Fall-idays

In case anyone out there thinks that our holidays are always sprinkle-coated bundles of fun...

Labor Day

S was working this year, but his Aunt and Uncle were having a big Labor Day bash at their house for the whole family.  I thought it would be a fun excuse to take the kiddos out, especially Boy.  (This would be the first time many of his relatives would meet him, after all.)

It kind of started off on the wrong foot.  Naturally, my non-napping Bean decided to take a nap that day.  I had to wake her up from a sound sleep to go and she was grumpy.  Then I went to pack up our leftover coleslaw from the previous night's dinner to use as our potluck only to realize there was hardly any left so I showed up empty handed.  Then my 3 hamburger buns intended for myself, Bean, and Aunt B ended up not being enough when MIL/FIL decided to do turkey burgers too.

We got there late, of course.  The house was awesome, though.  They literally have everything--including a two story play house which Bean wasted no time playing in.  Until she fell down the stairs and hit her head.  I didn't even know anything was wrong until I noticed her walking around dazed with a ginormous (!) goose egg on her head.  She hadn't cried until her mommy freaked out asking what happened.  Thank goodness there were willing hands to take care of Boy while I took care of Bean.  It was about this point I really wished S hadn't had to work.

Bean was back to her normal self, wanting to run around and play.  She loved the trampoline!  (I actually can't tell if these pictures were taken before her accident or after, can you?)  Well, I needed to get her and Boy home so I told her it was time to go and she started throwing a tantrum.  I counted her "1,2,3..." and when she still refused, I carried her kicking and screaming inside to have a timeout.  Awesome.

So after her timeout, she's still whining and crying and at this point Boy is starting to cry.  My now dazed in-laws helped us out to the car and I must have looked equally dazed because my MIL told me that "this too shall pass."  I went home utterly discouraged and promising I would never go out again with 2 kids on my own.  Which was quickly broken because I have short-term memory loss.

Halloween

I started off feeling rather optimistic about Halloween this year.  We bought our pumpkins in plenty of time.  I finished Bean's costume a week early.  I even stocked up on candy at the perfect time: not so early that S and I ate the whole bag and not so late that all the store had left were Dots and Tootsie Rolls.

Bean decided that she would be a Lion and Boy would be a Tiger.  After some discussion this led to a costume idea for S and me.  (Fittingly this is the only picture I have of mine and S's costumes...mine's a bear.  You can read S's.  Do you get it?  Hahahaha...)

Bean was unbelievably difficult the day of Halloween.  (This picture pretty much sums it all up.)  Like, we probably should have just cancelled the whole thing, but my inner guilty conscience kept thinking "you can't just cancel Halloween!"  So we gave it a go. 

The idea was that S would take Bean out again this year, with Boy in tow.  Should have been perfect, but Bean was/is now terrified of hills.  Our neighborhood has an awful lot of hills, including our driveway which, as it turns out, sparked a giant tantrum which had Bean back inside after only being out "trick-or-treating" for 30 seconds.  After Bean calmed down (and after I explained Bean's new phobia to S) they went out and tried it again but I guess every time they had to go up a driveway, Bean would freak out, leaving S to do most of the trick-or-treating himself, all with Boy in his arms.  Sounds like it was a party.

On top of that, we went out and realized that the 2 pumpkins we carved were half gone.  I automatically blamed it on wreckless teenagers and I was furious!  Hey, I was a teenager once, but I never messed with people's pumpkins.  That is just so mean.  I went out the next day to further investigate and I realized that they had teeth marks on them.  After a huge ah-hah moment I called S and told him I thought it was the deer instead.  It was later confirmed when we tossed the leftovers in our garden and noticed a deer eating it later.  So I guess if there is a silver lining in the whole thing, it's that we helped feed the deer.  Again.