This year was the second best Halloween I have experienced in my grown up years. First in rank was two years ago when our whole family dressed as rednecks. 

I realized  this year that folks just aren't as creative or thoughtful about halloween costumes as they were when I was a child. It seems as though everyone runs to the store to buy a costume in its entirety and just puts it on, and they all sort of look alike, whereas when I was a kid I seem to remember a lot more ingenuity and creativity and home made-ness going into costume making. 

As a mother, I wanted to bring back our more creative past.  But then I realized that I just don't have the Martha Stewart capabilities I wish I had when it comes to creative costume making, or really with anything. So, my children had costumes in their entirety bought for them at the local good will. My children dressed up as a pumpkin and a lion, as you can see in the pictures.  You can also see my efforts to make mascara-whiskers on my older son.  I kind of like its rustic look. Plus, I was thrilled to discover that everyone we ran into was in awe of our little afro-lion son that evening. 

So, we decided to take them trick or treating. Last year we discovered that very few people were out trick or treating in our neighborhood.  This year I discovered where they all went:  To the rich people neighborhood. That's where we landed this year.  There were children SWARMING everywhere.  I guess from a philosophical standpoint, the bigger the house the better the candy. I was wondering if all the people who lived there were annoyed that all the children in Eugene were coming to their neighborhood assuming that they would get the cream of the crop there.  But I was wrong.  The people were amazing.  Every house was decorated and inviting and all the grown ups were dressed up and VERY happily tossing candy out to all sorts of greedy children. And there was GOOD candy.  And lots and lots of little people and people who weren't so little going from house to house.  It was a very lively and happy experience for me, it seemed to cultivate a wonderful sense of community somehow.  Plus, it was a beautiful night. The leaves were falling from the trees like magic and the temperature was just about perfect and there was a welcomed lack of rain for the duration of our hike.  And best of all we got to experience this with our dear grandma, which we don't get to see nearly as often as we would like to. 

Jedidiah took about three minutes to decide which candy to pick from each candy bin, while several other children lined up to wait for them. I think one time he refused to get candy at all.  

Candy hasn't been too much of a problem this year.  I hid it. I hid it because this morning, Jedidiah woke up and said "I NEED candy!!!!"  Over and over again.  Out of sight, out of mind.  It is working this year.

This morning My son picked these flowers for me with his Grandpa.  This afternoon the bottle was empty.  The flowers were on the ground.  The son came into the house saying "Mama, I just drank some water!" Ugh.

 If you don't know, my son could easily down a gallon of juice in one sitting, so for his health I don't even regularly have juice in the house.  If I do, I will leave the room for a moment and find a very interesting situation where he has gone into the refrigerator, gotten a glass, put it on the floor, open the juice and pour himself (and the floor) a glass. Or two.  Or three.

Today, this is the conversation he had with his papa, as recorded by Isaiah:

"Jedidiah seems to be learning how the world works. Tonight, as he was getting ready for bed he came up and asked me for some apple juice. I told him we don't have any. That usually ends the conversation. If you show him that there is none in the fridge and he is convinced that you aren't hiding any, he will typically just drop the subject. But tonight he thought about it for a minute and then looked up at me with a smile and said, "Then go to the store and buy some juice!" I asked, "Are you willing to pay for it yourself?" "Umm, yes." "Ok, Jedidiah, go get me some money to buy the juice." Jedidiah walked around the room for a minute, looking through the clutter on the floor and came back with a Microsoft Windows installation kit. He handed it to me and asked, "Is this money?" 

My blog.

I changed the "banner" of this blog.  In the process, I was looking at the word "ramblings" and trying to decide if it was spelled correctly.  Then I looked at it long enough to be concerned about weather or not it was a real word.  It was a real word.  I found the definition online, therefore it is a real word, and I wanted to share this amazing online definition of "rambling" with my readers, so that they can fully participate in the true nature of my blog:

1. straggling or sprawling haphazardly; unplanned a rambling old house

2. (of speech or writing) lacking a coherent plan; diffuse and disconnected

3. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Botany) (of a plant, esp a rose) profusely climbing and straggling

4. nomadic; wandering

We bought fifty ears of corn.....

My latest garage sale find.  Mama made the mistake of allowing her son to take the Mother Pig and the Goat into the local Winco (grocery store) where they are probably happily frolicking in the bulk bins of brown sugar.  They will surely be missed! 

One of the joys of moving is finding memorabilia.  We have moved five times in five years since being married on July 7 2007, and each time I begin to unpack all of our stuff in our new place, I find more and more boxes I didn't know exist that are labeled "Isaiah's Memorabilia." As much as I enjoy getting the house in order, it is even more fun to uncover Isaiah's memorabilia.  Recently, I found that he had a sketchbook that had portraits of several girls he used to like.

Isaiah and I are both sentimental people and we like to keep everything.  Somewhere along the lines I became willing to give a lot of it up and Isaiah has not. When we were first married, I found five backpacks that were beaten up in his closet when I was cleaning it.  I asked him "Why do you have five backpacks?"  He answered a very long story for each of them.  I allowed him to keep one.  He can let the stories live in his memories.

If you ever wanted to rob our house, you will probably be mostly disappointed. Unless you want a golf ball from a youth group event or piles of philosophy books.  (Oh no I probably just encouraged a bugler to come who has been looking for these items.)

But these things are priceless to us.  It is very hard to get rid of them and I am glad that we can combine our memories together from the past, and make one home.

In order to write this blog, I set my oldest one in front of the computer to watch "Garfield" (from the 80's.) I handed the little one a cordless phone to keep him occupied.  So if you got a strange call from me and on the other line you heard lots of shrieks and squeals than you know why.