And finally, the good stuff.
All week I had been planning for Halloween, hoping to have it go better than the past, well, 3 or 4. I always either get caught unprepared and try to throw something together or get caught unprepared and give up and just hand out candy in my "Halloween Costume" t-shirt or stay home and watch Treehouse of Horror episodes all night, or both. I have great ideas, but sometimes don't know how to execute them and wait to late to start trying. Or I actually spend a long time on something only to have it not done enough to wear at the last minute. Last year the later almost happened but I did have enough time to at least get it wearable. I was just sewing up until 5:30 or so Halloween night as kids were already coming to the door. I'm a costumer, this is not acceptable.
I had quite a grandiose set of to do lists last week and I must say, I'm very proud that I accomplished about 80% of it. Let me say, if you don't already know this about me, my to do lists are usually impossibly ambitious. I very rarely can actually get this much of them done and feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when I do. Unfortunately, not enough of what I accomplished pertained to Halloween and getting ready for it. On the rest, timing was off a bit. The house was well on the way to being clean early in the week, but then I got busy with other things and the house sort of fell apart (as it does very quickly if I'm not constantly cleaning, it seems). So, Friday saw me in a whirlwind of trying to get the house put back together, costumes together and all sorts of other things thrown together in time for the evening's events (how many more times can I use the word together in this sentence?).
Most everything worked out just fine. I did have to make an insane trip to Party City at 3pm on Halloween (I don't recommend it) and they were out of lots of things (liquid latex, spirit gum, spirit gum remover and the little witch's broom Steff wanted to get Lilly but didn't have time to). I didn't wind up getting us pirate hats because their best one still looked like crap and costs $30. But I did at least get Chris a sword and us a couple of plastic flintlock pistols that looked ok for really cheap. But we pulled of the effect mostly and only a few people didn't get who we were at first. Now Jonah on the other hand. . . everyone wants to call him a chicken. I'm sorry, but when was the last time you saw a chicken that was yellow, red, green and blue? I know, it's Halloween and fantasy and all that, but, oh well. I thought it was hilarious that the 4 kids that were in the costume contest in his age group (0-2) were all animals (parrot, duck, kangaroo and lion).
Jonah loved the trick-or-treating and picked up on the game very quickly. Between houses, he'd say, "run, run, run" as he'd run along the sidewalk to the next house. If other kids hadn't gotten to it first, he'd run up to the door and say, "knock, knock, knock" as he knocked on the door. He was really good about just taking one piece of candy if someone just left a bowl on the porch or just held out the bowl for the kids to help themselves. One person came to the door in a scary rubber mask. He was a little afraid at first, but then as we walked away, he started growling while "talking" about the house we just visited (it's something he's been doing a lot lately, he roars). He got first place (sort of) in the costume contest. There were four contestants in his age group and two 1st place prizes. Us and our neighbors won the prizes, the other two contestants were friends of our neighbors that didn't live in the neighborhood. Our chili won us a $25 gift certificate to Ace Hardware, too. But then, there were four prizes and four chilies, so they were all going to win something. Not very many adults dressed up, so our costumes were greatly appreciated, I think. We got lots of compliments on them anyway. Sadly, my corset is already starting to fall apart after less than 5 wearings. The boning in the center back and one of the bones by the lacing in front are starting to poke through the fabric out of the bottom. Oh well, I'm wanting to start making some corsets because I've enjoyed wearing this one and would like one with more than 5 bones in it. Not only that, but because of my abnormally long waist, it really doesn't sit where it should on me.
After the kids got in bed, Chris, Steff and I sat up drinking beer and chatting and watching a few cartoons. Saturday, we woke up, I made eggs Benedict and Chris was getting ready to have a couple of guys over to brew. He hasn't brewed in months (since August he says and I don't keep track, I just know we have a lot of empty kegs right now) so the garage is a mess and his equipment is kind of scattered and unorganized. The first brew day after a period of not brewing is always kind of chaotic and sometimes disastrous. Of course, this is compounded somewhat when you decide to do two back to back beers on this first day out and you have people over to brew and are socializing and drinking while trying to brew. This brew day was apparently no exception. His grain mill got stuck and he had to oil it up. He missed his first mash temperature. He oversparged the first one and wound up with too much water and had to boil it down for 90 minutes. He ran out of sparge water on the second one and wound up with low efficiency on that batch. Kyle, who was also brewing, wound up with just as many problems it sounded like. It wasn't uncommon to see one of them come in for a glass or a bathroom break and be totally soaked or just generally looking tired and frustrated, but somehow still in good spirits (must be all the beer they were drinking).
Steff, Jonah, Lilly and I decided to go spend a couple of hours before lunch going to the Nature Center at the Warner Parks. The guy that works there remembered Jonah after talking to us for a bit. It's a really neat place, full of fun and educational things for kids of a wide range of ages. When they had their fill of the things indoors, we went out to take a look at their little frog pond and the vegetable garden. Then we headed over to the newish play area for them to get nice and dirty before going home. Basically, they've got a huge mud sand pit with a slide built into the side of a big hill of dirt and a miniature log cabin. The kids like it and get all nice and dirty there. Jonah kept bringing us shovels full of sand to put in our hands. As he would pour, he'd say, "thank you!" I think he's still a bit foggy on when it's appropriate to say thank you, but good manners are good manners and I'm not going to be upset if he says it too much or at inappropriate times, heh.
We went out to dinner at Jasmine in Cool Springs. It's a Thai restaurant with a French influence apparently. Chris had a fantastic duck dish that tasted like sesame chicken more so than what we were expecting. I got a steamed seafood red curry which was awesome (scallops, muscles, crab claws and shrimp in a red curry sauce with bean thread noodles)! Steff got a beef massaman curry that was wrapped up in crepes instead of served over rice. The atmosphere was really neat, too. We sat in a neat booth that was basically just wooden boxes enclosing a table with pillows on them for seats. It had a similar feel to eat in the room at Mikawa where you sit on the floor and there's space below the table for your legs. After dinner, we went to the Cool Springs Whole Foods hoping for gelato, but they don't have it there. We got Jonah a two bite brownie instead and Steff got Lilly a mini cannoli since she'd never had one. We were all exhausted, so we didn't stay up much past 10pm that night.
Sunday, Steff needed to get on the road after breakfast. We opted to go hit the Loveless Cafe, since it's right down the street and might not have had a bad wait since it was early and we thought people would mostly be at church. We still had a 20-30 minute wait, but a huge and pretty good breakfast. Unfortunately, I think Loveless might put sedatives in their food because we were totally exhausted and lazy the rest of the day. I even took a nap while Jonah was napping in the afternoon. Unfortunately, because of a terrible night's sleep last night, I'm still very groggy today.
My to do list is shorter this week but no less important. One last costumed event this week and I'm either getting back to work on the last costume I left off on or taking a short break while I get the rest of my life in line.
I had quite a grandiose set of to do lists last week and I must say, I'm very proud that I accomplished about 80% of it. Let me say, if you don't already know this about me, my to do lists are usually impossibly ambitious. I very rarely can actually get this much of them done and feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when I do. Unfortunately, not enough of what I accomplished pertained to Halloween and getting ready for it. On the rest, timing was off a bit. The house was well on the way to being clean early in the week, but then I got busy with other things and the house sort of fell apart (as it does very quickly if I'm not constantly cleaning, it seems). So, Friday saw me in a whirlwind of trying to get the house put back together, costumes together and all sorts of other things thrown together in time for the evening's events (how many more times can I use the word together in this sentence?).
Most everything worked out just fine. I did have to make an insane trip to Party City at 3pm on Halloween (I don't recommend it) and they were out of lots of things (liquid latex, spirit gum, spirit gum remover and the little witch's broom Steff wanted to get Lilly but didn't have time to). I didn't wind up getting us pirate hats because their best one still looked like crap and costs $30. But I did at least get Chris a sword and us a couple of plastic flintlock pistols that looked ok for really cheap. But we pulled of the effect mostly and only a few people didn't get who we were at first. Now Jonah on the other hand. . . everyone wants to call him a chicken. I'm sorry, but when was the last time you saw a chicken that was yellow, red, green and blue? I know, it's Halloween and fantasy and all that, but, oh well. I thought it was hilarious that the 4 kids that were in the costume contest in his age group (0-2) were all animals (parrot, duck, kangaroo and lion).
Jonah loved the trick-or-treating and picked up on the game very quickly. Between houses, he'd say, "run, run, run" as he'd run along the sidewalk to the next house. If other kids hadn't gotten to it first, he'd run up to the door and say, "knock, knock, knock" as he knocked on the door. He was really good about just taking one piece of candy if someone just left a bowl on the porch or just held out the bowl for the kids to help themselves. One person came to the door in a scary rubber mask. He was a little afraid at first, but then as we walked away, he started growling while "talking" about the house we just visited (it's something he's been doing a lot lately, he roars). He got first place (sort of) in the costume contest. There were four contestants in his age group and two 1st place prizes. Us and our neighbors won the prizes, the other two contestants were friends of our neighbors that didn't live in the neighborhood. Our chili won us a $25 gift certificate to Ace Hardware, too. But then, there were four prizes and four chilies, so they were all going to win something. Not very many adults dressed up, so our costumes were greatly appreciated, I think. We got lots of compliments on them anyway. Sadly, my corset is already starting to fall apart after less than 5 wearings. The boning in the center back and one of the bones by the lacing in front are starting to poke through the fabric out of the bottom. Oh well, I'm wanting to start making some corsets because I've enjoyed wearing this one and would like one with more than 5 bones in it. Not only that, but because of my abnormally long waist, it really doesn't sit where it should on me.
After the kids got in bed, Chris, Steff and I sat up drinking beer and chatting and watching a few cartoons. Saturday, we woke up, I made eggs Benedict and Chris was getting ready to have a couple of guys over to brew. He hasn't brewed in months (since August he says and I don't keep track, I just know we have a lot of empty kegs right now) so the garage is a mess and his equipment is kind of scattered and unorganized. The first brew day after a period of not brewing is always kind of chaotic and sometimes disastrous. Of course, this is compounded somewhat when you decide to do two back to back beers on this first day out and you have people over to brew and are socializing and drinking while trying to brew. This brew day was apparently no exception. His grain mill got stuck and he had to oil it up. He missed his first mash temperature. He oversparged the first one and wound up with too much water and had to boil it down for 90 minutes. He ran out of sparge water on the second one and wound up with low efficiency on that batch. Kyle, who was also brewing, wound up with just as many problems it sounded like. It wasn't uncommon to see one of them come in for a glass or a bathroom break and be totally soaked or just generally looking tired and frustrated, but somehow still in good spirits (must be all the beer they were drinking).
Steff, Jonah, Lilly and I decided to go spend a couple of hours before lunch going to the Nature Center at the Warner Parks. The guy that works there remembered Jonah after talking to us for a bit. It's a really neat place, full of fun and educational things for kids of a wide range of ages. When they had their fill of the things indoors, we went out to take a look at their little frog pond and the vegetable garden. Then we headed over to the newish play area for them to get nice and dirty before going home. Basically, they've got a huge mud sand pit with a slide built into the side of a big hill of dirt and a miniature log cabin. The kids like it and get all nice and dirty there. Jonah kept bringing us shovels full of sand to put in our hands. As he would pour, he'd say, "thank you!" I think he's still a bit foggy on when it's appropriate to say thank you, but good manners are good manners and I'm not going to be upset if he says it too much or at inappropriate times, heh.
We went out to dinner at Jasmine in Cool Springs. It's a Thai restaurant with a French influence apparently. Chris had a fantastic duck dish that tasted like sesame chicken more so than what we were expecting. I got a steamed seafood red curry which was awesome (scallops, muscles, crab claws and shrimp in a red curry sauce with bean thread noodles)! Steff got a beef massaman curry that was wrapped up in crepes instead of served over rice. The atmosphere was really neat, too. We sat in a neat booth that was basically just wooden boxes enclosing a table with pillows on them for seats. It had a similar feel to eat in the room at Mikawa where you sit on the floor and there's space below the table for your legs. After dinner, we went to the Cool Springs Whole Foods hoping for gelato, but they don't have it there. We got Jonah a two bite brownie instead and Steff got Lilly a mini cannoli since she'd never had one. We were all exhausted, so we didn't stay up much past 10pm that night.
Sunday, Steff needed to get on the road after breakfast. We opted to go hit the Loveless Cafe, since it's right down the street and might not have had a bad wait since it was early and we thought people would mostly be at church. We still had a 20-30 minute wait, but a huge and pretty good breakfast. Unfortunately, I think Loveless might put sedatives in their food because we were totally exhausted and lazy the rest of the day. I even took a nap while Jonah was napping in the afternoon. Unfortunately, because of a terrible night's sleep last night, I'm still very groggy today.
My to do list is shorter this week but no less important. One last costumed event this week and I'm either getting back to work on the last costume I left off on or taking a short break while I get the rest of my life in line.