A belated Halloweeny post

As stated above, I am late posting these pictures. And mostly pictures it shall be:

(As a side note, if you are a faithful blog reader [do I have any of those?!] there is another new post after this one cataloging the miscellany of the weeks preceding Halloween)

Some of our spooky decorations. (Thanks Dollarama!)

Carving the pumpkins.

I included this photo just for Ryan's facial expression. That's how he truly feels about the smell of pumpkin guts but he took one for the team and got in to the spirit of things.

The finished products.

Here is Madeline, being a scary pumpkin, in heels no less.
Our little Tinkerbell wore her costume for 4 days in a row. At least we got our money's worth!

I got to be one of the parent helpers at Maddie's preschool Halloween party
but was the only parent who dressed up! Boo.

We went to the CNIB children's Halloween party that same day and it was lots of fun.

Here's Claire testing out some of the gross items on the table.
She liked touching the brains (warm spaghetti.....*shudder*) the best.

Ryan was a good sport and participated in gummy worm bobbing in whipped cream.

The whole fam.

Carving pumpkins yet again. Ryan bowed out of the scraping this time... :)

The cutest pirate I've ever seen. Her little bandana wouldn't stay on though!

Trick or treating at the mall.

Games for prizes.

I thought this picture was very sweet. She's about ready to fall asleep here and you can tell.

Getting our Halloween Orange Julius's.

Ryan and I attended a lovely Halloween/Rock Band 3 party at the Hewitt's and indulged in good scary food, drink and extreme karaoke. Fun was had by all! Next time photographic evidence will be provided, or maybe it's best for all parties if no such evidence arises. :)

EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT

I wrote my attention grabbing blog title in all caps to disguise the fact that I have again left blogging for too long and have many subjects to cover.

But now I have undermined my own genius with excessive explanation.

NEWS:

Ryan is now an Apple employee. A few hours a week he will providing expert service at the Apple Store in Southgate so if anyone needs advice on how to spend lots of money, he will be available to help you along the way.

I've had a few fun nights out with Emily. We've decided that instead of indulging in sweets, we will start walking and talking. I think it will be beautiful.

The deck is done! Please stay tuned for a blog post devoted to the wonderful work of TWP Carpentry.

Ryan attended an Eskimos game with his Dad, Rob, Broc and friends.

I ran my first Malmo Parents Meeting at my house and it was not as scary as I imagined it to be.

We worried a bit about Mom's health this past little while, but she has pulled through with nary a word of complaint.

I've been lucky to play the piano for Natalie a little bit, as she takes voice lessons. She has a great talent!

Ryan and I got to attend our first Oiler's game with our shared season's tickets.
We sat in the true fans section, a.k.a. the nosebleeds.
But it was a great time....despite the loss.
At least they gave us two goals to cheer about, yay!

The view from nearly as far away as you can get from the ice!

Every time I take Maddie to school, I drive by this "art," but have never gotten close
to it until we took the LRT home from the game. I remember watching them build it thinking, "What the heck is that going to be....?!"
So, now I have touched the giant disembodied feet. I have truly lived.

Maddie is getting quite good at the interwebs. It's a little scary actually.

While the boys were putting the finishing touches on the deck one Saturday, we braved the cool weather for a little while to show our support, then promptly headed inside.

Cold weather is very tough on a girl who likes to wear dresses for every occasion.
Tyler was so cute, trying to copy what Maddie was doing.

We still had fun inside though.

Claire loves to lay and scoot on the floor. :)

One morning I woke up to this and it made me happy.

I swear she is slowly winning this cat's affections.

Claire is doing so well at riding! I know I have posted a million pictures of her like this, but it's great to have something that she enjoys and that we can see measurable progress in!

After that first blast of snow, we've been enjoying lovely days this past week. I'm trying hard to forget that it is November and that weather can change very quickly!

Two random Madeline quotes:

Mom, does the sun have a mustache and wings?

Mom, I love your feelings.

Forgive me, for I have sinned...

...it's been 16 days since my last blog. I will attempt to condense our activities, but I think we all know that it will still be too long.

Claire had a special Read-In week at school. They focused on literacy and I got to read her favourite books to the class during circle time one morning. It was fun to see her interact with her friends. We had our first IPP meeting and everything's looking very positive. She's so happy at school!

Claire's been doing great at riding. Yesterday I forgot her neck brace at home, and so I wasn't sure how she would do, but she rode the whole time and held her head up high. I wonder if we'll need to use it as much anymore!

Madeline has also been busy at school. She continues her quest to share with others and not stick out her tongue at everyone. I got to go with her on her Fall Nature Walk.

She loves nature?

I got a nice girl's night out with Kathy. We should do that more often! I've been busy with transcriptions for the university and am now helping with a couple of papers based on one of the projects. It's so exciting! Malmo Preschool stuff is also keeping me occupied.

Ryan's been busy with Young Mens and school. He's also been applying for part time jobs to subsidize our income for a little while. We've got our fingers crossed for one right now. He also helped Olivia and Rob move into their new place in Edmonton! We're glad to have them close!

Meet Ryan's new best friend.

I think M has had just as much fun with the box.

On Thanksgiving Monday we had some family pictures done. We've only got a sneak peek so far but here it is.

We had a great holiday at Mom and Dad's, as usual.

The traditional football game was played and for the first time, did not end in a tie!

Ye olde teame piktures

Madeline and I chose to languidly cheer for the teams after exploring the parks.

Love this picture

Mom. Trying to make us all fat with her pie-y goodness.

This is how Miss Claire spent most of the afternoon. What a sweetheart. :)

We were lucky to have the Jensens come and stay with us for a few days.

While Claire was at school we spent a cool morning at the park.

Eva is such a good story teller!

Nerds squared.

Claire enjoyed having our friends over.

We were also lucky to go see the Wiggles for the first time! Here's my advocacy story. I called about tickets and discovered that wheelchair accessible tickets were 4 times as much as the least expensive ones, since they were closer. Based on proximity alone, this makes sense. But since we have no choice as to where to sit, this seemed unfair to me. After explaining the situation to the proper decision makers, they sold us the tickets for the cheaper price. Huzzah.

I was super impressed with those Wiggles. They were climbing all over the place. Especially Captain Feathersword. Who knew he was such a gymnast?! It makes his annoyingness much more bearable. Murray couldn't make it, so we had to make do with some guy named Ringo. At least he had the accent to go along with that red shirt!

The cool stage set-up.

A family picture, thanks to Ryan's long arms.

This was Maddie's reaction to seeing Dorothy the Dinosaur....awesome.

Claire loved it all - the lights, the music, the atmosphere.
It's very gratifying to watch her enjoy herself.

Can you tell we're having fun?!

Work on the deck is still coming along...we've enjoyed playing with the Patricks while the boys work, but maybe it's been too distractingly fun!

This is what we call "going to the moon."

I can't tell who's having more fun...

I shall my best to keep up with the blog to avoid these long-ish posts. But we all know that's a bunch of hooey.