2022

  The city parks and rec department has been offering free indoor ice skating at a local rink. I'll emphasize free, because this is code for "this is going to end up costing me money."
  The skating experience was pretty new for the kids because the few times we've gone to outdoor rinks, it has been so cold that we didn't stay long. It's either freezing and windy, or it's warm and the ice is no good. Getting the opportunity to skate on an indoor rink, however, got Princess wanting to take skating lessons.


  As luck would have it, right after she started talking about this, I heard that a local skating club was offering lessons during the school day for homeschoolers at an affordable price. I told Princess she could do it.
  Then there's the issue of her little sister.
  Cookie doesn't listen well. She gets fussy and changes her mind. Her temperament being as it is, I didn't want to waste money for her to have lessons, too. Plus she just turned 5, so I figured going to free skate would be enough.
  But she said she really wanted to do it, and for now we're only signing up for five lessons. So OK, whatever, I signed her up, too.
  And this is where the story gets awesome, because at our first lesson, the girls were divided into little kids and big kids. The little kids had their lesson while the big kids skated on their own. Halfway through, they switched. And Cookie was instantly promoted to skate with the big kids!
  She is fantastic! She did everything they asked, even skating around the rink three times with her arms straight out. "Use the side of your skate," the teacher shouted. "I don't want to hear any toe picks!" Around and around she went, her stubbornness working to her benefit. She was working hard, and I caught her looking at me a couple times from the corner of her eye. Other moms were asking, "Is that your daughter?" and instead of saying yes apologetically and whisking her away, I was all, "Yes! Yes. She. Is."
  So now I have paid for lessons for both girls, and I bought Cookie a pair of used skates. Princess will probably need a different pair, too. So much for "free skating."

  But we're totally going to be ready for the 2022 Olympics.

That girl does everything her own way

  After trick-or-treating with a group of about 15 friends, we went back to one friend's house for the great candy exchange. The kids spent about an hour trading and eating candy — mostly trading.
  Driving home, I asked the kids what they were trying to trade away, and what they were trying to get. Princess said she was trying to get popcorn balls and red licorice, and she was trading away Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers.
  I had to suppress a "What? Are you crazy?!"

Happy Halloween, 2009

  It has rained a lot lately, the cold, almost-freezing kind of rain that makes you think it's the worst possible weather. As Halloween approached, I prepared by assembling an Alaskan fisherman costume. Turns out, the weather was great, and I didn't wear my raincoat. I still wore the huge pants, though, and yellow hat I made from leftover fleece from Cookie's Wolverine mask.

  The kids were Gandalf, Wolverine (from the X-Men, of course), and a witch. Princess really wanted eyeliner and red lipstick for her costume, and if I added it up, it's possible those two things cost the same as all the other costume pieces for all four of us: seven dollars for liquid eyeliner and six dollars for a lipstick. How do women afford to wear makeup all the time? This isn't even expensive makeup. She looks great, though. Notice how the auto-focus on my camera seems to know that she's the one who should be in focus?
  The girls wore snowpants under their costumes. Everyone wore long underwear and turtlenecks. It wasn't too cold, though, and dry. Perfect weather, or at least as good as we could ask for.
  I have not written about how I broke my pinky toe two weeks ago, but yeah — ouch. Trick-or-treating up and down our hilly town was a what-was-I-thinking experience, but Halloween only comes once a year, right?

  No worries about paperwork. The haul has been documented by Gameboy and Princess. Cookie saw these tally lists and said she wanted to write one, too. "But I don't know how to write!" she lamented. I told her I'd help tomorrow.

Gandalf hat is done

  I finished Gameboy's "Gandalf" hat today. That means I have completed all the costumes. Yeah! I don't want to waste my big day off on Halloween stressing out about sewing. We'll take a group photo tomorrow.
  I used to remember what the kids had been each Halloween. I should give this more thought and write it down. Things like that are the kinds of meaningless details that make me feel like a good mom if I remember them.
  I didn't use a pattern for the hat. Sewing with fleece is forgiving, it doesn't ravel and stretches well. The rim was too floppy so I went to the fabric store to get something — I didn't know what — to make it stiff. The staff was incredibly unhelpful, and I ended up looking at boning, which is used in wedding-dress corsets and such. It occurred to me that our answer would be found at Menards, our local hardware store.
  Sure enough, $1.50 later I had a coil of wire that worked great. I sewed a hem around the edge of the brim, bent over the wire and snaked it through. I cut it to the right length and hooked the two ends of wire together so there's no pokey end, and it's a connected hoop.
  It might be true that all the best costumes are a combination of secondhand store, fabric store and hardware store.

  Putting Cookie into another postscript, she spent part of the day reading a comic book while sitting inside a big box.

Kix butt?

  Like so many earth-mama mothers these days, I don't buy sugary cereal for my kids. I didn't eat much of the stuff when I was a kid, either. Rather than being your everyday breakfast, cereals such as Lucky Charms and Trix were eaten only occasionally, or for special events such as your birthday or Christmas. So I do know what these cereals are like. And I fondly remember Boo Berry, which isn't made anymore.
  Except that it is!
  There it was: Boo Berry, sitting beside its cousins, Count Chocula and Franken Berry, at my local grocery store. Turns out, it's a seasonal thing. I did a google news search and found this nice review of the three on a blog on the website of a community college in Utah. These cereals really find their niche with college students.
  So what did I do? I bought a box of each! Coincidentally, right before I saw the cereals, I had sent Gameboy back to the store's entrance to pick up the coupon flier. When he got back, we had turned a corner. He came down the aisle, then started to leave before he saw me and stopped. He started to laugh.
  "I didn't think that was our cart because I saw those," he said, pointing to the boxes of cereal.
  When my husband got home from work, he got all happy when he saw the Boo Berry, too. He said if he'd seen it in the store, he would not have bought it because of me. So he's happy with his box of Boo Berry. It's different than other sugary cereals; it's a weird color, and it sticks with the one flavor, unlike fruity cereals such as Froot Loops or Trix, which try to please everyone with a variety of colors and a hard-to-place taste. Boo Berry makes a statement: "I taste like artificial blueberry flavoring. That's it. Take it or leave it."
  The funny end to this story is that the kids don't want to eat the cereal; only one of them even tried it. Gameboy ate some Boo Berry but didn't finish it. I ate a couple bites from the bowl he left behind. I think I'm attracted more to the box and the color than the actual food; I didn't even finish his leftovers. I'm beginning to think I never did eat it as a kid. Maybe I just saw the commercials and thought it looked cool.
  Princess isn't much interested in eating anything that isn't a salad. Cookie wanted a bowl of cereal the second we got home from the grocery store: a bowl of Kix. "I want the circle kind," she said. I asked why she likes it. "Because it's so crunchy and so delicious," she said.
  I need to get her in a commercial.

Gameboy turns 11

  I took a picture of Gameboy on the last day he'd be 10. He'll have to count on his toes now, my 11-year-old boy.

  My mom made fancy birthday cakes when I was a kid. This didn't rub off, apparently, as my children's birthday cakes are fancy only in that they have sprinkles. His little sister put on the candles.

  It seems like half the kids in town are sick from one day to the next, so I invited nine kids to Gameboy's birthday bowling party. Turned out, no one was sick, and everyone could come.
  I like bowling parties. Everyone has something to do, but it's not all that important to do it, and there's lots of time to talk and goof off.

  My only point with this picture is that all my kids got their dad's eyes. It really shows up once in awhile in photographs.
  Happy Birthday #11, Gameboy!

Getting ready for the big haul

  Halloween is approaching, and I got the night off from work. It's that important.
  There are lots of events around town this Halloween, haunted houses, parties, and I just found out about free ice skating lessons at an indoor rink. My first thought was, "Why Halloween?" Because in my mind, Halloween is about one thing. We won't be going to the time-sucking, no-return ventures. We'll be trick-or-treating.
  I'm not talking about just a few neighbors' houses. I'm talking about from-first-hint-of-dusk-until-they-turn-off-all-the-porch-lights trick-or-treating. There'll be no treat baggies or plastic pumpkins for us; we're taking pillow cases.
  I don't like the kids eating candy. We don't accept the lollipops when we go through the bank drive-thru. But trick-or-treating is more about conquering the world than eating the candy. It's about counting your loot and trading with your friends.
  The weather promises to be nasty this year. I might dress as an Alaskan fisherman. I found some big, yellow rain pants at Goodwill. Now I need a Gorton's Fisherman hat. It's going to be fun!

At least the whales stand a good chance

I like movies about the end of the world. I know they tend to be silly and overblown, but if you're asking me to care about what's a stake, the end of the world gets my attention. (Pictured: The Himalayan Mountains being flooded by the ocean.)

The movie "2012" is coming out next month, and I hope to see it in the theater. I don't see a lot of movies in the theater, but a special-effects lollapalooza like this is fun to see on the big screen. (Pictured: Los Angeles falling into the ocean.)

The trailer gives away that the government (of course) is hiding information from the people (of course) and has some kind of ships involved in their plan to save the human race, and I imagine only the well-connected can get a ticket on a ship (of course). The trailer shows helicopters carrying cargo to these ships. And wait! Was that a giraffe? Yes, yes it is. Bwahahahahahaha! Of all the things to save! I can accept the movie's doomsday theory, the conspiracy theory, the true-love theory, whatever, but who decided to save the giraffes? (Pictured: Giraffe is transported by helicopter.)