After I picked up Leina from school, I began the ritualistic pulling of information. What did she learn, who did she play with, what was her favorite part, etc. These questions are usually meet with shrugs, eye rolls or my all time favorite, “idunno”. Yes, only 4 years old and already the “idunno” starts. But in between the eye rolls I can usually dig out a few nuggets. Today, I learned that someone got bit, they had pretzels for snack, and, oh yeah, a boy threw up.

Immediately, I jump to orange alert. Who threw up? Where? Where you playing with him at all? Leina took it all in stride and assured me he only threw up on the carpet, his mom came to get him, and she wasn’t playing with him at all. I had backed down to yellow alert but I was still nervous. Of course, Leina then informed me that for snack she had oranges and guess who brought them? That’s right. The boy who was sick. It was his snack day. So now we’re back up to orange alert. There’s a wicked awful stomach bug floating around right now. I so don’t want to get it but I know the odds are pretty good. This does, however, inspire me to get my kids to the doctor for a flu shot.

Please, let this be a random act of puking. Let this one pass us by….

Yesterday the girls and I went to collect food for our local food pantry. Over the weekend, I had papered the neighborhood with fliers asking for extra food and sundry products. Just the basics, cans of soup, paper towel, soap – stuff you’d have on hand that our local food pantry is low on.

Leina was very curious about what we were doing. She couldn’t understand why people just didn’t go buy groceries at Safeway but she quickly caught on to the idea of sharing. We have extra so we share. This is a simple principle that she hears everytime we have a playgroup or go to a friend’s house. She was so excited to help me look for bags of food on front porches. At least at first.

It was actually sunny and clear yesterday as we headed down our first street. The girls ran ahead, checking each porch, eager to find our first donation. But then their excitment slowed as we passed house after house after house with no luck. We were half way through our designated route and still had not collected a single item. Nothing.

“Why?”, Leina asked me. Why were their no bags waiting for us? I fumbled for an answer. I didn’t want to tell her that people probably forgot, or were too busy, or just didn’t care. Four is a little young to have your faith in humanity rattled. So instead, I told her that maybe no one was sharing because they didn’t have any extra. Leina looked at me a moment, and then looked back at the street of house with their 3 car garages, manicured a lawns, and 3,ooo sq ft homes and didn’t quite buy it. “No mom,” she said, “I think they just don’t know how to share.”

Our hike covered about 100 houses and we picked up one donation. Yup. Just one bag of soup and paper towels. The other moms reported similar results. Some found not a single donation. Other loaded up a meager bag or two. Most of the donations we recovered were from members of the moms club itself. After a whole morning walking the streets, we had very little to show for our work. It actually really depressed me. I live in such a well off community. So many big homes and big cars. I just wish we had a few more helping hands. We sure could use them.

Don’t you love traditions? I love the feeling of continuity it brings when I bring out certain decorations or make a special dish for dinner. It just gives you a sense of time. Now that my girls are here, I’m always looking for traditions they can remember and love too. One of these is our annual pumkin run.

Right after Leina turned 2, we heard about a little local farm that had a nice pumpkin field, animals to pet and a little hay maze. It’s not the ginormous affair that happens on Sauvie Island. It’s much calmer and smaller but it suits us just fine. Even better, they have some cut outs that they put out every year and I make sure to snap a picture of the girls in front of them. This is our third trip so I finally have enough pictures for comparison and man, how time flies.

Here we are our first year, 2005, when Leina was only a 2 years old. Kulia was lugged around in the backpack and didn’t make it into the shot.

In 2006, Kulia joined in the fun. She was a wee thing but totally game. Can you believe how much Leina grew in just one year?!?!?

Today, we added the 2007 entry to our montage. Now it’s Kulia’s turn to amaze me with her growth spurt.

When we got home, they wanted to do some dress-up and I snapped these pictures. They have nothing to do with Halloween but since this has turned into a photo blog today, I thought I’d throw them in for free!

Yup. It’s Friday. Otherwise known as PJ day here in Casa de McLaughlin. In between Christmas projects, I like to take a break and do something quick and easy. Due to overwhelming demand, this usually means I’m making fuzzy pants. It’s a really easy pattern for pj’s I picked up a while ago. I took Leina to the fabric store and let her pick out whatever type of material she wanted and she headed straight for the fuzzy fleece. The kid’s got a good eye for sleep material, I’ll give her that. Because the pattern is so plain, after they are stitched together I get to embellish them however I want. The first pair were blue with fleece flowers. This time, I went green and stitched on some cute heart patches for the knees and bottom. She adores them which makes my day. Even better, they cost about .50 each which can’t be beat. Now I just need to find an adult sized pattern and make a pair for myself because everyone needs a pair of fuzzy pajama pants. Don’t you think?

My kids are crazy dancers. Most of the time, their version of “dance” is to run around in circles going crazy loco with a total and wanton disregard for the beat of the music. It is danciing in the loosest sense of the term. But yesterday, Leina requested some really fast music and right in the middle of their chaos running/dancing, Kulia started to channel Elvis. Maybe Elvis doing karate? At least that’s my take on what happened. Watch for yourself and decide. (Warning – this is hilarously cute. Be prepared for multiple viewings.)