Day 271

Today I did one of my favourite things of the year...decorate for Halloween! We live in the middle of nowhere so we never get any kids, but now that I have my own kids, it's an excuse to go all out.

Here is the porch

The decorations on the side of the house. Can you believe I picked the ghosts, the witch's cauldron, and the orange pumpkin and cat in the previous picture out of peoples trash a few years ago? There was nothing wrong with them! The biggest ghost even lights up!

Vlad, the impaled. I made him out of a dollar store mask, some $ store eyeballs, $ store gloves, $ store cape, a styrofoam wig head, 2 pieces of wood, plastic bags for stuffing, some wire, and some old material.

An unsuspecting victim. I added surplus eyeballs to the skull. It makes him look creepier.

This sign pretty much sums up our place :P

When Ryan got home from school, we pretended he was trying not to be Vlad's next victim

Day 270

This is our new crab, "The Claw" (named after the claw on Toy Story) We had another male crab before him, but he mysteriously died.

Today The Claw, and his lady friend, Clawdia, molted their shells. I pulled their shells out to dry and the boys were mesmerized. Alex keeps wondering where the crabs went. LOL

Day 269

My Halloween lights :)

Day 268

Today Ryan's friend, Audrey came over for a play date. Alex of course had to tag along and do everything they did. In this picture they are fishing off of the tree. As you can see, Ryan has barely taken his George costume off.

Day 267

The boys have been watching George of the Jungle a lot lately. They think it's the most hilarious thing when he hits the trees. They keep jumping off the couch and splatting themselves into the wall while doing a jungle call.

Ryan asked to be George of the Jungle for Halloween, but I told him it would be a little cold to be running around at night in just a loin cloth. I went to Value Village and spotted a velvety jaguar patterned curtain for $5.99. It was perfect. I managed to make them each a George costume, and now they are both running around the house pretending to swing from vines.

Day 266

Today I got treat bags ready for the kids in Ryan's school. I thought to myself that I'd better make them now and tie them up or I'd be too tempted to eat them all before Halloween.

Each kid gets a Halloween stamp, a Halloween eraser, 2 chocolate bars, a spider ring, a Twizlers or Nibs, a tube of gum, and a squooshy pumpkin ball. I found the treat bags at the dollar store and they were just too cute to resist.

Day 265

Found this tiny guy while pulling some dead flowers out of the garden. Isn't he adorable?

Day 264

Alex decided to help me clean up and put away the shoes...except he hung them on the kid's coat rack in the back room. Oh well, nice try Alex :)

I also made my first upside down cake. this one is peach and it was quite yummy :)

Day 263

Alex and I went out shopping with my parents and we stopped at Dairy Queen for a little treat. I don't think he's ever had such a huge cone before and even though he shared it with my mom and I, he couldn't finish it.

Day 262

I spotter this contraption at Wal-Mart today. Has society really become that lazy that they need this?

I think this mushroom in the garden was happy to see me :o :P

I bought a fake skull at the dollar store and put it in Ryan's bed. When he came home from school I told him someone was waiting in his room for him. I'm so going to hell :P

Day 261

On the way home from picking Ryan up from a play date, I stopped on the side of the road to pick some wild flowers. These are the last ones of the season before everything goes brown and dead.

Day 260

Tonight we put out a play tube for the kids. We were pretending it was a tunnel to Jupiter. Here is Julian in the tube.

I was an alien on Jupiter. The kids kept running away from me going "Ahhhh!" I can't understand why...

Day 259

At the bus stop this morning I was surprised with a tin of "get well" cookies from one of Ryan's schoolmates. I thought that was veyry kind of him, and for a 13 year old boy, he did a pretty good job. I may have had 3 of them for breakfast LOL

A check in the garden revealed that I have 1 measly pumpkin growing in my patch. That's 1 better than last year. I don't know why I can't grow any pumpkins. I have seen a few gardens around here with big orange pumpkins already and all I have is this little green thing about the size of a baseball.

Day 258

I dropped Alex of at the sitters today and spent the day in bed. This cold is killer. I managed to crawl into the shower at one point and took the longest, hottest shower ever. It felt so good! Ryan came home with a little book that the kids put together every year. It lists a few facts, and then asks "Who am I". You then flip the page over to find out.

This is Ryan's page. He writes: 

I like dogs. I like the snow. My favourite colour is blue.

"Who am I?"

It's Ryan! 

Day 257

I am so freaking sick today and Alex is being a terror. All I want to do is veg in front of the computer or go to bed but this kid is really working me. Check out wheat he did to my sink and toothpaste. All the kleenex was his attempt to clean it before I caught him. Don't mind the rust stains from the water, we're getting rid of this sink soon anyways.

Day 256

Ale's germs got to me and now I'm getting sick too. The only picture I could muster today was this one after Alex made his first poop in the big potty.

Day 255

As we did our shopping today, Alex got quieter and quieter. At one point he just rested his head on the handle of the cart and just stared off into space. I checked his forehead and he was burning up. By the time we got to the check out line a few minutes later, he was fast asleep. The poor pooper ended up with a 39.7 fever, his nose got all congested and he started coughing. He'll be going to bed early tonight!

Day 254

Ryan and I headed out to a near by grocery store to buy a new soy butter peanut butter alternative. I heard rave reviews about this stuff so I was anxious to try it out. We had tried a few other alternatives in the past that were all a bust, so I was really hoping that I wasn't wasting another $5. On the way there we spotted these people having a horse drawn ride, getting soaked in the rain.

We were just amazed at how much this stuff actually looked, smelled, and tasted like peanut butter. So if anyone out there is missing peanut butter after having to deal with an allergy or wished you could send you kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich, I highly recommend this. It's even made in a 100% nut free facility so it's a great safe alternative.. It's called "Tastes like peanut butter" and even Ryan, the pickiest kid on the plant gives it a huge thumbs up.

Day 253

I was woken up at 7:30 am with furious knocking on my bedroom. It was Ryan and he was yelling through the door that he had lost his tooth. This boy is starting to look like a Hillybilly with all the missing teeth in his mouth.

Later on I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. When I went to take a closer look, I saw a tiny mouse climbing up my screen door. My cat was on the deck but hadn't spotted him, but just to be sure the mouse would be safe, I scooped him into a bucket and let him go on the far side of the yard.

Day 252

My parents dog Barkley arrived for a weekend sleepover while my parents headed to Toronto. He's 11 years old now and recently went stone deaf. It was quite strange making all kinds of hand movements in front of him when I needed to see if he wanted to go out.

Day 251

A surprise visitor at the school BBQ

My creation, destroyed after only 15 minutes.

Day 250

The other night Ryan's school called me up and asked if I could make a dessert for their curriculum night/ BBQ. I spent the day baking this chocolate fudge cake with butter cream icing and a cream cheese filling. Yum! I love this cake. It's the first time I've really got my icing super smooth. :)

Day 249

Two bees getting kinky in my garden. Bow chicka wow wow!

Day 248

The birds are getting ready to head south. In the woods today we saw a huge flock of grackles fly into the trees above us. I took some pictures, but they all turned out blurry. This was the best of the bunch and I don't even think you can spot a single bird in it. Oh well!

Day 247

On and off showers gave us this beautiful rainbow today. No pot of gold to be found anywhere. Bummer.

Day 246

Another cake made today for my friend and then we are on our way to her BBQ.

Here are the 2 cakes together at the BBQ. It was so crazy windy that even though the cow was secured on the board, it ended up blowing right off and knocking a "fence post" down. Gah! The effect was still there though and I heard a lot of chuckles as people cut into the crap :P

Alex and Dad enjoyed some soccer

And Alex cheated at beanbags

Ryan got crazy on the trampoline

And then the pig was carved, yum!