Halloweenies

 

Halloween isn’t just a day in this house.  It’s a season.  They start out regular kids,

 

a little goofy no doubt, 

 

and by goofy I mean, who goes to a fall fest and asks for his face paint to be a snowman??!! 

But then the Halloweenie season starts and we have… the costume changes, the candy, the dramatics.

 

Yes, sweet child o’ mine/star of Goshen Elementary’s Wednesday after school drama club is holding a bloody heart.

Thank you, Ross!  CAN’T WAIT ‘til you have kids.

And then Sam gets to “experimenting.”

 

Oh, and no surprise, but Caroline had three costumes this year. 

Day 1 at the school Halloween parade and party, the kitty cat:

  

Day 2 for trick or treating, the cheerleader: 

Did you know 20 trash bags, scissors, and tape equals two totally, literally last-minute pompoms? Helps immensely to already have a skirt and pompom appliqué as Halloween hand-me-downs from Aunt Deb!

And then Day 3 when Daddy says “You know, you could look like Sarah Palin” and she says “Who is Sarah Palin?”  We show her a picture and she insists she can come up with a costume  right from her closet.  And that she did.

Sam repeated last year’s knight costume and his mom lavished him with kisses and said, “Thank you, kid. Here, have some candy.” 

It was specified no weapons allowed at school so the dashing knight’s sword stayed home, but you can see he got right into the part nevertheless once they gave him a stick of licorice and the teacher’s back was turned.

By actual trick-or-treat night, the handles had fallen off the hand armor, but no one noticed the blue rubber bands, right? 

Or the black sweats with dress shoes?

Grant’s costume was fairly last minute.  He became Secret Agent Man at bedtime the night before he needed a costume to take to school the next morning.  Pulled it off ok, I thought.

     

And Jack was even more last second as he wasn’t going to trick-or-treat at all and had no costume until a friend called that afternoon on Halloween Day and asked him to go around with him in our old neighborhood.  Jack came down the stairs looking like this…whoa!  Good one!

   

Buckling a baby car seat is he** when you are a knight with hand armor. 

And so is trying to stay awake after all the fun. 

MusicMonday—Frankie Valli

Well, this kinda spun off out of nowhere other than I heard a particular song on the radio yesterday and it started a conversation between Gary and I about who sang it. 

He looked it up and said it was the Four Seasons.  I didn’t know that!  And I was confused.  It didn’t sound entirely like Frankie Valli.  Hmmmm….what’s going on?!

I knew Frankie Valli as the singer from the Four Seasons since I remembered my dad to like this music when I was a kid.  Songs like Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry, and Stay (this version is not what I was wanting but all I could find to link to) so Frankie’s falsetto is what I associated with the group.  Then of course, I knew Frankie from his role in Grease, one awesome movie and one of my all-time faves.  And then I was going next with this:  Did you know that before he had success musically, Frankie Valli worked as a barber?!  And isn’t it so ironic then that he played the beauty school teen angel from Grease! EXCEPT, hello, that was Frankie Avalon.

My life is one big string of mistaken thoughts, I swear.  And then I eventually find out and wonder how much of my brain is filled with this apparently  interchangeable babble that isn’t accurate in the first place.  And I tell people stuff all the time. 

But then I realized Frankie Valli did have a tie to the movie Grease and, no, maybe I haven’t completely lost my marbles because, hello, he sang the title song!  You know, that 70’s disco intro, written by Barry Gibb speaking of falsetto!, to the movie that’s a musical all about the 50’s with the 50’s music?  But you know, I can’t imagine it being any other song.  It totally works.

 

 

So anywho …. the song that started this whole crazy thing off in my brain.  I’m sure you know it even if I don’t really know much of anything at all.  And, turns out, it was sung by two other of the band members. You got the drummer and bassist and front man Frankie singing, so that help explains that. 

And the title is actually December 1963, what I probably always thought in my crowded, disorganized, messed up head was “Oh, What a Night!”

And also, I never quite grasped the song’s meaning until now. OH! 

MusicMonday—Mondo Bongo

I have been going to Zumba exercise class once a week at the YMCA since August.  I LOVE IT!  And, boy, is it exercise!  But it goes by so fast and is so totally enjoyable, you don’t mind that you’ve been working out hard for an hour.

 

If it were offered every day of the week, I’m telling you I’d go at least five.

You might have seen the infomercials on tv for Zumba.  It is hot dance moves set to hot international music, very Latin.  I am not kidding when I say hot.  I have sweaty legs by the end of the first song.  Legs, people.  You can imagine my head and chest.  I am literally dripping.  And I’ve got another 50 minutes to go.

I think part of the appeal is the encouragement you get to shake it and work it, which this little piece of clip art does not truly capture, but still I thought it would be fun to add.  Jazz it up a little here on the Monday bloggie.

Really, how many times in your life are you encouraged to put a bigger swing on the back porch?  From someone who has lived her life trying to get a place with a smaller back porch, it is so cool to hear.  Move it with freedom, girl, and move it big!

And then it also helps that your wonderful Zumba instructor wants to see you do your belly dance moves while you still have a pitiful, three c-section flop-over belly.

It’s like come as you are, have fun, do what the sexy, hot girls do.  That, my friends, is pretty liberating.  

I highly recommend it.

Plus, I have learned that all this hip action can help us ladies down the road by reducing our chances of broken hip bones.   Use them and you keep them strong and flexible.  I can see it now, this generation’s just gonna bounce when we hit the ground in our 90’s, right?

Plus, it burns like a quadrillion calories so it makes it  totally a little more ok for me to go straight for Mexican when Zumba gets out at 11:30 a.m. 

Our regular instructor is HeatherSparkPlug.  I don’t know, plug doesn’t sound very kind.  She is full of energy, but really she’s not waif-thin.  She is built sturdy we’ll say, but so in shape and so able to move her stuff.  Apparently the girl weighed 200+ pounds when she started Zumba.  And she said that’s all she did to get fit.  I was impressed.  I’d guess her now at 135-140, about my height, and looking very healthy, with kinda a scrappy street attitude that I find really motivating.  Man, she can move.  And not a tad bit timid about doing it.

When she leads Zumba, it is hard core. 

But every once in awhile, we have DeLisaSloMo as a sub.  She is totally different in style.  She has slow moves which initially was disappointing following my exposure to HeatherSparkPlug, but I have found the repetition is the work out and my legs are worn out by the end, even if I am barely upping the heart rate and the sweat-o-meter is only registering a five. 

So anywho, last Friday we had the slow-motion sub.  She brings her own different music whereas Heather Spark uses, I think, official Zumba music.  As we did our cool down, I noticed the last song and really liked it.  I couldn’t figure out the words, though. I thought it was saying something like “king of the rainbow.” 

I asked DeLisa then after class what that song was.  She didn’t know who it was by, but she thought it was called Mondo Bongo and told me it was from the Mr. and Mrs. Smith movie soundtrack.  You now, the movie that brought the world  Brangelina.   

I know we rented it sometime, but I really don’t recall this song or this scene where they dance to it.  It must have been when I did my usual cat-nap-during-regardless-if-it-is-a-good-or-bad-movie thing.  

With the coolness of my new fun and useful phone, I sat in the van, googled  Mr. and Mrs. Smith soundtrack and confirmed it was Mondo Bongo and it was by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.  Cool name. 

I looked up the lyrics.  My “king of the rainbow” was actually:  “Latino caribo.”  So much more cool. 

I then found out that somewhat familiar name, Joe Strummer, was a founding member of and singer for the huge 70’s-80’s punk band The Clash.  He’s on the left here.  Very cool.

But he died in 2002 at the age of fifty from a congenital heart condition after being out walking his dogs.  Uncool.

And it turns out this song is from the 2001 album called, get this!,

  Global A Go-Go.  How cool is that?!

Enjoy.  It’s got a great sound.

Two Little Stories: The Helmet and The Helmet Hawk

When you are the fourth-born kid, you will undoubtedly get handed down your sister’s purple flowered bike helmet.

But because your mom has a heart, though maybe not unlimited cash flow, she will do her best to make it a helmet her little boy can wear to ride with pride. 

What is that saying?  Mother is the invention of creation?  The creation of mother’s invention?    Something like that.

Enter the:

• blaze orange spray paint
• black electrical tape
• and confidence that she can pull off a tiger stripe motif.

Even if there are men beside her taking bets that this little project is a big FAIL waiting to happen in, I believe Gary said, “(laughing, laughing)….three days and all that tape is peeling off!”

Ross, I think, said he was giving it a week. 

Probably just because he was company at our house and he wanted to protect his dear aunt’s feelings more burritos and fakeOreos.

Yes, they were totally laughing at me the whole time I was crafting the work of art.

Mind you, in the dark, on the porch, with crappy scissors, numerous distractions, and nothing to go off of. 

 

So there it is!  Rest assured, I will be updating you all on the life of the helmet.  I think it’s more in the scope of YEARS.

It’s already been three days and  absolutely no tape is peeling (laughing, laughing)!

Most importantly, Sammy likes it!

(This picture was, unfortunately, taken when I mistakenly thought this was the back of the helmet, oops, and I didn’t care if the striping looked so bad. 

Never fear, once I realized this was the front view, I kept working it.) 

-------------------------------

Story Number Two

Grant’s school had a family bike ride last Sunday and he participated in the 9-mile trail ride with his nice new neighbor family, The Hunters, because his real family was lazy, busy, sickly, all of the above. 

He had a great time and it was a beautiful day for sure.

I snapped this shot of him before he took off.  That day he was sporting a new hair…um...would you say hair-do or hair-don’t?  

 

I like to call it the helmet hawk.

Stanley, Caroline, and Kitti

Flat Stanley came to our house in an envelope recently, just as he has come to some of yours.  The letter inside asked us to show Stanley some things from the area where we live.  He had a big time with our cats.

Well, maybe except while he was being clawed

 

and treated a little too friendly.

 

Caroline enjoyed putting her reply together with pictures and mailed it off all the way to….

Glen Carbon.

Yeah, Stanley travelled a whole eight miles.  Flat Stanley was sent here from, speaking of cats, Caroline’s good friend, Kitti. 

Caroline and Kitti go way back, well, as way back as back can be when you have lived for seven years.  They became fast friends in Kindergarten.  Kitti did not speak one word of English when she came here from Hungary at the start of that school year.  It was amazing how quickly she picked it up.  These days you would not have one doubt that she was not born and raised all-American.  Well, until she talks with her limited-English-speaking Mom, but really that’s it.

I remember once having lunch with Caroline at school one of those early days of Kindergarten, and there was Kitti sitting at the lunch table and she was in tears.  I think she didn’t recognize or like the cafeteria food in front of her, but no one knew exactly what was wrong or how to help her.  I felt so sad for her right then but that was short-lived.  The girl is so sweet and so smart and adjusted so quickly.

She and Caroline were in different classes last school year, but got together frequently since we lived just down the road from each other.  They rode the bus together and Caroline’s first sleep over was with Kitti.  Now then this year, they are at different schools since we moved, but they still are best of friends and just a car ride apart.

But some day not too far off, Kitti’s letters will be travelling much further, addressed from her home in Hungary.  Her family will be living here just one more year as her dad works in St. Louis temporarily, and then they will return to their home country. 

But who knows, with cell phones and Internet and whatever else lies in-store technologically, I am thinking they could easily remain friends forever.

Hamming it up for the camera at our house last weekend. 

One Fall Day

It was time to head out to school one morning and I didn’t know exactly where the kids were.  I found them out here, at the far south edge of our yard.  They had gone to the Leaf Forest, as they called it. 

I didn’t even know we had a Leaf Forest.

For someone who has a face as sweet as this, she sure can irk her brother in an instant.  See?

I think it was just because she put her arm around him.  Still just being sweet.  Maybe Sammy was just extra sensitive that day?  Or maybe she had just pinched him.  Who knows?  Well, besides Sam.

Now they’re both being sweet.  I can hardly stand it.

 

Sam suggested we take a shadow picture.  We did.

 

One more fun picture and then it’s off to school.