Voyages in Parenthood

Happy Halloween! What a day! First, there was a Halloween parade at day care - well, what would constitute a parade for a bunch of kids under the age of 3 - mostly it was just milling about the play yard showing off for the parents in their Halloween costumes. Leda looked very cute in her witch costume. And that's what she called it, her 'costume' - not outfit, not dress up, her costume - several billion times today! We were only supposed to be there for a few minutes and then head back to work, but Leda must have been a bit confused (read tired) because there was screaming and crying and it had nothing to do with play acting! We finally calmed her down and she pretty much went straight in for her nap and Daddy and I creeped away and back to work. So tonight, after work, we headed off to the Shier/Gabb neighborhood. Our neighborhood doesn't get many trick-or-treaters - in fact, in the 10 years we have lived here, not one - but we live on a busy street, not conducive to ...

Saturday night we headed over to Aunt Rachel's for a Halloween party and parade. Aunt Rachel lives on main street of a little town in South Jersey. This little town throws one heck of a halloween parade. The whole town (and then some) comes out and hangs outside their homes and have people over and have parties and watch the parade, which is what Aunt Rachel did! So we hung out with Calean and Tristan and Uncle Wayne and Albert and Margaret and Jackie and lots of friends and family. The kids all dressed up and we ate chili and dips and chips and lots of other goodies. There was even a funnel cake booth set up right across the street, just for Brock! It was so chaotic though (I mean, a good chaotic) I just couldn't get a lot of pictures. So no, I don't have pictures of the kids in their halloween outfits. After the parade was over, Uncle Wayne was about to take off to go out for the evening on his motorcycle and as he was saying goodbye, Leda wanted to get on the bike. So we...

I'm the one: One in five fans believe in jinxes, survey says But it wasn't my fault this past weekend (if you hadn't heard, the Eagles blew it!) I wore my jersey, Leda wore her jersey AND the green socks! We did everything right. Maybe we should have been playing that game. I mean, I think after the first 10 plays that the Eagles' defense guarded the sidelines and the Bears went right down the middle, I GOT A CLUE! Enough about that. Anyway, they promise to do better next week. Hummmm, deja vu. This past weekend, Leda and I spent the weekend alone. Brock was off in California playing with his friends at some race track ( 24 hours of LeMons ) (and, no I didn't spell that wrong - click the link - it's nuts). So it was just us girls. We made oatmeal cookies and read books (LOTS of books, over and over again, too!) and built castles with our blocks only to knock them down over and over again. We did a little Halloween costume shopping - Leda wanted to be the Little ...

Yesterday we headed off to Linvilla Orchards for a little pumpkin pickin', a hayride, some lunch, and a little playin'. We had a big group together for this one - the Durhams, the Shiers, the Fodens, Karen and Sydney and Leda's Granddad and Fay came along as well (given that they live right around the corner from the orchard, it was kinda a no-brainer for Leda's Granddad to join us!) What a fun day we had. We went on a hayride around the orchard and then we had a little lunch. Leda and her Granddad went over to feed the ducks and check out all the animals they have there at the farm and then we took the kids in to the play area - a huge area swarming with kids (and I swear, they really were just as bad as the bees in the swarming arena - it was amazing the amount of kids that were there!) Leda had a blast climbing all over the wooden structures they had for the kids to play on. Freaked me out, some of the things she would climb on - I was terrified she would fall. Then,...

On Friday night, for the first time in probably 20 years (I think I may have made it back at least once, maybe twice after I graduated), I went to a football game at my old high school. It was pretty new to me - we didn't have lights when I went to high school (and, no, it is not because electricity hadn't been discovered yet!). There were probably only about 3 high schools in our area when I was in high school that had lights on their football field for night games. All our games were on Saturday afternoons, with the exception of one or two away games where the other school had lights! Since I graduated, the school district built a middle school on the visitor's side of the field, where once there was just lots of practice fields. The parking lots and drives are all different now. I wasn't sure where we should try and park, as we got there just before the start of the 3rd quarter. We did find a spot and we entered the stadium on the visitor's side - I've never ...

Lately we have been trying to teach the "you had better listen to what Mommy and Daddy tell you" lesson, with little success. This afternoon, Brock and Leda picked tomatoes and peppers from our garden. Leda picked tomatoes, Brock picked his hot tomatoes - one is a hybrid which apparently is pretty hot and the other Serrano, which is apparently also pretty darn hot. Brock had left his pepper bowl on the living room table and Leda and I came in from outside and I told Leda, don't touch Daddy's peppers, and I specifically told her not to eat them (yes, I realize that is where I went wrong!) Next thing I know, the child is screaming and scrapping her tongue with her fingers and shaking like crazy. She bit into one of the hybrids - luckily she only bit into it, not bit it off, but that apparently was bad enough. For the next 15 minutes it was everything we could do to calm her down. As she got a little calmer, we tried to use it as a learning experience - see, when Mommy t...

I have decided to try this National Blog Posting Month thing to see if I can write a post a day for the month of November. This should be pretty interesting, since I think I have been averaging about a post a week these days! I guess I will have to come up with some material! Or Leda will have to supply me with some! We'll see how it goes! Oh, and yeah, the baseball playoffs - we get to play the Colorado Rockies (as my sister-in-law so kindly pointed out on the last post). That means that when we win the series in Colorado on Saturday night, it will be after midnight here on the East coast because the darn game doesn't start until 9:30pm. Guess it's a good thing it's a Saturday night and not a school night and that I don't have tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert (don't EVEN get me started on that!) so I have the time to watch the game if I so desire. Now, see how nicely I played there? No trash talking (none that was blatant). See, we Philly fans can play ...

As you have probably noticed, I've been very quiet about my football team this season - I mean, really, there hasn't been much to talk about. Last week was awesome, except for the Blue and Gold jerseys - eeeeewwwww! They was ugly! I guess since it was "throwback" day (the day your football team wears old jerseys just to freak you out) and it's the Eagle's 75th anniversary, they decided to wear the first jersey's the team ever wore. Thank goodness some one way back when decided to change the colors to green and silver because that blue and gold sucked! But the team played well. I said to Brock, they lose next week, there will be calls for them to wear these ugly jersey's for the rest of the season. Well, we lost last night. And we lost bad - to the Giants of all teams. Pitiful, it was. Disgusting. If they continue to play like they did last night, we might as well start thinking about next season. Well, that's enough about that. Now, we do have SOME...