Just Soooooo Interesting!

Yesterday I had a funny conversation with my children when we were in the van on our way to deliver cinnamon rolls and rice krispie wands to our elementary PTA bake sale. The kids were out of school because their elementary is a voting station. The plan was that I would go and vote right after dropping off our goodies.

Sam asked who the other man was whose name was not Barak Obama that might be president. I told him John McCain and he said, "Oh yah, but I think I would vote for Barak Obama because he promised his two daughters that when the election is over he would buy them a dog. Plus I like his activities!"
Emi then piped in, "I think you should vote for Barak Obama too. His name intrigues me. Its just soooooo interesting."
When I was getting out of the car to go vote Sam said, "Make sure to vote for Obama, he's getting a dog," and Emi whispered in my ear, "Vote for Obama, I did."
I found out that they learned about the candidates in their scholastic at school. Plus, I am sure they couldn't have missed everything going on around them. I got 5 phone calls from the Obama campaign just on voting day.
I feel pretty content with the election outcomes. I stood in my little booth for literally 10 minutes staring at the ballot still undecided. I am not sharing who I voted for and it is driving Emily crazy, she asks probably once an hour. I was finally able to fill in the bubble on my ballot when I came to the realization that I didn't have to justify my decision to anyone and I could keep it to myself. I feel content with the outcome and feel that John McCain showed soooo much class in his concession speech. I also bawled a couple of times watching Obama's speech and the reaction of the people around him. Who wouldn't be moved? The image that stands out the most to me is of an African American father here in Cleveland, standing tall, with his toddler on his shoulders and tears streaming down his face.

All Hallows Eve!

Halloween could not have been any better this year. Temperatures were reported to be as high as 71, the sun was bright, the leaves were brilliant, the kids were adorable and fairly well behaved for the amount of sugar that was pumping through their veins.
Both Sam's and Em's classes had parties and the school does a traditional parade around the street and into their playground. I am Emily's Room Mother so I helped with their class party and to get their costumes on and what an adventure. Imagine helping 29 Kindies load their backpacks with their folders and take home mail, lunchboxes, towel bags, goody bags, see their face as they remember their costume is in the bottom of the bag and then start over. It was fun! My back hurts.

After school we hung lanterns in our yard that stayed lit for about 30 minutes because I bought the batteries at the dollar store. Silly me! I don't think they even made it past dusk.


Then it was time for us (me) to carve our pumpkins. The kids draw the faces on and I do my best to keep them original. This is the part of our day where a little mystery started. When we went out to get our pumpkins Danny's was missing. It was there when I backed out of the drive to take the kids to school. I guess someone didn't make it to the pumpkin patch and thought we should share:-) Then we ate Chinese food that the delivery man was so kind to drop by. We also got treats from my visiting teacher whose family tradition is to reverse trick or treat in the afternoon. They dropped it off just as the Chinese delivery man was there and he asked for a cookie. We shared :-) How funny is that! I guess it was a day of giving for the Parks' but we don't mind, we had plenty of pumpkins and sugar.

We ran into one of Sam's classmates and his family when we started trick or treating and spent the evening with them. It was good because Sam is usually done after the first 20 houses and this year he stuck it out for the whole 2 hours.


Sam loved being Indiana Jones and Emi prances around every time she is dressed in her Wood Sprite costume. I had a ton of fun putting their costumes together this year. Sam's was found mostly at Salvation Army and the hat and whip at the Halloween Store. I only had to sew the satchel. If you click on the pictures you can see a lot more detail.

Emi's was just fun to make, especially the wings. I have always been about the fru, fruey girly stuff. She got her hair cut for school pictures last week and it turned out perfect for her costume. A pixy for the pixy. If you look close you can see her brown, pink and white striped tights. Soooo cute!

Here she is rubbing her blankie on a huge scrape she got from our bush.




I love Halloween!!! I think it might be my favorite holiday. It brings back so many memories from childhood, all good. I love how our neighborhood comes alive and we actually get to see our neighbors. Everyone leaves their computers and televisions and come out into REAL life and it just feels like the good old days when people knew each other and kids could play outside and be kids. I think Halloween should happen every other month and we should pass out vegetables. LOL