Our no recipe repeat October ran out of steam early last week. I knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off while we had a visitor, but we still did decent for the month, and we have some new staples for the next year. I kind of cheated Wednesday when we had a low country boil for dinner, and we just made these hot and cold chocolate drinks. But they were yummy. Hot chocolate + Ice Cream = Delicious. IF you drink it fast enough, you get the hot and cold of it. If you don't, you just get cold chocolate.
We did cover a lot in home school last week too. I knew this week would be light, so we tried to make up for it the week before.
And best of all, we FINALLY put together our universe pillows. It took me two Neptune buttons to get it right, but I finally did. The boys love them, and don't even notice the buttons when they lay on them. It was a super fun project. And they can tell you why each button is the color they are, the size they are, and where they are located from the sun. Success!
You may have noticed Calib in some of these home school pictures. This is because after one quarter at public school, Calib has FINALLY opted to be home schooled instead. He was home sick, experienced what we do, and decided he wanted in on it. We're trying out some online curriculum for him, along with the projects we all do together, and Asa is taking over Math for him. But, my big task was expanding the space I need for home school. With another kid, I decided I needed more space and the kitchen cabinet with things strewn about just wasn't working for me anymore. I still have the cabinet, but now I have tons of space for everything else as I made space in the laundry room.
Thursday night the Bucs played. It was our first night game, and we were all so excited the weather was nice, a little cool even. It was so nice not to sweat to death at a game. We decided we would tailgate dinner before the game, and picked up some $5 hot and ready Little Ceasars Pizza.
The cool part about being at a Thursday night game, is seeing all the guys from NFL network!
During pregame, the stadium was pretty empty. It filled in ok, but the game took a turn for the worse (par for the course), and people kept leaving. We decided we were going to stay the whole game, and have fun, because we paid for these season tickets!
By the fourth quarter, there were 27 people left in our section. The Bucs and Panthers are still playing during this picture, there's still a whole quarter left in the game, and there was nobody left in the stadium.
And then it got ugly. I took pictures of our coach on the sidelines, SO hoping I could put them in this blog and talk about how it was the last NFL game he ever coached. But, no such luck. Schiano is still coaching the Bucs. Despite how ugly it got Monday night.
Saturday my college roommate, Emily flew in to visit. Our first order of business: going to a hockey game together. It was my first ever Tampa Bay Lightning game! Calib and Peyton came along, but since Asa was working the next morning and Hayden was not too interested, they stayed home. After Thursday, I can't tell you how much I wanted to see a Tampa team win.
And win they did! They beat the Buffalo Sabers 3-2. It was super exciting too, the Lightning scored their last two goals in the last five minutes or so.
Since the Bucs had played Thursday, they weren't on Sunday. But we decided to have a football party anyway. After Asa was off work at 3, Kevin, Katie, Angela, and Justin came over for a cookout, some games (yay bean game!), and football. Big thanks to Katie and Kevin for bringing all the hot dogs and hamburgers!
Oh, and making an appearance via skype, my cousin, Jake. He wanted to see the Browns game and it wasn't on for him at OSU. Too bad they lost.
Monday I did school work with the boys, and then we played lots of games. I built a FOUR STORY card house, because I'm awesome like that. I lost Guess Who thanks to Emily's psychic-guess who-ness, and Hayden at one point took the connect four launchers championship.
Our plan was to head out to Epcot for the Food and Wine Festival on Tuesday. I convinced Justin and Katie (and Angela) to come along. They all finally got passes, yay! This turned out to be a super great decision. Not only did we have super lots of fun, but when I went to turn on the car on Tuesday it wouldn't start! So, Katie and Justin drove. Thanks, guys!
Emily told me I should go big for the food and wine festival, and try and get the rest of my passport stamped. I'm not going to talk about everything we got, because I don't feel like digging out my passport, but we did get all the stamps! (Minus the beer stops)
I'm not going to detail it all out, but I do have to give you the sequence of everyone trying the calamari from Greece. The pictures speak for themselves.
Later, we tried the escargot in France. I was the only grown up to try them. Calib was not a fan, Angela thought they were ok, and Peytons ended up on the sidewalk.
Oh, and we discovered these in France-- and they are there all the time. It's a MACAROON ICE CREAM SANDWICH. I mean, it does not get better than that.
After going halfway around the world, we took the boat back up to let the food settle and ride some rides.
Of course, no trip to Epcot is complete without a stop at Club Cool. And, they have new flavors. Did you hear that, mom? NEW FLAVORS!
Calib convinced Katie, Angela, and Emily to go on Mission Space's orange mission, which was quite the feat. But, I convinced Emily to try on these hats afterwards, so I win.
Mexico was fun. But it was too hard to get a self taken sombrero picture.
Norway school bread! (Funny side note: Peyton believes were in the capital cities in Epcot, not just the country.) So, this is Oslo School Bread according to him.
Potstickers in China!
And then we started feeding the ducks. We missed the sign not to feed them. We saw it on the way out, oops.
Justin was kind enough to buy Asa a bratwurst in Germany. Its sort of a tradition.
And we finished up the world (and our passports!) with some Watermellon Juice, and dessert at the new Scotland booth!
After using our test track fast passes, we stopped on the way out to ride Spaceship Earth.
And my completed passport! It was such a fun day with lots of my favorite people!
Wednesday Asa was off work, so he took the car in to get fixed. Between the Fit and the battery issues, and the Accord and the transmission issues, I am not happy with my cars lately. Come on, Hondas, get it together!
But after all that, we went out to the beach. Justin joined us again, which was awesome because then nobody was smooshed in the car. We got there around 4, and stayed until sunset.
It wasn't a perfect sunset, there were a lot of clouds- but it was still pretty. We really should try and get to the beach more. It's one of those things, it's always there so we don't go out of our way to go out there. But we should!
And huge thanks to Emily, for fixing my radio for me. After the car lost power, apparently the radio needed some code to unlock and work again (crazy, I know!) We didn't know the code though. Emily went to the Honda website, signed me up, got the vin number to the car, registered the car, got the code, and fixed it all up for me. It was super awesome. And during all this, she took us all out to dinner at five guys too, what a friend!
The boys also got some Halloween stuff in the mail on Wednesday, complete with glow sticks and cool cups. In their colors no less.
I had all kinds of activities planned for Halloween. We played candy corn Math Bingo. Peyton was happy to eat everyone's candy corn pieces.
We played the donut game. Peyton won, eating almost all of it before it fell on the ground. Hayden had the second most. And Calib, well, he wins for the biggest mess. He had glaze all over him. It was so gross.
After the boys played the dangling donut game, and had some apple cider, Emily and I got in on the fun. I was pretty terrible at it. I lost half my donut.
Then we went bobbing for apples. It was super funny watching the boys. I tried it as well, but didn't have much luck. I could get the ones with stems, but not the ones without.
Since Thursday was the last day of the month, the boys found the treasure at the end of Pirate Treasure Reading Maps they'd been following all month. I'm not sure if we'll do a new theme in November, or still with the maps. They really liked them.
We all played pin the face on the pumpkin for Halloween too. Peyton didn't do so well.
We didn't get big pumpkins to carve this year. The boys aren't crazy about doing it, plus they rot SO fast here in Florida. So we opted for painting some baby pumpkins instead.
I am so against spending money on Halloween costumes. We have a bucket of old ones, some of which I got at goodwill, and the kids will throw on and play sometimes. But other than that, I just can't justify spending a lot on something the kids hardly wear. Hayden decided to be Luke Skywalker, which was perfect we had the robe and the light saber. Peyton wanted to be Super Meat Boy, from a video game he plays. Google it if you must, but I totally nailed it making this costume. And the best part: You put the candy in the mouth (it's a pillowcase!) I totally nailed it. People didn't know who he was (which was fine, I told Peyton people wouldn't-- after all it's an indy game), but they LOVED his costume and that the candy went right in the mouth.
And we had our traditional Halloween dinner: A low country boil (yes, twice in one week! It's an easy dinner with minimal dishes. We are fans)
Calib decided he wanted to go as a disgraced Bucs fan. That wasn't hard at all. Check out his sign he carried around, it's actually a box I covered and thats where his candy went. He actually had a couple of people take his picture. The total cost for all three kids Halloween costumes was less than $4! Thats a good deal.
Our friends JD and Tracy came over to go trick-or-treating with us, and the kids all hauled in a pretty good amount of candy.
Seriously, I was so proud of myself for this one.
Friday Emily was headed home, we skipped Waterstraut Waffle Wednesday while she was here because she took us all out on Wednesday night. But we couldn't let her go without having waffles, so Hayden made us all lunch. He's getting pretty good at it!
Before I took Emily to the airport, we all headed out to MOSI for the ropes course. We met Asa there since it's close to his work, and climbed for about an hour. 
Emily and I made a stop at Crispers for dinner before I dropped her off at the airport. Such a fun visit, I hope she's able to come back soon!
This morning I knew I was going to have a busy day getting back in gear. I have home school plans to work on, and errands to run. When I went grocery shopping something awesome happened though. Someone mislabeled some steaks at 29 CENTS a pound, instead of 4.29/lb. And Publix gave it to me for that price! I bought all four packages!
It was also movie day at the library, so I took Hayden out while I perused the book sale, and found some great workbooks and things I can use for home school, all for $1!
It was kind of a crappy rainy day around here. But, I did want to share the awesome rainbow and sunset I saw when I went out to joann fabrics to pick up some supplies for our projects next week.
And as a fun note, Calib's home school certification came in the mail today too. Now I have all three of them. Wish me luck! I'm pretty excited about it.
Next Up: Eco-Field Trips, Work from home week, and maybe even another Disney day!
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