Trick-or-treat!

 

We took Parker & Cecily trick-or-treating in Downtown Edmonds for Halloween.

 

 

First, let me get this off my chest.  Although I will freely admit to being something of a Grinch about Halloween, and I hate coming up with costumes, it was NOT my intention to force Parker into Fiona's hand-me-down costume (from TWO years ago)!  Even though I actually made Parker a fireman costume (I made it this afternoon with construction paper & duct tape, but it's still MADE), he insisted on wearing the strawberry.  At least he didn't insist on this one:

 

 

It's cuter on Cecily.

 

Both kids had a great time.  Cecily loved wandering around, and although Parker was over-whelmed by the crowds, the draw of candy was enough that he did a great job of going store-to-store saying "trick-or-treat".

 

And since I did spend all of 5-minutes making Parker's "real" costume, we forced him into it for a picture (doesn't he look excited?):

 

Cecily's just excited about candy.  She carried this (still wrapped) package of red vines around from the first store to the very last one, how could I deny her at least one?

Croup

I know it's been something of a miracle that we've missed out on it thus far, but this week, our family was hit with it's first (two) cases of Croup.

 

Since I'm a horrible Mom, I had hopes of a day or two sitting on the couch, sipping tea, watching a movie with a sleeping baby in my lap.  No such luck, these two were almost-perfectly fine during the day, and super cranky and coughing all night long.

 

But, we were lucky, I think they had a mild case and we never had to break out the steroids.

 

But, add up two week of not sleeping, plus Cecily broke out two new teeth this week, and I and the two littles are plum worn-out!

 

Pumpkin Carving

 

Parker had his first pumpkin carving experience this year.

 

It mostly involved Parker chatting while Keith & I scooped & carved, but he had a great time.

 

Parker's Pumpkin was a bike:

 

I decided to go with a pattern:

 

(note to self: next time I get this mis-guided idea that I'm Martha Stewart, do one of her projects that involves power tools, not tiny orange knives)

 

Keith made the Jolly Roger:

 

When Keith took Parker out to see the finished project, Parker's response was: "It's beautiful"

King's Costume Fun-Run

Parker's cousin, Fiona, goes to pre-school at King's, the school I attended for K-12.  Kelly mentioned that they were having a Costume Fun-Run with kids entertainment today, so we thought we'd stop by.  It's close, it's easy, and it had a bouncy-house to make up for last week.

 

 

We put the kids in the bouncy house when we first got there, Cecily loved it, Parker spent 10 minutes standing like this:

 

He was more excited once Fiona showed up.

 

Fiona wore this strawberry costume two years ago when she was Cecily's age.

 

Once Fiona was in the bouncy house with Parker, he had a BLAST.  He just takes a while to warm up to stuff, and everything is more fun with cousins.

 

After the bouncy house, we wandered around the campus for a while, checking out the new STEM building Keith's company worked on.

 

Then Parker & Fiona played peek-a-boo outside the chemistry building until we tore them away kicking & screaming.

Cecily's "Chair"

Any time I let Cecily walk around with food in her hand, she almost always ends up sitting here:

 

 

Then, Parker, not to be left out, crams himself onto the seat as well.

 

Not that there isn't child-sized seating 5-feet away at the tiny-table!

Cecily's first "war wound"

For the first time ever as a parent, one of my children actually had an injury requiring a Band-Aid.  Sure, we've gone through several boxes of Band-Aids in the past three years, but this is the first time it's actually been necessary.

 

 

Cecily is a determined, if not yet sturdy, walker, which means there are a lot of face-plants in her day.  Usually, she lands on the carpet, no-harm no-foul.  Today, she face-planted the coffee table, and it bit her back.

 

She didn't bleed as much as she could have, but it was a good thing we bought those Hello Kitty Band-Aids last month.

 

She's fine, and after a minute of crying, she was back up moving on in her fight against gravity.

Fall Harvet Party

 

Our church had their "Fall Harvest Party" last weekend.  They had games, popcorn, and pony rides.

 

Last year, they had a bouncy house, so we'd been talking the bouncy house up to Parker all week, but they didn't have it this year, I guess we need to pay closer attention to the announcements.

 

But, we still had a great time.  Parker had a blast playing the "carnival" games, he's still talking about his "golf game".

 

He also loved the Popcorn.  He ate nearly this entire bag, his little lips were beyond chapped by the time he'd finished that much salty popcorn!

 

Parker was super excited waiting for his turn at the pony ride.

 

You know, at least until it was his turn at the pony ride.  Then he panicked and the excitement was over.  This is as close as we got to riding a pony, but it's a good 10-feet closer than we got last year, so maybe next year he'll actually make it onto the pony.

 

The kids have changed a bit since last year:

 

 

Today's Project ~ Parker's Comforter Cover

This started out so innocently...

I was at my parent's house shopping for home goods, um, I mean, visiting, when I saw a comforter in one of the laundry room cupboards.  I thought, "Parker loves our bed, I bet he'd love having a comforter like ours", so I took it naively thinking that I could buy a cheap cover to put on it.

 

Turns out that the "cheap" covers are only $80, compared to the normal ones that are $100-150.  So, I thought I'd just make one, buy two pieces of fabric, sew them together, viola, a comforter cover.  Turns out, they don't really sell fabric wide enough for that little idea, so it had to be pieced.

 

And before you know it, I'm making Parker a quilt:

 

 

It ended up being even more pieced than I'd planned since I didn't have enough fabric for my initial plan and ended up using every tiny scrap of fabric I'd bought.  So, it was WAY more of a project than I'd ever intended.

 

...not to mention that it ended up costing about $60 for all the fabric, so I probably should have just bought one at Target after all.

 

But, it's soft and cozy, made with "warm" fabrics that Parker loves, and I got pretty good at using my serger.  (Yes, I made it with my serger, I know that's not real quilt-making technique, but I'm not a real quilt-maker, just don't tell my Mom)

 

So, after all that work, here's where we found Parker the first night it was on his bed: