Halloween

We had trick-or-treating on Sunday in our county. Here are the usual suspects.

It was hard to get Tovina to really stand still for photos. She was, shall we say, a little teensy tiney bit excited. Yes, this is a mid-air shot. One of many actually.

There was a flower for the butterfly to land on but that was not used until the butterfly was cold and tired and just curling up on my lap at the end of the evening (sans wings or flower for that matter.)

Remember summer?

Winter is pretty close to being here. We've had a fire going to warm the house for a while now. I'm back to wearing fuzzy socks around the house and sweaters and jackets at work. Even more startling, Tovina is actually sleeping under the covers. Its times like this that remind me of summer.
This summer we joined the nature center that is not too far from our house, Rowe Woods. Lots of great walks there.
And lots of ways to get around, both by backpack and with just good ol' muscles.

Halloween costume - take one

Tovina had a costume party at preschool today so we decided it was a good time to test out her costume before Sunday (that's Halloween in case you didn't know.)

I learned many things while working on Tovina's costume:
1) Fabric is harder to work with then cardboard. I think knowing how to sew may have helped but I am not convinced.
2) I really like working on Halloween costumes. Really like. Spent-all-day-thinking-about-it-and-couldn't-wait-to-get-home-to-work-on-it like.
3) Tovina likes making costumes too and can even work a glue gun (as long as I am also holding on.)

So what did we make? Hah! We're not telling! But we will let you see some photos and make your own guess.
(Luckily for us, Tovina and I already think that Tovina's costume rocks so we are not about to have our confidence swayed by anyone who might have absolutely no idea whatsoever what it is suppose to be. Confidence is a wonderful thing however misplaced that confidence might be.)

First thing to do before donning the rest of the costume was to get the head gear ready. (Michael went far and beyond my expectations!)




We still have a few days to change things up so if you have any suggestions then please please pass them on! Tovina already found the shiny beads that I forgot and wants to glue them on - right now Mommy!

Ninjas

I asked Tovina, Brendan, and Emma to do ninja poses for me. (No I don't remember at all how this came up.)
Brendan thought about an appropriately spectacular response.
Emma tried to help Brendan out.
Tovina leap into action - I didn't even know she knew what a ninja was!


I decided to try again.
Emma and Brenda were ready with their accurate and terrifying poses ready.
Tovina was.. interested in watching Emma and Brendan.

Charlie's Angels this crew is not.

Swings and ponies

I realize that normally swings and ponies aren't associated with each other, but stick with me here.

A couple of weeks ago we visited Carriage House Farms for their Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association farm tour series. It was a great afternoon and as an added bonus while we were there Michael found the biggest swing set I have ever seen!
How big?
Well here is Michael and Tovina getting ready to take off

 And here is the rest of the swing. The down side? We didn't spend the 20 minutes that we estimated it would take to reach an adequate swing height. But the possibilities boggle the mind!

While we were at the the farm we saw some horses. This prompted Tovina to ask, "Can I ride the horse? Can I ride that horse? Mommy, when can I ride a horse? Why can't I ride a horse? Which horse...." and so on. I had no idea Tovina liked horses this much/ Lacking a better answer I told her someday I would find a horse for her to ride for a while. And that, I thought, was that.

Then came today's birthday party for one of Tovina's cousins. And this party, being pretty darn awesome, had ponies! 2 to be precise and Tovina tried both of them. The brown one is Elvis and the black and white is Oreo.

For some live actions shots:

Halloween face painting

Everyone wanted to show their Halloween spirit
Emma is showing you a candy corn flower.
Brendan has a green and red snake.
And Tovina rounded out the group with a glittery spider (which Tovina called 'plain'. Maybe because it didn't have a smiley face? This was after we explained, 4-5 times, that there were no butterflies to be had)


On a side note, Emma's flower reminds me of fractals for some reason. It could just be that I learned today that Benoit Mandelbrot passed away so I have fractals on the mind.



These images from http://www.fantastic-fractals.com/Fractal-Flowers.html

Pumpkin pictures

For the last 3 years we have gone to Shaw's farm during October to get us in the Halloween spirit.

It seems to work.
What struck me this year is that we somehow started a family tradition when I wasn't looking.

2008-2010

Bright Lights, Big City

Tovina was impressed with Calgary especially the bright city lights at night - and by night I mean 5:00 am Mountain time when she was waking up. Admittedly this was right around 7am Eastern time which is when she normally wakes up... but still, the principle of the thing was rough.

She would wake up, make her way through the darkened hotel room to the floor length windows, duck behind the opaque curtains, and then... just... stare.. at the street lights.

'Mommy, the sun is up.'
'Sweetie those are lights down where people can walk. (Not that anyone was moving around outside of the hotel at 5am.) Its still sleepy time.'
'No. See. The sky is bright.'
'That's a reflection of the light down here. We're in a city. That brown color? That is what the sky looks like here at night.'
She was not convinced but she did think it was fascinating.

I think now that we are home and she is once again stuck in the middle of a forest she might be a little disappointed.