Today was perfect – clear, cold, sunny and Friday. We has a totally free day so I rounded up the kids and headed for the zoo. The place was empty and the animals active. In sum, we had a great day.

Leina’s reaction to entering the zoo? Excitement.

Kulia’s reaction to entering the zoo? Energy!

After tromping about, we stopped for snacks. Kulia took her eating very seriously.

Leina was all smiles.

Their favorite part, however, were some animal structures they could climb on. They must have spent 30 minutes jumping and scaling these statutes. Kulia liked the little cubs…

Leina, however, prefered to curl up in the sun with the mountain lion.

This was one fine fall day. Hope your friday was just as wonderful.

Yesindeedie. Too much candy will make you sick. How do I know this? Not because my children sing about it incessantly let. Nor because they ate too much candy last night. Oh no, I have a much more personal and first hand knowledge about how awful you feel after glutting yourself on mini-candy bars.

Halloween started out great. Kev can home at a decent hour, the kids were dressed and ready to hit the road, the weather was cold but clear. Perfect. Around 6:30pm, Kevin and the girls headed out the door leaving me home to dole out the candy.

Now, I had a plan. My brilliant idea was to dump all the candy I really love into the candy bowl first. This would ensure that it would be totally given away and not available to lie around the house and mock me and my lack of self discipline. The plan was brilliant in design but lacked in execution. I was blissfully unaware of my folly as I heaped our candy bowl with mounds of scrumptious chocolately goodness.

You see, I had forgotten about the time delay. I don’t know about your house, be we seem to get hit in waves. We’ll have a stream of 20 kids marching up and down our porch and then….. a dead space of ten minutes until the next mob descends. It was that dead space that did me in.

The candy had just hit the bowl when the first fist knocked on my door. Smiling, I opened it up and grabbed candy to drop into eager bags. One, five, fifteen kids tromped to my door. And then, as quickly as they came, they were gone. I closed the door and realized I was alone with a giant mound of my favorite candy and I had nothing to do. I couldn’t really go start the dishes or fold the laundry. No watching TV or reading to keep my hands busy. Instead I paced up and down our front room, peering out our window, willing a kid (any kid) to head up my front walk. After 2 minutes, I caved. I scarfed a teeny tiny Almond Joy – perfect in its balance of crunchy almond, bitter dark chocolate, and dry sweet coconut. I had just crumpled the wrapper when my hand snaked out to grab a lollipop – sour apple flavor drizzled in caramel. When the next kid wave hit, the trick or treaters found me with a bowl of candy, a pock full of wrappers, and a lollipop in my mouth. It quickly went down hill. By the time my candy bowl needed a refill, I didn’t feel too great. Luckily, the next candy in line was the stuff I don’t care for so it was easy for me to abstain but the damage was done. The candy was getting crazy in my tummy and it was not fun.

I will say, however, that there was a silver lining. As planned, I handed out all the stuff I like and what we have left doesn’t tempt me in the least. However, I forgot to take into account the fact that my children would be tromping home with little tubs full of yumminess. In fact, as I type this, my tummy is again not so hot and I am surrounded by empty candy wrappers. Did you know that Milky Ways now come in dark chocolate? Or that Tootsie rolls have a vanilla flavor? That SweetTarts are, in fact, both sweet and tart?

Oh help me. Please. Come to my house and take all these bite sized temptations away from me!

Alright everyone. Gather ’round the computer. My girls have a very important service announcement for you…..

For those of you who do not speak toddler gibberish, the lyrics of their most impressive song are: Too much candy will make you sick. Too much candy will make you so sick. Candy, candy, tastes yummy but. Candy, candy gets crazy in your tummy. Repeat this, continually, at full volume, for three days straight and you will be in my shoes.

(If this video doesn’t work, let me know. OK?)

This weekend we was all about Halloween. We cleaned off the big pumpkin and Kevin set to cutting it open. Leina wanted to get her hands on the knife so bad she could taste it. I was afraid she was going to lose her fingers but we managed to keep every digit attached. Once the pumpkin was open though, she went right to work scooping it. She loved digging out the guts and pulling out the seeds. Kulia was a bit more timid and was happy enough just watching Leina. By the time the pumpkin was empty, the kids were covered in pumpkin mess so it was off for a bath. Leina came down first and helped me draw the face. I think their favorite part of the night was turning out all the lights and setting our jack-o-lantern aglow. Pretty, eh?



The next night, we opened up our gingerbread Halloween house kit. This was a mild disaster. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought this. Take a moment here and picture a 2 yr old and a 4 yr old and give them access to copious amounts of frosting, jelly beans, candy corn, and mini jaw breakers. Are you seeing an image of domestic bliss? Not really, right? More like a wild sugar fest with streaks of frosting all over and the sound of candy rolling off the table and all over the kitchen floor. The girls (and Artie) were in candy heaven though and I survived it but I’m thinking it’ll be a few more years before I try another one of these kits. I went downstairs today and most of the candy corn has been removed from the door. I can only assume it rests in the bellies of my little ones. Leina already has her eye on a Christmas gingerbread house. Maybe I’ll let Kevin have the “joy” of decorating that one. I think I’ve had my fill. But we are ready for the big night. I’ve hidden our candy stash so we’ll actually have something to give away. The girls’ costumes are ready and it actually might not rain on Wed night. Can you even believe it?!? Trick or treat, here we come!

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.