Halloween before Rome

I need to post Rome pictures, but they are all on Ray's computer. I do, however, have some halloween pictures. Note to self: do not go on a vacation out of the country and come back the day before Halloween. Not only had we not gotten a pumpkin, I did not have a costume for Ariel. So yesterday we scrounged out the rest of Ariel's cat costume and today, after two grocery stores were completely devoid of pumpkins, we found one at Potomac Vegetable Farms' stand on 7. We also picked up some of the best cider I have ever had. yum! So here are some pictures!!!


OK. These pictures are backwards, oops. I don't feel like changing them. This is their loot. They made buckets for candy with grandma and Aunt Mary while we were in Rome. We hit our entire neighborhood and they filled the buckets to the brim.


Starting out down the street. They ran right up to the doors, even miss shy Ariel. I would stand on the sidewalk, they would knock and yell TRICK OR TREAT! It was very cute.


Getting some candy from our neighbours.


Ariel the kitty cat. We got the cat ears at Michaels and the dress was the last one at Target and was thankfully in her size.


Ariel the kitty, Rachael was Cinderella, and Trevor was a skeleton pirate from Pirates of the Carribean.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Cox Farms Adventure

Ray and Trevor are off to a wedding in FL this weekend, leaving just me and a couple of cutie little girlies. Rachael has this undying bond with her brother and has been missing him terribly. Consequently, I am trying to keep our time busy and fun. Friday after school I took them to Chik Fil A for dinner and they played in the play area for over an hour. Then we spent most of today at Cox Farms in Centerville. Now, Cox Farms is kind of a tradition with us. We have been going every year we have been back. I'm actually not sure how much of the farm is an actual FARM, as we only ever visit the fall festival they have. And what a weird and trippy festival it is! There are TONS of slides, all done in different themes and of varying sizes. Ariel is really too small for the biggest ones, so we stick to the medium sized ones. They are all fast, lined with hay bales and require a trek up a hill to get to them. Some have dinosaur themes with big plaster dinos soaring around it, one is a dragon in a volcano- complete with sound effects. One is a giant and the entrance way is covered with plastic bugs and you hear a giant's voice saying "Fee Fie Fo fum, Cox Farms is a lot of fun!" (We missed the giant slide this year! I am so bummed!) It's all so corny.

They also have the infamous hayride. This is the weirdest hayride you will ever go on. It's complete with an Alien landing, many plaster animals lurking in the woods and corn fields. There is even wooden cut outs of such icons as spongebob, charlie brown and pikachu. It really is weird. Then, the wagon gets stuck in some mud. And we are asked to yell for help. We do... and this farmer comes out wearing this huge fake bobble looking head and pulls us out of the mud. See.. it's weird. I'll probably say that a lot this post. But the best part is the end of the ride. When we go into this huge dark barn. The wagon stops and, suddenly, the lights start flashing ala night club style, this peppy maniacal music starts playing and you look around and the barn is garish, covered in gnomes, trees with eyes, skeletons and other really crazy stuff. Think Jack Black when he is on shrooms in that movie about Tenacious D (what was that movie called?) It's like that. The girls were finally not scared of the barn this year! Go them.

This year they intro'd their cornundrum maze, and we had lots of fun exploring that- full of optical illusions and a vortex that made us dizzy and I had to practically shove the girls through because halfway through they decided they didn't like it and we couldn't turn around. I wish the fall festival wasn't so darn expensive to get in (15/person) because I would go every day! It's gotten more popular every year, though, and now we are lucky if we don't have to wait in line to go down the slides, etc. We used to be able to go on weekdays and it was not packed. Now it's packed whatever day we go- school groups during the week, everyone else on the weekend.

I posted most of these pics to facebook. They are iphone pics because Ray took the pocket cam to FL. I'll throw in a couple kitty pictures, too, because they're cute.


Sitting in front of the 1007lb pumpkin.


Ariel being, I dunno, a grown up? heh.


Rachael being a kernel on a multicoloured ear of corn.


There was, no joke, two guys dressed up as corn playing chess in the maze, behind a fence, no less. What's your job? I dress up as corn and play chess all day in a corn maze.


There was a gorilla carrying around a guy in a cage. He said the gorilla was his friend.


Some of the better done wooden cut outs. Charlie Brown et al. Some of them are really bad, but still recognizable. Some I don't know who they are. There are tons of them everywhere.


At one point we go through this witches hut and there are witches making brew everywhere (fake people, not real people). These are skeleton witches around a misty cauldron. We also go through a grave yard with funny gravestones.


The highlight of the hayride for the kids. They spend all year talking about Cox Farms. We really talk about it at least once a month. And the alien on the hayride always comes up. Ariel saw him and exclaimed excitedly "Look mommy! It's the alien dressed up as a man!"


We all get to pick out little pumpkins at the end of the trip. So the girls picked out their pumpkins and posed next to the kind of creepy sunflower. We had a blast today!


Stripey sleeping because he is darn cute. I usually sit at the top of the stairs while the kids fall asleep (or Ray does). Greystripe curled up on my lap and zonked out. This is what he usually does when I sit down. He's the lap happiest cat I have ever had. I love it.


He and Chaos really do like each other. Chaos wants to play soooo badly with Greystripe, but he's too nervous. Chaos is so huge and everytime they try to play, Stripey gets scared and runs away. They played for a while last night. Chaos even rolled over on his back and Stripey pounced on him, then arched his teeny back and bounded away. It was ridiculously cute.

What a weekend!

We had quite a busy weekend. Saturday morning we had the kids' friends, Webb and Zea, over. This meant that not only did I have a couple kids dropped off at my house, but the neighbourhood kids eventually ended up over here, too. So at one point we had 3-4 boys wrecking havoc and 3 little girls trying to be girlie. Then Rachael came in at one point while I was on the phone and, in all her dramatics, gasps out "MOMMY! There was this huge wasp and he was just hiding in the grass and when I ran by he jumped up and BIT ME!" She wasn't crying, she showed me a spot on her leg where there was just, well, nothing. But she insisted that this humoungous wasp was just laying in wait for some little girl to pass by so he could lunge from his hiding spot and bite her. Needless to say, I sent her back out to play. This is the girl who also got drenched and sopped and cried because she couldn't wear a knitted bag on her head and once cried for an entire walk because I wouldn't let her take her tootbrush. She is prone to, well, being melodramatic. heh.

Saturday evening we went bowling with Ryan and kids and friends. Trevor beat out Ray and I narrowly beat the kids. We are not expert bowlers. The kids were adorable, though. Ever spelled everyone's names on the computer and it was "Trever" "Ariol" and "Rathl". And when it was "Ariol's" turn, everyone would help her drag the little thing you roll the bowling ball on out and then help her carry her ball to it. She would push it and the bowling ball would creep down the lane and hit a few pins and then she would get claps and cheers and big hugs. It was very cute.

But I don't have pictures of any of that stuff. I do have a few pictures of our adventures today. We went biking and geocaching. Geocaching is an obsession of a couple friends of ours, Bill and Christianne. Ray and I like geocaching, too, but don't really do it unless we are with said friends and their really nice GPS (though the new iphone makes a fine GPS as well). So we loaded up the bikes and head out to their house, where we enjoyed a wonderful brunch and a description of sugar shacking and maple syrup and all things wonderful like that. Then Ariel overflowed their toilet. Seriously. It was rather mortifying, requiring lots of towels and bleach and a bright orange plunger to fix. But THEN... we loaded up the bikes and head out to the W&OD trail where we found a total of SIX (!!!) caches! We also got in a nice 8 mile bike ride and a stop for ice cream. The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot and not too cold. The boys did great on their bikes and I think a wonderful time was had by all. Here's some pictures: ETA- Rachael and her little friend Evelyn are not in any of the pictures. Why? They spent their day being pulled in another Chariot by Bill. As they reclined in luxury, they leafed through this princess book and day dreamed about going to the ball with the prince. They did not get out to geocache (they did however, suffer themselves to join us commonfolk for ice cream). My Rachael has gotten very girlie recently. heehee..


Finding one of the caches up in a tree. Hopefully everyone knows what geocaching is? Basically, people hide these caches (sometimes something as small as a film canister, some as big as a tackle box) and leave coordinates to find them on a website. You load the coordinates into your GPS and then hunt down the caches. Some have little treasures you can take (and leave a replacement of your own), some require multiple steps to complete like a scavenger hunt or puzzle. Some are super hard to find, some are really easy. It's pretty addictive and pretty frustrating when you DON'T find the cache.


One of the caches was a plastic squirrel! It was cute. Ariel helped find it and as beyond thrilled. She wanted to keep the squirrel. I kept thinking of the little animals in the woods. heh. (my mom should get that).


Ariel was beat by the end of the ride. She had it tough, riding in the back of the chariot.


Trevor and Jonathon at the end of 8 miles on bikes. I dunno... Jonathon looks a little beat!

New Kitten!

After our bad luck with our puppy, we were all feeling a little down and out. We visited our local shelter and lo and behold, they had kittens! But not just kittens.. my favourite kind- one little male nondescript tabby cat. We adopted him. I haven't had a kitten since Chaos was a baby.. and that was almost 10 years ago. We named our new little addition Greystripe, after Firestar's best friend and deputy in the Warriors series (yes, I'll admit it, I am devouring this YA series for my own enjoyment because I have a huge love of felines). We kept him in our bedroom for all of two days while the other two cats got used to him. Shadow wasn't thrilled but Chaos, who seems to be top cat in the house, didn't really mind. In fact, he won't admit it, but I have caught him flicking his tail for Greystripe to chase, so I know he likes the little guy. Shadow has come around and will even play a bit with Stripey now and then. The only time they seem to have little tolerance for him is at night after the human kids are in bed. Then Chaos and Shadow want peace and quiet and to lounge in the room with us. Greystripe is always bounding around like a maniac and trying to play with them and they usually hiss at him. I told Ray it's like when the kids stay up too late and he and I just want some peace and quiet! Here's some pictures. He was smaller when we got him.. we've had him for about 3 weeks now and is about 12 weeks old or so. He's a sweetie and sleeps on my head at night and has a love of people food. I have never seen a cat go so crazy as when Ray and I break out the ice cream, hot chocolate or pumpkin cake. He also loves pea soup, milk, rice and chicken. He's spoiled rotten.


Greystripe never stops moving, except when I sit down. Then he climbs in my lap and falls asleep.


He also has many many little kitty toys (all the cats do, but he is the one who plays with them)




Ironically, Greystripe is actually kind of spotted, not striped. He was stripier a month ago. heh


Chaos is the big furry Maine Coon. Shadow is a black cat with the huge owl eyes. The hermit crabs live in the aquarium they are sitting near.