Travel Prep: The Essentials

We still play the odd game of chess, and Scrabble Junior, and checkers, and Matt has taken to teaching the girls Solar Quest every night after dinner, but Sorry is the latest true obsession:

 
Have I mentioned that the girlies and I are going on a very odd and unruly road trip next week? Our elderly and much-mistreated van, which we use for hauling everything from craft fair stuff to the craft fairs to bicycles to the trailhead to our dumpster-dived coffee table home to our living room, is just about dead in the water. Every day Matt tests its bum transmission by driving it to work and back at under 25 mph and 2,000 rpms. While I was researching little cargo trailers to be pulled behind our Sable (and to probably kill ITS transmission), Matt's parents bought themselves a new used car, and generously offered to give us their old minivan--if only we could find somebody to drive it cross-country to our house!

Hmmm...I wonder who we know who has the time and the inclination for a cross-country road trip?

Hmmmmmmm.....

The kiddos and I leave next week.

Travel logistics are doubly difficult for me, since I have a plane trip AND a road trip to plan for. As you with small kidlets know, entertainment is different for each method of transport. A plane flight, especially since it's likely that Will won't be able to sit right next to me if the rows are small, requires lots of independent, quiet, small-space, no-mess snacks and activities. The benefit, however, is that I can often play with them, or at least fetch them things and set them up with stuff. A road trip, at least for my kiddos, requires LOTS of books, LOTS of educational DVDs, LOTS of audiobooks that we listen to together, LOTS of snacks, and a few playthings and activities. I also can't fetch anything or set anything up, because once we're in motion, I don't take my eyes off of the road--paranoid driver, I am. Now you know.

Hallelujah that we're flying Southwest, in which each traveler gets to check a bountiful TWO FREE BAGS. For us, most of these bags will be filled with road trip stuff; this is good, because when Matt's parents come to pick us up at the airport, it's a tradition that my father-in-law pick up one of my bags, almost die, and then say, "What's in this BAG?!? ROCKS?!?"

At which point I reply. "No, books. Duh!"

So the travel essentials shopping list looks like, to date:

• magnetic board games. Chess is an absolute must, of course, but it's been decades since I've gone shopping for magnetic board games, so WOW me, board game manufacturers!
• car kit for the ipod. I hated that ipod FM transmitter thingy that I bought last year and then returned because I hated it. Wow me, Apple!
• as many books and DVDs and audiobooks as we can sneak out of the public library before we go.

When that's all settled, I'll think about packing some clothes, if we have anymore room in the luggage...

The World's Sleepiest Kitten

She earned her keep at the Halloween party, that's for sure:

And now the world's sleepiest kitten indulges in the sleep of the just, and the kind, and the patient:

We'll see that she gets a good nap before she wakes up to play some more.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

One thing about Halloween being on Sunday, at the very smack-end end of the week, is that you basically get to celebrate ALL. WEEK. LONG.

And we did:

We made yummy Halloween treaties:

 Can you tell that they're supposed to be Jack-o-Lanterns?

We ate yummy Halloween treaties at each of the THREE Halloween parties that we attended in three days:

You probably recognize every piece of Sydney's outfit, from the Salvation Army "handmade by grandma" dress to the $1 garage sale vintage necklace to the birthday crown. The girlies weren't super-inspired by costuming this year, so they cobbled themselves together a new costume from their dress-up stash for every Halloween event.

We attended Night of the Living Red with the IU men's basketball players, with trick-or-treating, contests, a scrimmage--

--enough free candy to keep a little girl entertained during the scrimmage--

--and a costume parade down on the court with the basketball players, broadcast on the Teletron:

We made even MORE Halloween treats:  

That's another Amelia Bedelia sheet cake, by the way, with pretty much three entire jars of sprinkles thrown on top of it.

We decorated the house all pretty and spooky:

 We made some healthy treats, just so that we could feel good about ourselves:

And then we had a party! Little friends made gak with us--

--were enthralled by the overhead projector--

--loved on all the play dough--

 --and, of course, helped us eat some of our many, MANY Halloween treats:

And here and there and in between, we made Jack-o-Lanterns out of felt and Jack-o-Lanterns out of paper and Jack-o-Lanterns out of pumpkins and even, for keeping for momma's posterity to make her sniffle bittersweetly in twenty or so years, Jack-o-lanterns out of funkins: 

Willow's is on the left and Sydney's is on the right, with their signature and the year on the back, and I don't care that Matt does beg me to think about ten years from now, when there will be 22 carved funkins to deal with, each baby IS going to make her own funkin Jack-o-lantern every single Halloween from now on.

And lordy, I didn't even talk about the neighborhood trick-or-treating!

Willow Bakes Amelia Bedelia's Cake

The kiddo loves to bake.
The nice thing about baking is that the recipes are generally rather simple, really. You don't have to use the stovetop, usually. Often, you don't have to even use an electric mixer. Most of the time nothing is timed until it goes into the oven. All this makes baking ideal for little kids to do independently--they can take as long as they want, they don't have to worry about burning themselves, they can build up their little arm muscles and practice their math skills.

Although Willow rarely wants to make a recipe a second time (she still talks about how much wooooork the French bread was, even though she didn't complain while she was making it), if she finds a new recipe that she wants to taste, she's pretty much always up for making it once. The other day, she read Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off, and at the end of the book, Willow showed me that the author actually included the recipe for AMELIA'S PRIZE-WINNING CAKE!!!

It was very exciting, likely the easiest cake recipe that I have ever seen, and here's how it went:

First comes the flour. Notice how clean the table and the child look. That will not last:

Next, you add the sugar. Please note that child baking is NOT for the faint of heart--it took Willow over four minutes to measure out one cup of sugar. I thought that I was going to die:

The cocoa goes much better, as now Willow has a system, but Sydney also develops some alternate plans:

Then you mix the dry ingredients, and you, the audience, discover that I am, in fact, a mean and wily parent:

Shout-out to Pizza X! And also Willow grosses me out a little:

There were big plans afoot to ice the cake and frost it like a dinosaur, or maybe a castle, and to decorate it with cookies and candy obtained who knows where, but after enduring the agony of waiting for the cake to bake, and hearing me announce that we'd also have to wait for it to cool before we could decorate it...well, plans changed:

PERFECT cake.

Thanks, Amelia Bedelia!

Cloudy with a Chance of Screen Time

It was a GORGEOUS morning:

The sky was full of clouds, and the clouds raced across the sky, so that all you could do was stand with your head craned backwards and watch them:

 We took many photographs:

And then we ran around, chased all the rest of the leaves that were going to fall off the tree right that minute, and watched the amazing sky some more.

Then the tornado sirens began to wail, so we scurried inside and spent the rest of the morning watching Land Before Time in the basement.

This was also fun, it turned out.

Do Not Eat the Candy Corn

I know it looks delicious:

All white and orange and yummy:

It's true that crayons are non-toxic and all, but if you eat these--

--I'm pretty sure that your tummy would NOT be pleased:

You can check out my NON-EDIBLE candy corn crayons over at my pumpkinbear etsy shop.

And speaking of non-edible treats, my weekend post over at Crafting a Green World about sugar-free, eco-friendly Halloween treats has spawned a series of the meanest, most mean-hearted comments that I've gotten since I dared to declare that the tag "craftivism" shouldn't be tethered to one particular leaning. Apparently, I am stupid, all kids hate me, especially my own, and don't I know that all apples have razor blades hidden inside of them? If I wasn't making an effort to be all Power of Positive Thinking lately, I'd be deject that the mere possibility of a Halloween absent high fructose corn syrup and individual packaging could be met with such vicious negativity, but I AM making an effort to be all Power of Positive Thinking lately, so...

Yay, I'm getting so many comments on my blog post!

My opinions are out there in the webosphere, and the world has taken notice!

Next stop, Larry King Live!

And when I appear on his show, I will give him a festive Halloween pencil.

And maybe an apple.

Little Kid Kasparovs

Sure the babies still like dinosaurs and human evolution and their bicycles and Magic Tree House and My Little Pony and baking sweet treats and Nancy Drew and Halloween, but their latest obsession?

 
 
 
Willow would rather play with me (and one of these days soon she's going to kick my butt instead of it being the other way around), but Syd likes to play, too, so usually I pit the two girls against each other and I coach.

It makes for a WAY better game, frankly--both of those two little nuts are so crazy and unpredictable that they'll do anything, and they never pass up an opportunity to take a piece. Seriously, they might as well salt the earth when they're done, because they leave their battlefied BLOODY!

And I can't even describe the thrill as they race their pawns to the other side to get their queens again, only to have the queens attack each other the very next move--and goodbye, queens!

All I can say is thank goodness--the girls and I are taking a cross-country road trip in a couple of weeks, and before we leave, I am shifting some cash out of the food budget and buying us a travel chess set. Because we won't even notice that we're eating beans and rice AGAIN if we're playing an exciting game of chess over dinner...