SpongeBob Short Shorts

The big news of this particular Halloween is that Calvin got a great costume. For those of you who don't know, Calvin is a very non-squeaky wheel in a house full of other wheels that are rather screechy and demanding. Yay for me, but not so much for him. I find it all too easy to say to myself "Oh Calvin won't mind" and he usually doesn't. Sadly this happens throughout the year in a variety of situations. But what kind of message does that send? Some years in October when I am overwhelmed (okay, that would be most years) I don't really get around to whipping up something great for Calvin and so I end up buying him a cheap-o costume at Party City. Bless his heart, he never really seems to mind, but I do. In the non-PC words of my non-PC dad, he gets treated like a red-headed step child. So this year I committed myself to really putting Calvin first and he was going to be Patrick to Tommy's SpongeBob. He was really excited and a few weeks ago before school, I had him lie down on the wood floor and I traced him in sidewalk chalk. Only when I started cutting out the pink Patrick fleece I somehow made the costume too short and suddenly I began to suspect that Calvin wasn't going to be Patrick anymore. Being Calvin, when he came home later that afternoon he took the news pretty well and was soon just as excited to be SpongeBob. And he was an adorable SpongeBob.

What made this costume was the short shorts. When Pie saw Calvin fully dressed he looked at me and said, "Did you have to make the shorts so short?" Well, yes. Yes I did. Because the magic of this costume isn't the fact that I took 2 1/2 yards of green 1/2 craft foam and cut it and glued it and then hand stitch it through the glued foam to reinforce the seams, somehow creating a sponge shape and then covering it with fabric and used blue and red Sharpie's to color the bands on the socks and red felt to make the little tie. No. The magic came from the legs. I wish you could have seen him walking around in his costume, because the pictures just don't do it justice. It was the long skinny legs working those short shorts that got the laughs. And SpongeBob is meant to be funny. I know, I watch him every day.

Santa

Sometimes having two blogs can be burdensome. Like when you think you are posting on one blog and after you hit "publish post" you find out you were posting on the wrong one. Other people, people more experienced with computers and such, would know just how to fix that. It probably involves some cutting and pasting. Anyway, I posted about Super Granny over at my black blog, when really I had intended to put all the descriptions of the costumes over here. I know, you are thinking to yourselves, She has a method to all this? Well, I do. The black blog is much more snarky and full of poking fun at others. The monkey blog is meant to be the stuff my kids will read when they are grown up and want to know why there are no scrapbooks or photo albums.

So on to the next costume re-cap: Santa

Maybe it is the particular shape of the fat suit underneath this costume, but something about Jon that I cannot quite put my finger on makes me think of the Grinch dressed up as Santa.

For the last couple of years Jon has been quite sure he wanted to be Santa for Halloween. But always at the last minute he changes his mind. Sometimes I change his mind for him, like last year when I decided we would all be penguins. So this year when he again mentioned Santa, I knew I had to do it. Because he is right at the edge of childhood regarding Santa, if you know what I mean, and next year I seriously doubt he will still be interested. You may recognize Santa's glasses from Super Granny's costume. They both have the same kind. $3.99 at Party City. Jon's beard gives him fits and so he usually wears it pulled down to under his bottom lip. Kind of giving Santa more of a Brigham Young/John Taylor vibe. Anyway, he loved being Santa. He had all the kids telling him at school what they wanted for Christmas. At one point during last night's trick or treating, he told me he wanted to go home to pass out candy at our house, so he could have the kids (the girls) sit on his lap and tell him their Christmas wishes. I predict he will try and resurrect the idea of being Santa for Halloween again sometime in his teen years. I further predict that we are in serious trouble with our little Casanova Frankenstein, come puberty.

A Recipe For Insanity

Around this time of year, in addition to spending obscene amounts of time hand-crafting Halloween costumes for my kids (the one activity I perform a year that elevates my Mommy status from bare-minimum to just above just getting by), I also enjoy making and eating sugar cookies. You know, with the chilled dough and the rolling pins and the cookie cutters and the colored frosting. Old School. I whipped up a batch or four of sugar cookies just this very week. Blue bats and spider webs, orange owls, yellow moons, and green haunted houses (not pictured).



I wrapped them up in gift bags and took them to school to give to the teachers and office staff who love and tolerate my children on a daily basis. If there is any bit of advice I can give to parents of kids just starting out on their school careers, it is this: Always bring in homemade gifts/treats to the women of the front office. Teachers, deservedly, get lots of gifts and treats each holiday, but those women in the office get squat. They will know and interact with your children on a daily basis, particularly the school nurse. So give these women what they deserve, sugar.

And now for my favorite sugar cookie recipe (complete with icing):

Note: these cookies are not your typical sugar cookie. They are not overly sweet (but rest assured, the icing is). These cookies are best with this particular icing. Kids like them, but I have found it is the adults that really really love them. A good sugar cookie is my absolute favorite cookie, and these taste like childhood. You will sniff the icing and eat the cookie and you will think: Christmas. Now that I have completely over-sold these cookies......

White Velvet Cutouts (from allrecipes.com)

1 cup butter

3 oz cream cheese (the good stuff)

1 cup white sugar

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk and vanilla. Stir in the flour. Gather the dough into a ball and chill overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 F. On a lightly floured counter top, roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes and place on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake for 5 minutes and turn pan around. Cook one sheet at a time. Bake another 3-5 minutes until the cookies are set and the edges have just begun to get some color. Let cool. Frost with:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoons milk

2 teaspoons light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

pinch of salt

In a small bowl stir together sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in the corn syrup and almond extract. (Here at my house I have to double the milk and corn syrup because we are so dry. If it is too thick, the recipe recommends thinning with more corn syrup.) Divide icing into separate bowls and add food coloring. Apply a thin layer of icing with a knife (the icing should be thin enough to create a thin sheet of icing that will harden as it sits.) This icing is fun to use because the colors are so intense, especially if you use the paste type colors instead of the liquids, although those work just fine.

The Boy Has Style

Some people know how to work a look. Some people simply ooze style. Like Tommy. Every morning before school as the other children are being manhandled into their clothes, Tommy is there putting together a look. One of Tommy's favorite sources for the day's wardrobe: the laundry pile. The boy is not afraid of layering and loves to pair plaids with stripes. So Justin Timberlake. I call this one the Dandy Skater.

Here we have the Olympic Scholar, complete with track suit bottoms and orthopedic librarian shoes.
This is a very macho top.

This little number, while not really gettin on the bus-wear, is certainly noteworthy for the use of synthetics and full sleeve gloves. It is at once both revealing and demure. But don't even think about this type of outfit if you aren't super toned. The top leaves little to the imagination.

A Delightful Walk

This is not a good time for real estate. But on the plus side, Realtors like Pie have room in their schedules for taking an afternoon walk. A rare treat indeed.

Tommy and Pie on the Highline Trail. One of our favorite places to be in Autumn. Too bad that the leaves this year haven't been all that spectacular. Some years are just duds. But 58 degrees and sunshine make for a very pleasant afternoon.

Picking up sticks and hunting squirrels.

The trees are about as big as they get, growing next to the canal.

Tommy is reluctant to pose for the camera. He would much rather be shuffling his feet along in the dirt.

He was very into the walk until we turned around. Then he sat down and sulked. No more looking for squirrels and sticks, no more shuffling along in the dirt.

We had to pick him up and carry him. Sullen child.

While I am loath to have another picture of me in this post (it is against all my natural instincts) I present this one for those who were curious about my haircut. Even though in the course of wrangling Tommy for the shot, my neck is doing something rather unflattering. I have made a mental note to avoid posing like this in the future.

We love this trail and are jealous of those people so lucky as to live right next to it.

We had a lovely walk. We thought Tommy would enjoy it more--just being with Mom and Dad. He missed the other four kids. They would have known how to show him a good time, probably.

Hair

Some days just seem to have themes and if I had to pick one for today, it would be hair. During the morning session of conference, Josie and Jon made good use of the electrical tape I had carelessly left laying about and fashioned mustaches and eyebrows for themselves.


They also took ball point pens and gave themselves underarm hair. I was unaware of this until later tonight when Josie was showering. Please note the picture. She explained that this was hair she had drawn all by herself. You know, to go with the mustaches/eyebrows. !Que Macho!

But as if underarm-hair machismo wasn't enough, here is Jos performing her regular post-bath climbing ritual. She has done this for years and I thought I should record it for posterity (and the wedding album) before she gets to big to hold her own body weight with just those guns of hers.

And for the final thought on today's theme of hair:

Just before getting in the shower, Josie had a pressing question:

Mom, do girl mountain goats have that cute little shaggy chin hair like the boy mountain goats?

She seemed sincerely disappointed to hear no.

I Love the Mountains, A Long Time Coming, A Pommel Horse Pummeling

A hodgepodge of updates:




This week we.....


Drove up to the mountains on Monday to look at the Autumn color. Sometimes our family outings are quite the horrid little affair. And sometimes we all get together to do something as a group and we have a wonderful time; everyone pulls together and the children are kind and patient with each other. Pie and I are kind and patient with each other (and the children) and I am completely fine with the way Pie drives. Sadly, this was not one of those wonderful outings. This was another HLA (horrid little affair). The children didn't want to go and were detained in the car against their will. We got started too late in the day. Pie had remembered the drive to Guanella Pass as "not very long". It was very long. Some children wanted to sing. Others were against singing. We were too early in the season to really see the best color, but too late in the day to get a good look at whatever there was to look at. We don't imagine we'll get another shot at it this year. The kids made it very clear that they are done with the mountains. And Pie and I officially wash our hands of the whole thing.

Actually on the Pass. Which we actually spent less than 10 minutes driving on. But oh! the memories we created as a family.

Some trees that we thought looked pretty. The photos aren't quite as pretty. But everything smelled great.

More trees.

We got out and frisked about. Josie climbing up a tree. Teen Angst behind her, lurking barefoot in the forest.

Pie and one of the "good" children. As you can tell from these pictures the sun had already set and since we had a 1 1/2 hour drive back home in the dark with hungry, thirsty children we didn't stay long. On the way home we stopped in Bailey for a delicious meal of hot dogs at this very Coney Island Hot Dog Stand pictured below. The children were unimpressed (it was quite dark) and the place, being much smaller than it looks in this picture, was very crowded with our crew making up the bulk of the customers at the time.

So to recap: We drove to the mountains. Josie and Sid hated it. Calvin cried because Sid was mean to him. Jon begged Josie to stop crying in the back seat. We begged Josie to cry into her blanket. Sid was surly. Tommy napped (contrary to what you might think, not such a good idea at 5:30 in the afternoon) and Pie and I were each offended with comments we made to each other about the driving. We spent $17.50 on hot dogs.

And then on Tuesday:

Josie and Jon went to gymnastics. After almost a year and a half, Miss Josie finally moved on to the next level in her illustrious gymnastic career. She had been ready to move up since May, and her coach was merely waiting for her to get a few classes in a row under her belt wherein she did not spontaneously burst into tears. August was good, and September was even better so finally Coach Trevor gave us the go-ahead and the much coveted, oversized ORANGE RIBBON.
It is a many-splendored thing, isn't it?



Unfortunately for Jos, her moment of jubilant rejoicing was overshadowed by the gruesome injury sustained by Jon on the pommel horse. Jon was working on the horse when suddenly his face fell onto the horse and his teeth fell through his lip and gushing blood ensued. Thankfully, all the teeth involved are "baby" teeth and with this not-so-gentle-nudging will soon be coming out. We talked over the possibility of putting a lip ring in his mouth--this being an opportune time--what with the hole in his mouth and all. Jon said NO to the lip ring but YES to a Wendy's Frosty, so we have great hopes that he will make a full recovery. No word yet on the status of his emotions regarding getting back up on that pommel horse. In this attractively posed picture below it is hard to see the hole in his lip--but trust me--it looked just like the result of a small hole punch and it bled profusely. The inside of his mouth was worse, and three distinct teeth-shaped holes can be seen. Sadly, the gym did not have a ribbon for this.