Mandalorian Pizza and a Creepy Clown

Tis the season! For skeletons and ghouls, that is. October always brings excitement at this age, and people really seemed to go all out this year in their yard decor. Our neighbor across the street loves this holiday, and the neighborhood kids love to help her put everything up and move it around every few days. This setup was all about COVID-sanitation. On nice afternoons, the kids and I have biked around to check out the nearby displays. We saw a skeleton COVID-race, badminton game, lawn maintenance crew, and rock band, just to name a few.

We even drove around one night, as some folks put up lights like it's Christmas! We came across this one, timed to music that we could tune into on the radio (a few song's worth at least), just in someone's yard. What dedication! (And an impressive electric bill, I imagine!)

It finally dropped to some pleasant temperatures and felt more like fall! We headed to a local pumpkin patch one evening for some photo ops and enjoyed the ambiance. Oh, and we also purchased a couple of pumpkins...

The kids wanted pictures with the goose gourds and octo-squash, too. Leave no gourd behind!

Kids love decorating their pumpkins! This year they each painted one and carved one. Owen was faithful to his theme. His costume was the Mandalorian, so he wanted to make a Baby Yoda pumpkin. With some cardboard ears and a paper bag body, I think it turned out pretty cute!

Hadley couldn't decide, so we scanned online for inspiration, and she saw a rainbow, melted-crayon pumpkin that called to her artistic side. Our crayons didn't melt down as far as the example, so we had a lot of white pumpkin space left. I suggested a clown, because of the rainbow wig, and H took that and ran with it. The scary face was all her own creation. P.S. Melting crayons is very messy and splatters everywhere!

I'm not really a fan of scooping out pumpkin guts, so I always make the kids do their own. It's messier this way, but it's only fair to spread the love. Tip: the ice cream scoop is perfect for this task. My hands were clean at the end! I also tried roasting some seeds this year. Verdict: they tasted like popcorn.

Here's the full family of pumpkins. Kids drew their designs, but I still do the actual carving part. Hadley finally decided on a BOO!, Owen went traditional, and I paid homage to the face mask, THE must-have accessory for 2020. We actually carved on Halloween. I wish we had done it a few days earlier, so that we could have enjoyed our creations a little longer before trash day. The carved pumpkins were cute, but Creepy Clown and Baby Yoda will hang around a few more days.

This Halloween was definitely different than usual. I wasn't going to do any candy handling or trick-or-treating, but changed my mind the day of. After all, we've had a sad, strange year, and why not try to have a little normalcy and fun where we can, especially for the kids. I didn't have a table, but we put down a little blanket with candy at the end of the driveway, and the kids supervised the passersby. We had less t-o-t-ers than usual, but more than expected.

We went very low-key on costumes this year. It was originally Mandalorian and Baby Yoda, but our neighbor was getting rid of this pizza costume, and Owen liked the combo. I asked them if they wanted to go trick-or-treat around the block, but Hadley told me, "We're getting to be too old for trick-or-treating, Mom." What? You're 8! But it was fine. Plan A was that I'd get them each a bag of candy, and we'd have a movie night. So, we did that. But we did give out some candy too. All in all, not too shabby!

Back to School, Again

Well, we made it! A full 9 weeks of district virtual schooling accomplished at home. It went pretty well; the kids learned to follow a schedule, manage the assortment of apps needed, and submit assignments via pictures emailed or uploaded to their Google drive. That's not to say that they didn't forget the occasional zoom, neglect to scroll down for the full instructions, or have to chase down a missing assignment here or there. They had some nice breaks throughout the day, but it was tiring to keep up with two different schedules and to follow up on what was submitted every day. I think the typing lessons paid off though.

They did get to do their GT work together on Fridays, which they enjoyed, but it was definitely their busiest day of the week because of long zoom meetings, lots of online assignments, and hands-on experiments at home. For example, they're studying geological forces, like earthquakes, so they were asked to create 12-inch tall structures out of items from home, make jello for the ground, see if the buildings could withstand some shaking, and submit a video of their test. Good thing these kids have a parent at home with time to supervise all of this!

The kids were actually content to stay home for the next grading period, too, but I felt that they would really benefit from being in person with their teachers (less chance of missing assignments), seeing and talking to other kids (socialization is important!), and just being back in their school routine (we've all been home together for 7 months). So, we stocked up on face masks and the kids returned to in-person school this week! So far, so good!

Safari Time

It was Granna's birthday, so we decided to go see her before the kids returned to in-person school. To make a day of it, we also went to Aggieland Safari, which had lots of different kinds of animals to see. It was still a little warm, but we walked in the shade and saw lemurs, kangaroo, a hippo, tayra, fennec foxes, and snakes, among other things. The kids' favorite thing may have been feeding the birds.

 
We were all pretty excited to feed the giraffes. Apparently, they like romaine lettuce. And, isn't this a sweet video of brother helping out little sis? 😍

One of our favorites was the tortoise enclosure. Although we didn't have any food for them, they seemed to enjoy a nice back rub and had a very chill vibe.

Then it was time for the drive-thru tour. We had some pellets to toss out the window, and the kids loved trying to get food to each animal we saw. Most of the animals here were the hooved kind, but they had a good variety of deer, cows, antelope, etc.

The truck in front of us was letting the animals stick their head in their vehicle to get food and petting this bison on the head. So weird to see after all of our Yellowstone conditioning to give bison space. He was so full when we finally drove by that he was just licking his lips and not very interested in us. I'm pretty sure his bison friend left a slobber streak on our car though. Yuck!

Same for this ostrich. I hurriedly rolled up my window when it became obvious that he expected to get his fill from inside the car. Yikes! These birds are so big! I guess I'm still scarred from that time when the bear bit/clawed our bumper in Bear World. But we came out unscathed (other than slobber) today and had a good visit with the grandparents afterwards.

Mercer Botanic Gardens

With the "cooler" fall air (mid-80s) finally arriving, we joined Uncky Dan and family at Mercer Botanic Gardens on the north side of the city. It was a good opportunity to get out of the house, outside, and into some new, pretty scenery.

Plus, we hadn't seen our cousins in a while!

 

It wasn't too crowded, but the shade was definitely still a friend. We walked around for a while, taking in the assortment of plant life and hardscapes.

I let Hadley have my camera for a while and she took a ton of plant pics. Here's a few to get the idea. She enjoyed playing photographer.

After we got our fill of plants and meandering paths, a walk under the road to the other side of the park brought us to the Arboretum for bigger plants and paths.

About a mile down on the other end of the Arboretum, we found a pretty sweet playground. The little cousins did a good job keeping up with the big cousins.

Then we had a buggy walk back to the cars through a swamp and a bog, aka Mosquito Heaven. Come on fall!

Afterwards, we sought out a local brewery, as we often do, for some cold patio drinks and a late lunch. Yum!