So, here we are... another Monday, another evening trying to kill time while Calib's in class. But, hey, good news- he logged like 20 more minutes of driving this week. That has to bring his total over the last year and a half to at least 4 hours. So, like, any minute now he'll get those other 36 hours and I can go ahead and let him drive himself to school, right?
Until then, here I am on Mondays. Last Monday I treated myself to some hot chocolate while I worked on the country blogs I was behind.
Asa was in the office though, trying to even out with days he'll need to work from home while Calib, Peyton and I are in San Diego the rest of this week. That meant Peyton and Hayden were holding things down at home. After I'd been gone about an hour and half my phone rang, and it was Asa telling me not to be alarmed, but Peyton had just called him...... because there was a fire in the kitchen!
Turns out it was a small fire. Nothing but the kettle was effected, and they put it out, stopped the smoke detectors and aired out the house. But realizing they had screwed up, they made a list of ways to make it up to me. When I got home I found the kettle ruined, and fans strewn about the house. But, the house was clean and all the 'chores' they had thought of to 'make sure mom wasn't too mad', were complete. Basically, they handled themselves well. But, oh my gosh the fire jokes we tell these days-- and Peyton CANNOT stand it.
Lucky for 'Mr.-Totally-Out-Of-Vacation-Hours' Asa, Halloween fell on a Tuesday, the first day of our weekend. We had just gotten back Saturday. Sunday I do a whole lot of nothing but unpack and watch football and then Monday I had to bust my butt getting things in order, doing the grocery shopping, and getting Calib to class. But, in between all of that I managed to pick up some of the best Halloween Candy I could. (Why, WHY does every bag include something gross? Nobody wants your Almond Joys, dang it!)
I also picked up some donuts, because if we do no other Halloween activity, the boys always request the hanging donut game. This one is easy to do and put together, so I happily obliged. We even had new trees to string them up. Last year Halloween fell during our crazy 'are we moving/are we never moving' phase, so it was sort of smooshed in then too.
Asa did pretty well, and finished his donut without dropping any on the ground in record time, but he was competing for fun, not the small candy reward for the winner.
Peyton meanwhile, did well until about a quarter of his landed on the ground.
Calib took a little longer than Peyton, but he didn't drop any of it.
Hayden, meanwhile, couldn't figure it out (which is weird, because he's done this before!)
Eventually everyone left, and Hayden kept working away. I stayed outside to cheer him on, and Asa took to relaxing in the hammock, which has made its way back outside our bedroom windows once again.
So, Hayden worked away, until eventually half the donut fell on the ground, and Calib was rewarded with the candy.
Calib had asked if he could carve a pumpkin this year. It's not something we do every year. Here, the pumpkins go bad in a matter of days, and the boys aren't super into carving them (don't even get me started on how grossed out Peyton is by pumpkin guts), but since Calib asked, I wanted to make sure he got to carve one this year. By the time I went to the stores Monday, there were no pumpkins to be found, but our friend Kayla came to the rescue.
He hallowed it out, and then decided against the templates to carve something. He wanted to freehand it. His pumpkin, his choice!
So, he tried to do the USF Bulls thing, it didn't work out. So then he decided that kind of looked like a mouth, added two eyes on the side and called it a day. It might not have been perfect, but he had a good time doing it.
Costumes were also an issue this year. Usually I make them some (the boys STILL talk about how great the Wall-E costume was), but we didn't get to it before we left, and then they were super non-comittal. I offered up some ideas (I super wanted Peyton to be 'Bill' from School House Rock), but they weren't into anything. Finally Peyton decided he'd like to be Link. That was fine by me, because Hayden was Link last year, and I still had some of the costume in the Halloween tub in the garage. I whipped out another shield and called it a day. Then, I realized how easy that was and pitched the idea of Hayden being a Pokemon trainer, since I still had Peyton's stuff for that from last year. He was sold. So, it was a swapsies Halloween. Calib put on his horse mask he loves so much, and we called it a day.
It was our first year trick or treating in this neighborhood, so we weren't sure what to expect. We did get a lot more trick or treaters here though.
And the neighborhood goes all out. People gave out treats like cookies and juice, and 'adult beverages' for those parents sticking it out. Our neighbor a couple houses down LOVES Christmas, so she was Mrs. Claus and handed out candy canes, which was just adorable. The whole neighborhood was packed, and we just went up and down Quail Trace and the boys buckets were full.
Once they were full, we all sat with Calib to hand out candy. We met some new older neighborhood kids too, so Peyton and Calib have been hanging out with them a bit. (They struck up a conversation about Peyton being Link, so I guess that worked out for him-- but I'm secretly going to work to get Hayden to love School House Rock over the next year so I can dress him like Bill next year.)
In other news, we had some fun mail days this week. We were chosen by my nephew Garrett to be a host for his Flat Stanley, and we got some postcards from around the world.
My cousin Tim sent us one from Namibia, and Allison's husband Nate sent us one from Kuwait. The Kuwait one was especially cool because the towers on the postcard were in our book and the boys recognized them right away.
Of course, since we got Flat Stanley for Halloween, we made him a costume so he could dress up and go Trick-OR-Treating.
We decided to be low-key this 'weekend', since it was our only time all home together inbetween our Ohio and San Diego trips. But, we took advantage of the nice weather and took a bike ride.
We brought Flat Stanley along for that too. (You can't really see it in the gator sign picture but there was a baby gator out along the banks that day. He's under the trees on the left.
A new Dunkin Donuts opened at the entrance to our subdivision, so we thought it'd be fun to ride bikes down there. We were hoping there would be a Baskin Robbins with it like the one on 54, but no so luck.
Then we headed back and decided to spend some time at the lodge. It was nicer weather, but not warm enough for the pool (and the non-heated pool is getting COLD). We went and stuck our feet in and sat by the edge though, and we grabbed some food and fed the fish (sadly, no turtles that day).
One evening Rachel Baker came to visit us. She worked with me and Asa at Sneak Peeks years and years ago. Peyton and I had seen her on his big Peyton Manning trip, but I'm pretty sure that's the first time her and Asa were together in the last decade. Hopefully it won't be so long between visits next time!
We also had to take care of lame adult chores, like trips to the dentist and vet.
Ellie doesn't love the vet, and she pouts. But, she gets over it. And fun fact, she only last a pound and a half since her last visit, but they don't consider her overweight anymore because she's gained so much muscle. That's probably thanks to the amount of time she spends chasing lizards outside since we got the fence installed (fun fact: our neighbors just put in a fence a couple of days ago since our side was already fenced for them.. we're starting a trend!)
We're moving along with the countries. We've done six so far this month, and had to vote on collections this week. I'm behind all of them for the blogs (though I have the drafts with the dinner part all complete), but I figured I'd write this one and worry about all the other one's later. I've been busy working away on 'Explorer's Week' for when we get back, so blogs have been on the back burner. Oh, and we're almost ready for that Papaya Chutney recipe for Guinea-Bissau! We've got lots of papayas coming!
We had a taco bar last week after we got back for football watching, and then week we got chicken tenders from PDQ (they have BOGO platters the whole month of November!), and supplemented with some fruit, chips, pasta salad, and cookies. It doesn't seem to matter what food we have though, the Bucs still stink. At least, feel better about it when I'm not paying a ton to watch them lose in person.
Oh, and do you guys remember last week when I put that picture of tiny little Peyton in his underwear catching a frog that had gotten into my house? (I'm reposting for those of you that missed it) Well, this time it's a 15 year old-pajama-clad Peyton, grabbing an albino gecko out of my laundry. The more things change, the more they stay the same. (He no lie spent like 10 minutes with it outside before it finally jumped off of him).
That's it from here. I still have about an hour before Calib gets out of class. But I'm going to go wander the interwebs and collect my Pop Slots.
Next up: Tomorrow 2/5 of us are headed cross country one more time. (I mean, I like traveling as much as the next person, but maybe next year we could just stay home and people could come visit us!)
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