboard chocolate bars. Of course there was still That Guy who ate like 47 pizza samples while mumbling about getting some for his daughter.

So, not much new to report.

Painting egg carton caterpillars

Made some carameled apples

Assessing damage

Hot chocolate sippin'



Cup lickin'

We Drove Through a Wildfire

Well, not exactly through a wildfire, but it looked like it. Then we drove through even more of Wyoming and it got awesome. Tomorrow we plan to climb the Grand Tetons. And by climb, I mean Cal and Clark will crawl around on some boulders near the base of the Grand Tetons.  This is a beautiful place. And it was great to be greeted by family with wine at the end of that drive. Ah.

Somewhere, Wyoming

Somewhere Else, Wyoming

Clark found a baseball field in Debois, Wyoming!

And someone left a catcher's mask!

What the Grand Tetons?!

Oh no! It's a gruffalo!

The Story of Our Balcony

I love our balcony. Our lives would be much different without it. It's abnormally large for a typical condo or apartment balcony and basically an extension of our our living space. I was looking at some old pictures yesterday and noticed quite a few balcony pictures over the years. Don't worry, I won't share them all. But, here is a photo story of our balcony over the past four years we've lived here and the beginning of the fifth.

First year

Second year-- can you tell I was on bed rest and could spend all day planting one flower?

Second year--  a few months later with broken dryer and spitting-up infants

Second year-- first snow!

Third year-- spring

Third year-- fall

Fourth year-- ball practice

Cal kisses Ava

Summer escape

Nighttime rodeo grounds

Favorite picnic spot

Bubble-blowing lesson

Fall wrestling match

Fifth year-- toy parachute man stuck in tree

The flu aftermath

February popsicles

After dinner drinks

Brief magnolia tree blossoms

We've had an unseasonably early spring this year and so I've been in a gardening mood now for a month or more.  Our magnolia tree lasted only about two days in full bloom and then the angry sun (I think it reached 90 degrees) burned the beautiful pink blossoms away. Nevertheless, I've been dreaming of having a lush, pretty balcony this year. Not that it's usually frightfully ugly, but last year the boys were really into eating potting soil so I couldn't do much beyond the flower boxes. I'm hopeful that we'll get a little more sun this year since two surrounding pine trees died and had to be cut down last fall. So I've planted some veggies and herbs in hopes of having a little more sun and being able to eat some homegrown produce-- something I really miss from growing up. You just can't beat running to the garden for a snack of fresh carrots and sugar snap peas, hosing them off, and crunching on them whenever you want. Oh, and getting lost in the raspberry patch. 

My parents are still big gardeners, especially with much more land at their new house and for my birthday they are helping fund a more bountiful and beautiful balcony. I did some research about shade plants and ordered some. I got two bleeding heart bushes, a fern-ish plant, and some English primroses that should thrive in a partial/full shade setting. With them I'm mixing in some lettuce and spinach, basil and cilantro, and probably some begonias. I have a mini iris plant that was a gift. I also have some peas that I originally thought we'd just watch sprout in a bag with a wet paper towel and throw away, but I couldn't bring myself to toss them out. Now they're huge! They need sun though, so I'm not sure if they'll be able to flower and produce actual fruit. A few years ago I had lovely, big tomato plants that never had any tomatoes. I'll add some more plants as I haunt Home Depot (though I do wish the gardening section was closer to the ceiling fan section.) and keep taking pictures of how much my plants grow because I'm a little garden-dorky. I also want to make a compost bucket for the balcony. I found a model for making a balcony compost bin, but I'm just not sure I'm willing to give up the space and risk the boys getting into it. 

Here are some garden balcony pictures from this spring since you haven't seen enough balcony pictures already: