A little bit of Thanks were Given

Thanksgiving this year was not the Thanksgiving we were expecting. More on that will come, but for now, I think we made do pretty well for a last minute, thrown together meal.

And when you are sick and just home from the hospital, you can have both turkey legs to eat during Thanksgiving dinner.

With no silverware required.

Ryan has been a star through everything over the past two weeks. He just keeps smiling and keeps his complaints that its all been about Brother to a minimum.

 And me, well, a nice bottle of Chardonnay makes everything a bit more digestible.

 And yes, this was MY bottle. Mom and Carl shared the Cab.

Batman is Awesome

I've found my new catch phrase, of this there is no doubt. The boys were watching (as a special treat) Batman the Brave & The Bold tonight, and after defeating a whole bunch of bad guys, Batman states:

"The Hammers of justice will always pound straight the bent nails of evil".

Which is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever heard. Ever.

The Backyardigans Gotta Feeling

Little known sad fact:
The Black Eyed Peas' I've Gotta Feeling is the #1 most played song on my iPod.

And yes, I like the Black Eyed Peas. And at one point, I liked this song. But enough to justify 472 plays? Not exactly...

Those 472 plays are due to the fact that Team Danger LOVES this song. So we listen to it in the car. Over and over and over and over and over again. They call it the "Good Night" song. Which is an improvement over the "Knight Song" they first kept requesting and I kept giving them clueless looks and insisting there was no "Knight Song" on my iPod.

In case you are wondering, the next most popular songs on my iPod are Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, Taylor Swift, four Glee songs (mostly Team Danger favorites, like the Ice, Ice Baby remake. Please. Don't ask.) Finally, at #8, we see an actual Annalynn song cracking the Top 10: Jack Johnson's Better Together.

But not far behind in the play count are an awful lot of Backyardigans songs. This is Ryan's favorite show, by far, and one that Alex likes, too. He had a Backyardigans themed birthday party when we turned 4, and I downloaded all their songs for the celebration. We've played them so much we know all the words at this point.(I know, also a sad fact of my life)
 
So you can imagine the surprise and happiness on Team Danger's faces when I found the youtube video of the Backyardigans singing I Gotta Feeling.


A song Alex and Ryan know so well they can tell when the words were changed to make it more family-friendly.

Ryan: "Are there bad words in the Good Knight song, Mommy?"
Me: "Oh no, not at all."
Ryan: "Then why did the 'Ardigans change the words?"
Me: pause. "Well... they aren't bad, per se. Just that the 'Ardigans words are easier to understand."
Alex to Ryan, whispering: "Those have to be bad words. It must be bad to have money, be stressed, to burn the roof, get smashed, and to take it all off.*"

* perfectly noticing the changed words of 'I've got my money' to 'I've got my friends here,' 'I feel stressed' to 'I feel fine,' 'burn the roof' to 'raise the roof', and 'look at her dancing, take it off' to ' I see you dancing, don't turn it off.'

I'm so, um, proud.

Dark and Scary Times Ahead

The past two Halloween seasons, Alex has complained incessantly that our decorations weren't spooky enough.

I like my decorations. I've had a theme of scarecrows and pumpkins, and created a nice, happy Halloween setting. One that is appropriate at a house with small children. Which is what we are.

Or what we were, I'm sadly realizing.

Last year, we added this ghost.

He has a bit of a spooky face, but I still thought he was close enough to the cute and cuddly Casper variety. He flies in the breeze between two trees, and the first two weeks we had him, he would move back and forth on his string and make some ghostly sounds. That feature didn't last long, but I still put him up since he looks so good.

When it comes to decorating, Alex is my outside guy. Ryan tends to prefer the inside decorations, and he was very sad that our Halloween village didn't come out this year (our inside decorations were kept extremely sparse due to the home improvements).

Alex was also sad. Now that he is a big and strong eight year old, he needs to have scary decorations that show the world how big and strong and not scared of scary things he is.

With two sad kids, I was determined to at least make one of my children happy with our Halloween decor. I asked Alex what kinds of decorations he wanted. I was told more scary things, like witches, and vampires, and ghosts and skeletons.

One day, I came home with these three great scarecrows - a ghost, a vampire, and a witch. Scary people + scarecrow = something for everyone.

I couldn't wait to show Alex.

 He took one look at them, and then gave me an "Are you CRAZY??" kind of look.

"These aren't scary," he explained.

"They are SMILING."

So I tried again. I bought some tombstones at Target. They had glittery sayings on them like, RIP, Out To Lunch, and I'll Be Back.

Alex did not approve of the bling. Turns out they were made of such cheap, lightweight styrofoam that they've blown away, so he won't have to worry about them coming out again next year.

I made one last attempt, and picked up this skeleton. He was definitely scary. I was even freaked out by him. Surely Alex will be impressed with the skeleton.

Um, no. 

Because he, like the scarecrows, is SMILING.

At this point I gave up. And we spent the rest of October with a moaning and deep sighing Alex every time our car pulled up in the front and he saw the smiling decorations.

Tuesday morning, I had to pick up bagels for work. I somehow found myself at the Panera located near Target, and when I looked at my clock, it was 7:58 a.m. About a dozen folks hovered by the doors, and I soon realized they were waiting for the Day After Halloween sales to begin.

Fifteen minutes later, I was the "proud" owner of four very spooky and scary Halloween decorations.

No one is smiling.

Everyone is dead and scary looking.

And finally, Alex approves.

Ninja Halloween

My floors are done. But the inside of my house is still in disarray, so we'll keep your suspense for a few more days and bring you an update on Team Danger's Halloween, circa 2011.

The boys were Ninjas this year. It wasn't my costume of choice, but considering Alex wanted to be the Scream ghost, an all black Ninja was an improvement. More than a few tears were shed by me at the realization that Alex has officially entered the age where Halloween is known as a scary event, and not a fun, pumpkin and scarecrow filled festival. Where did my little boy go?!

Ryan also wanted to be a Ninja. But he wanted to be a blue ninja, and the blue ninja costumes we found were not to his liking. So he ended up picking a Blue Power Ranger costume, and decided he would be a Samurai "ninja" Power Ranger.

On to the past ten days of Halloween celebrations...

We went to a Halloween party in our hood, at the house of one of Ryan's classmates. She also has a second grade older brother, and I have to say, I love how we have so many friends with kids the exact ages as ours. Beau and I grew up four years apart (plus the whole boy-girl division) and rarely had any overlay in friends, so this is nice for the boys.

Ryan was especially pleased to find his kindergarten BFF, Giles, at the party. Giles was there with his second-grade sister, as well. We've already had playdates with Giles, and Ryan talks about him all the time. The boys had fun bobbing for apples, and going on the Haunted Trail that comprised their entire backyard.

I made these oreo spiders to take to the party. I had gotten the idea from Pinterest, and it looked nice easy. Turns out that its hard to find the little licorice legs I needed, and that Twizzlers don't break apart very well. So it took me over an hour to produce twenty of these babies.

On Friday, the boys had Dress as your Favorite Storybook Character Day at school (since apparently Halloween is not an approved upon school holiday. Kinda sad.) Against all my great advice and suggestions, Alex went dressed as a Jedi Knight, and Ryan went dressed as a soccer player.

 And yes, if you are counting, this is the second time this year he has gone dressed up in 'costume' as a soccer player to school.

Friday was also the day we had trick or treating at work. Team Danger didn't come down this year (since they were on their way to Waco for the Zoo Snooze campout with the Cub Scouts). But I was vastly entertained by one of our investigators and his Star Wars family.

And I have his official 501st Legion business card should I ever need a storm trooper or Darth Vader to appear at a birthday party. :)

On Sunday, we finally carved our pumpkin.

We usually carve more than one pumpkin, but with all the home renovating going on, we've been way short on time and I'm sad to say Halloween has taken a back seat this year. So at 6:30 pm on Sunday night, we carved out an hour of time.

Monday evening, the extended Swanson family came over to join us for trick or treating. Alex's friend Travis and his mom, Carolyn, also joined us, injecting some missing Star Wars into our Ninja Halloween.

 

 Grandma Chris was a big blue LEGO. It was a very cute costume, and I know it meant a lot to the boys - especially Ryan - that she dressed up as their favorite toy.

Elaine and family were pirates,and Baby Matthew was a parrot.

I am not a big costume person, so I went with Cat in the Hat. Simple, and I got to wear jeans, a black t-shirt, white gloves, a pinned on tail, a red Christmas bow, and of course, the hat, which meant I didn't need to do anything for my hair. Bonus points all around. The cat nose I had made my glasses fog whenever I breathed, so it was quickly discarded in exchange for some eyeliner whiskers.

Carl and his dad stayed behind to hand out candy to the trick or treaters while I headed out with everyone else. I just adore our neighborhood on Halloween evening. We have our resident haunted house about two blocks down, and the trick or treaters just flock to our streets. There are so many kids running around, its like I'm living in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. Pure happiness.

When we were done, Alex and Ryan took over the candy duties from Carl and Al.

 We had a great night, and the boys were even asleep and in bed by 9pm. Not bad!