Did I miss Halloween??? My favorite holiday??!!

Wow. It was a busy fall. That is SO not like me, not to even mention Halloween or our costumes.

So here we go backtracking.

Halloween. Felix and Robee had their costumes planned out long ago. Felix wanted to be Cruella deVille from "101 Dalmatians" and Robee wanted to be a mummy.

Both would have to be made since I am starting to hate the store bought ones. I did it when they were little but now we enjoy piecing costumes together from either the thrift store or actually sewing them. Which is what I did for all three of us.

I was a cave woman. It was a choice between a cave woman and .......... I forget it's been so long. But I like how mine turned out.

JoAnn fabric was having a close out sale because they were moving their store so they were liquidating everything. Their fur was so cheap!

Felix was insistent that her coat have: some kind of fur on it (and being the dog-skinning woman she was portraying, it was logical) and we were lucky to find enough to make the front and back; sleeves were done in spotted (like Dalmatian puppies); AND had to be lined in red. Crikey. Did this girl think I was Leah Arkush or something? (my most FAV seamstress)

Robee's was easy to buy; sheets from the thrift store, soaked in black tea for two days, torn into strips and sewn onto thrift store sweats so it looked like he was wrapped.

Mine was just your basic fur toga with wrist and ankle bands and bone accessories. However, the piece de resistance of my costume was the cro-magnon uni brow. Honestly. Everyone loved it.

And their costumes turned out exactly as planned. (the person with the kids is Felix's friend, Jayce)

Luckily, I have every makeup available for every sort of look.






This was taken after three Halloween parties and the kids were just a tad tired of dressing up.

Halloween will always be my favorite 'holiday.'

Thanksgiving 2010

So another Thanksgiving in the Beautiful State of Washington has come and gone. It is our 6th here in the State of Washington but 5th in our home. I will say that it does not seem like five years at all. I always have to count back to when I graduated from UNLV and then when we moved to Long Beach WA and then up here. Unbelievable. But I wouldn't change it for the world.

Our Thanksgiving this year had all our kids together except for Em and her family who stayed in Utah after being gone 9 days in Puerto Rico; I cannot blame them one bit. Besides, last time they came, we had a snow storm that shut down the Northwest for about a week; we were snow-bound for days. I do believe it was their fault. :)

We also welcomed our favorite transplants, Bob and Kathi (Angie's in-laws) as well.

Everyone brought food which is so wonderful since I'm not one who really likes to cook. Cleaning up, fine. Cooking? Not so much. Green beans and carrots (Ivy adored the carrots) from Kathi and Bob; a million rolls from Jen & Greg (and there were almost no leftovers of those!); collard greens from Ben & Kelsey (yeah for some green in the meal!); yummy appetizers from Angie and Steve and then of course the famous what-diverse-and-out-of-this-world-recipe-can-we-use Turkey from Ben's constant research for the perfect turkey. Luckily, since I have the world's smallest oven, they cooked it at Jen's house, let it nap and then brought it over. This freed up the scrawny oven for the rolls. It was incredible. I think the best ever really.

For my contribution, I made pies. I have no background for this at all; my mom was not one to be a from-scratch kind of cook. She cooked but it was basics. She abhorred all home canning, bottling, bread making, pie making from the day she got married. She said it's all they did while growing up with nine siblings and she was not about to spend her days doing it again - she cleaned the house instead.

So this is a new venture for me. I made pumpkin for Robee, Oreo cheesecake for the boys (Steve, Greg), banana creme for Ben, chocolate creme for the others and apple for me.

I told everyone rather than being nice, to please be honest in their review of the pies. Nothing is worse than someone who makes something, thinking that this is their "speciality" when in reality, it tastes like poo but no one wants to hurt their feelings and so never says "You know, your chocolate creme pie tastes like poo. You should not make it anymore." This is far nicer than letting the person make the poo pie for 10 years not ever knowing it's gross, right?

Food ready to be eaten.



Lining up at the trough, Ben and then next is Steve with Thomas close at his heels.

Raising for a toast for good health and being thankful. (missing is Jen and me and Thomas)




Looks a little like Hannibal the Cannibal, eh?

Miles and miles and miles of rolls. Mmmmmmm!!!





Evan's first Thanksgiving.

Kathi, Bob, Evan, Angie's head.

We had a snowstorm on Monday night, part of Tuesday and a little more on Thanksgiving day. This is what Robee and Owen put together after dinner. His name is Harold.

Me with my sweetie babies, Ivy and Evan.






Steve and Bob discussing politics...sports.....weather ... I'm not really sure. It's hard to tell with men.





Owen eating our favorite potato chips, Ruffles.

Here is my apple pie. Granted I did not make my own crust BUT I did do the lattice work thingy on the top AS IF it were homemade crust. And before you scoff, I did make the crust for the pumpkin pie but I was too exhausted after five pies to make the apple pie crust. BTW, I thought the apple was yummy. So yummy I think I ate four pieces.

Me peeling potatoes. I put Robee in charge of taking pictures.


Side note: during our Puerto Rico trip, I put my lovely Nikon D3000 in my backpack to take pictures of Old San Juan. Two things happened: we were in a downpour most of the time and my water bottle lid sprung a leak. Both of these combined put water in the bottom of my pack where my camera was sitting. This killed my camera. So I'm back to using my orange mini camera which takes good pics but I really miss my zoom lenses for GREAT pics. Oh well.

I have to explain this pic. This is an apron of my mom's. She made it around 1968-70 in her Homemaking class in church. It's incredibly politically incorrect. Please note the "black face" native cooking a buxom, blonde woman. I still have a hard time believing that it was okay to paint something like this to wear in public. Very interesting.

The kitchen after dinner.

The kitchen after clean up. Ahhhh!!

Before ...............

After.

As much as I hate to admit it, there are a few things where I take after my mom; cleaning is one of those. I mentioned that cooking is not my forte'.

So I've sort of made a deal with my big kids; they do most of the cooking and I'll do the clean up. So far, no one has complained! I'm just lucky my big kids like to do the cooking!! Thanks to all who came and ate and laughed and did the weigh-in and brought food.

Thanks to Jen and Greg for a wonderful game of CatchPhrase (me: something yellow you spread on toast. Robee: Mustard? Jen: something that Greg is. Greg: Ass?).

And so we say goodbye to another Thanksgiving. And hopefully goodbye to the freaking five pounds I gained whilst enjoying my apple pie. Ugh.

Latest TKD pics of the family

Some recent pics of the TaeKwonDo family. They scanned a bit blurry but not bad.

Only in Puerto Rico ...........

............ and probably anywhere else that doesn't care how you drive (sometimes includes crazy Utah drivers).

During our stay, we traveled in a 500 person van when we wanted to go exploring. Please remember that we now have 19 people in our immediate family (10 adults, 6 kids, 3 babies). If we all travel together, we need MAJOR transportation.

Okay, maybe it was only 15 person van but it seemed HUGE. Luckily we had a great local-type driver that got us wherever in one piece. Jeffe (aka: Greg) was amazing in the craziest traffic I've seen since Thailand. He even learned how to honk at his displeasure of other drivers (it's a courtesy thing; they all do it).

However, this is how ALL the babies traveled whilst screaming thru said traffic:

This is Evan being held by his dad, Steve. Please note the look of complete and utter satisfaction on Evan's face. He knows that this position is completely wrong and is enjoying his moment in the sun with absolute bliss.

I didn't get pics of Lyla or Ivy in the same position but trust me, they enjoyed it too. So much in fact, that the mothers (as well as myself) wondered how much pain they would be in when real life slapped them upside the head (figuratively of course) once they returned home to binding, uncomfortable, backwards-facing (really??) car seats.

I, of course, wouldn't be able to experience their final discomfort on arrival because I'm an old woman with baby-making way behind me. All I can do is cluck my tongue, offer a few words of sympathy and then waddle (yeah, waddle: did you see me on the beach?) off to my car that had two giant children in regular seat belts and go to sleep even before the car left the airport.

A few more pictures. What a great time.

The little kids, Thomas and me.

Historic fort in Old San Juan - 500 years old.

Leaning out of the tower in the rainforest.

Jennifer and Ivy, making their way up.

My exceptionally handsome boy Robee.

The boys checking out the scope. (l to r: Maxito, Owen, Ryan)

Looks like well planned baby making.

(l to r: Jen/Ivy-17 mo, Ang/Evan-10 mo, Em/Lyla-6 mo)

Ben, in a moment of vacation happiness, twisted his ankle trying to catch a football at the beach.

Rainforest waterfall.

Maxito, Eric, Greg under the freezing cold waterfall.

Miss Biss (Alysa) in the hotel.

Em at breakfast.

Ben showing his breakfast that was $22 as opposed to Kelsey's that was $14. That's when we decided to go buy a few food items to cut down some of the cost.

Owen being Owen. My friend.

Steve and Evan. I love his shirt "I still live with my parents"

My kids have never seen a gecko before. I rememer them from Thailand.

Felix on our balcony.

Some of what I do have.

The view from our balcony

There were iguanas running around everywhere



Even in the pool. They just hopped in and would swim from end to end.

El Yunqua Rainforest Waterfall. (i'm now thinking i spelled that wrong)

My favorite pic of all. This was a beautiful ocean.