Halloween 2010

So this year the girls were a gypsy (Abra) and a little black cat (Thalia). The fun kicked off on Friday, when they had a Halloween Parade at the school. Here's Thalia getting ready for the parade:


and then Abra coming out with her friend Maddy:


Here are the kids parading down the street:


Then on Saturday, Thalia and I made a scarecrow. Thalia was a bit skeptical about my scarecrow making credentials, but in the end it turned out pretty well! We put a plastic pumpkin on his head, and filled it with lights, and then draped chili pepper lights around him (why? why not!?!). And we topped it off with a "Psycho Killer" baseball cap -- one that previously belonged to none other than Tommy Lee (thanks, of course, to Ant Cat for that one!) -- what could be scarier than that?

Thalia poses with the scarecrow:


And here he is all lit up:


And then tonight it was time to get ready for Halloween parties and trick-or-treating. Brenna applied the whiskers to the little black cat (love that tail!).


And here they are all ready to go!

So off the girls went, first to their Halloween parties, then trick or treating with Brenna. They got quite the haul. I stayed home and manned the candy station with Mr Scarecrow and the pumpkins:

Early Halloween Project

So the girls appear to be working on an early craft project for Halloween. Last night I found this hidden behind the cats' scratching post.

Now, I must say that, uh, the "craft supplies" they have used are an interesting choice, but I guess you use the things you have that are in abundant supply....


and you open it up and find....


hmm, those ghosts in our house must be drinking a lot of beer....

A Srong Thing

Here is Thalia's Valentine message. As she says, "Love is a Srong Thing" indeed.

Merry Christmas 2009

Last night the girls began tracking Santa on the computer using the NORAD/GoogleEarth site. We got the globe out as well, and they tracked him across Europe and into North Africa. It turns out this is a good way to learn some geography!


After dinner, the girls hung up their stockings:


and a very excited Thalia did a little Christmas dance:


Then the girls set things out for Santa and the reindeer. Santa got cookies (koulourakia, in fact!) and milk, and all the reindeer got carrots. All but Blitzen, of course, who (as Santa explained to the girls in his annual letter a few years ago) prefers broccoli to carrots. So the girls set out a piece of broccoli along with the carrots. Healy, of course, tried to muscle in on the action before Santa came:


Later in the night, Santa stopped by, and left the stockings full and presents under the tree, including Thalia's American Girl doll!


Early this morning (at about 6:20) we heard the girls sneak downstairs, and about 10 minutes later we followed them down to find this sight:


And Thalia was just about jumping out of her skin she was so excited about her doll:


And it turns out Santa left a note:



The girls gave us our presents first. Thalia had made a calendar for us in school, which she wrapped beautifully:


and the girls collaborated on our other gifts: a dollar bill for each of us -- woot!

Lots of other presents were then opened, here's just a small sampling. Abra got the Harry Potter set from Gramma, which will definitely keep her busy:


Thalia got Lemony Snicket from Papou and Yiayia:


And "Ant Cat" got the girls an Easy Bake cupcake kit:


And there were lots more presents; thanks to all our family and friends for taking such good care of the girls and us. After it was all over, and wrapping paper, boxes, and bows all littered the floor, I sprinkled catnip (from the cats' stocking) into a few cardboard boxes and hijinks ensued:

So now I need to get busy working on the turkey for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas, all!

Deck The Halls...

A little musical interlude for everyone: Abra and Lily play a duet of Deck The Halls on the piano. Listen here.

Merry Christmas, all

The girls are in bed, dreaming of Santa. They left out treats for him, and carrots for all the reindeer except Blitzen. Blitzen gets a sprig of broccoli, since a few years back Santa left the girls a note saying that Blitzen was a big broccoli fan.

Anyway, presents are wrapped, stockings are hung, dog is walked (just before midnight, with sleigh bells ringing), and it's time for us to retire so Santa can come. And so the cats can mess around with all the wrapping on the presents while we sleep.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone.

Gingerbread Follies

Abra brought home a gingerbread house that she had made at school, and started working on some renovations. It was very cute, right down to the little marshmallow snowman and the shredded coconut that she used to make the snow around the house.

Healy was quite interested in helping Abra with her house:



Helpful cat. Raise your hand if you can see what's coming next.

In the middle of the night (3:11am, to be exact), we woke up to the ugly but common sound of a cat barfing up a hairball.

In the light of the morning, when we went in search of the hairball, we found it not to be a hairball but in fact a coconutball -- a small compactified blob of regurgitated shredded coconut. And the gingerbread house was... well... it wasn't pretty. Let's just hope the gingerbread family had full replacement coverage on their insurance.

Life with cats and kids.

Halloween 2008

Halloween was low key this year. Abra went off to have a trick-or-treat sleepover at a friend's house, so it was just Thalia on the candy circuit tonight. Here she is in her pixie costume, ready to go.

Lily came over, which was nice since Abra was missing in action. Thalia and Lily posed for a minute...

...and then off they went, dashing down the street in search of CANDY!


After an hour or so of looting and pillaging the neighborhood (during which Thalia learned that if you are trick-or-treating at a house that displays a University of Michigan flag, when you say "Go Blue!" you get an extra handful of candy) we came back home when the pumpkin candy bag was too overloaded for Thalia to carry any more. At that point it was dark and we lit the pumpkins.


And then Thalia got to hand out the candy... with a little help from Mom.

Happy Halloween, all! I'll post a picture of Abra in her witch costume when she comes home in the morning....

Update: OK, here's the witch:

Fourth of July

OK, another admission -- while I like fireworks shows, I don't like going to fireworks shows. It gets crowded, it gets hot (except in Cleveland), you gotta walk all over the place (now with young children), etc, etc. Yes, I'm lazy. Plus I broke my neck at a fireworks show on the National Mall when I was younger, and I guess I still have bad memories from that.

Luckily I married a woman who shares this opinion. Our daughters, however, do not. Yesterday when Abra woke up she said "Are we going to see fireworks, Daddy?" Oh, groan. I was hoping we'd get through the day without them even realizing it was the Fourth of July, like we did last year.

Then I remembered that we had an old pack of sparklers stuffed in the back of a kitchen drawer. The box had come from Brenna's house when we packed it up 18 months ago, and was probably well older than that. I wasn't even sure they would light, so I tested one when the girls weren't looking. It lit. We were in business.

So when it got dark, I started lighting them up and passing them to the girls. Abra ran around waving them and making wishes. Thalia was a bit afraid at first, but then got brave and held them. Being old sparklers, half of them would die out halfway through and need to be relit. But they held up. And after we went through the dozen sparklers, the girls chased fireflies for ten more minutes. They would name the fireflies "Ted" and "Sally" and the like. Then it was bedtime.

And when we tucked the girls into bed, Abra said "That was the best Fourth of July EVER!"

Heh, the joy of exceeding low expectations.

Santa Just Left!

Here's how it looks at our house, after Santa has left and before we leave it to the cats:



Merry Christmas, all!