All Hallow's Eve

Halloween was almost cancelled by Sandy this year, but the timing ended up working out well.  We were spared the worst of it (by a long shot) and only lost 1 shingle and our power for about 24 hours.  It came back on in time to save our food, and I was SO glad that I'm not a breastfeeding mother with a stash of frozen breastmilk anymore because OH MY GOD.  Talk about crying over spilled defrosted milk.

I spent all of Sunday and Monday cooking and cleaning and doing everything I could that required electricity.  I did some activities with the girls, and we just huddled inside while the rain pounded.  But then on Tuesday we were stir crazy and just about out of ideas for entertainment.  Luckily I remembered we had balloons and glow sticks, so as it got darker out I just tossed a bunch into the family room and told the girls to go at it.

And of course, we don't do anything without Maxx sneaking in and stealing something

3/4 of my kids

 Then we started writing letters in the air while I used a slow shutter speed on my camera.  Not quite the level of those wedding pictures where people spell out LOVE with sparklers (AT ALL), but it entertained Emily for awhile.

I was resigning myself to the idea of carving pumpkins in the dark, when the lights came back on!  Hurray!  Halloween was saved!

The allergies seem to be gone!

Designed by Emily, carved by Will

As usual, Halloween just kind of descended on me.  You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but it seems to surprise me every year.  My family all came over and brought food and before I knew it I was hosting a Halloween party!  All so everyone could see these little cuties in their costumes.

Kathleen as Hipster Ariel

Will as a horse....judge maybe?

With a green face

Do you ever have one of those "I married my father" moments?  Me neither.

 Will's dream was to drink pumpkin beer out of a pumpkin on Halloween, and though mine was a bit leaky I didn't mind because Pumpking is just so freakin' tasty no matter what you're drinking it out of.

Slurp

I also had a bunch of my dad's homemade hard cider as well, which turned out to be WAY harder than I thought it was.  Oops.  

Hurricane and all, this was the best Halloween so far, and I think they'll only get better as the kids start to require fewer potty breaks during trick or treating :-)

The rest of the weekend

After we finished the party at Pump it Up, we took the party home with us.  We invited Emily's grandparents, aunts and uncles home so they could celebrate with her in a more relaxed environment.  

Many conversations were had

Shirts matched

Much wine was consumed

Happy Birthday was sung again

More presents were opened

Sisters were jealous

New uses were found for Emily's presents

Can I just mention here that we witnessed an incredible My Little Pony miracle on Saturday?  As people asked me what Emily wanted for her birthday, I told most of them "My Little Pony stuff".  After telling the 8th person, I started to think that maybe I had better think of something else to avoid duplicate presents.  However she didn't get a single duplicate pony, and she got EXACTLY the ponies she needed to complete her collection.  I found that pretty astounding.

I know that is probably only interesting to me, but who cares, I have lots of new ponies to play with now :-)

The next day we got up bright and early and headed up to the farm for a slightly soggy Dam Day.

We found some rocks that hadn't been thrown into the creek yet

Eating melon as fast as Aunt Margaret could cut it

Emily spent almost all of her down time using her new Leapfrog Tag reader...I love this thing too and I am beyond excited that SHE'S excited about the prospect of learning to read by herself.

Then Emily and I had to leave early so we could get back to Frederick for Emily's dance pictures.

Incidentally, Emily LOVED wearing makeup, and keeps talking about how she can't wait to wear it when she's older.  Oy.

We spent the rest of Sunday making and decorating cupcakes for Emily to take to school the next day.  She had been envisioning and discussing these cupcakes for months, so they had to be perfect.  

She seemed happy enough with them, although I had a tough time getting the frosting thick enough once I had added the blueberry purée.


Monday was Emily's ACTUAL birthday, so I wanted to make sure to do some fun things she wanted to do.  We went to Toys R Us to get her birthday balloon and crown and to TRY to find some My Little Pony train cars, but they didn't have any :-(  We left with slime and a new Mommy Unicorn instead (that makes 3 now).

She also wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, so we stopped by for a bit (i.e. as long as I could stand) before dinner.

Charlotte just kept pumping tokens into this thing one after the other

Dinner was Common Market sushi, followed by ice cream sundaes at Emily's request, and more presents.

Birthday girl

Charlotte was pretty chill about the whole thing

Then, after 3 days of partying, we officially declared Emily a 5 year old and collapsed on the couch for a bit.

Preparations

Aaaaah.  My husband has declared (upon interacting with me a couple times since getting home) that I need a break so he is currently bathing both of our children AND it's his night to put them to bed (happy sigh).  The cake is in the freezer, well, freezing so I can frost it with a minimum of crumb-age so I've reached a lull in party prep and can sit down for a minute to blog.  It's nice.

Things have, predictably, been a pain.  I ran out of powdered sugar for the frosting and when I used my blender to turn granulated sugar into powdered sugar (look at me!  I don't need to make another trip to the store!) I neglected to take into account the fact that the sugar would be HOT when I was done, so when I beat it into the butter it melted into slop :-(  Amazon has taken their sweet time sending my package that contains most of the goody bag items, so I'm having to desperately find things that the parents hopefully won't curse me for giving to their children at the last minute so I can make less awesome but hopefully still adequate favor bags.  I left some cupcakes in my cupcake carrier for a LITTLE too long the last time I used it, and now despite a hot water/soap washing, a baking soda scrub and quite a bit of airing out it still smells like mold and buttercream frosting imbued with mold smell = not a good thing.

BUT, things are getting done, and I haven't binged on frosting yet.  

Here is what I HAVE eaten today.

  

Blueberry oats with walnuts

6 egg whites + mushrooms, broccoli, onion, cilantro, salsa

greens + salsa + red kidney beans + random 0-point veggies

 Unlike yesterday, lunch did NOT satisfy me today, so shortly afterward I decided to bump my evening banana peanut butter treat earlier.

sprouted almonds...we finally finished all the tamari almonds!

8 oz nonfat plain greek yogurt, 4 drops stevia, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, strwaberries

Plus a pear I didn't feel like taking a picture of.

 All afternoon I felt hungry, so I decided to just go ahead and eat my normally-planned snacks even if it wasn't "time" to have a snack yet.  And all afternoon I felt like I was burning through my snacks and would end up consuming way too much food, but you know what?  Except for the banana and peanut butter I ate just what I usually ate so I really wasn't in the hole for the day by the time dinner rolled around.

I got a reduced-price rotisserie chicken at Common Market the other day, so once we removed the meat I used the carcass to make broth.  I have a bad habit of making broth and then forgetting about it during one of the steps and then finding it in the garage fridge after it has gone bad, so I consciously wanted to use it up this time.  Enter the veggie-chicken soup!  Once you have the broth and chicken it only takes about 10 minutes to make.  It was a perfect dinner for a busy night.

Veggie chicken barley soup with whatever herbs I felt like picking and chopping

 I DID allow myself this tonight though, so I guess I am in the hole for the day.

Now the rest of my evening will probably be consumed by turning this:

into this:

Then hoping Remy doesn't eat the head.

Stay tuned for a recap of what is sure to be a rockin' dragon party tomorrow!