Man, what a busy busy day. Quinn had his first presentation at school today. It's a basically a report that the kids write and up give in front of all the other kids and parents are allowed to attend. I plan on covering his report all on it's own soon, but I figure since today is Halloween that should be focus of the post for tonight.
It started with Ginger asking me to come home early because the kids wanted to carve a pumpkin. Oh, and by the way, could I stop and buy a pumpkin on the way home. No problem I thought. Turns out getting a pumpkin on Halloween in a year where drought has caused a shortage of pumpkins is more difficult that you would expect. Wegman's had run out of pumpkins the day before. So I ended up stopping by a garden center on the way home and picked through the remains of what we shall refer to as the picked over pumpkins. These were bottom of the barrel pumpkins. Almost all of them were completely missing stems, and they had lots of dotty blemishes on them. But beggars can't be choosers, so I bought two and headed home.
Once home the kids didn't want to carve them so much as they wanted to draw on them what they wanted carved. Then guess who got to do the actual carving. Yep, good times. The difference between the kids pumpkin drawings was rather drastic. Catherine's had this absolutely huge mouth, but no eyes except little dots. I ended up having to use a drill to do the dots. Later Catherine added "ears" that looked and were positioned a lot like the eyes would have been. Quinn's pumpkin was simple and minimalistic. Very small eyes, nose and mouth and that was it.
Once finished I thought they turned out okay. The one above is Quinn's. Catherine's is the first picture in the post. Once she added those "ears" that look like eyes, I thought her pumpkin looked really good. Which just goes to show pumpkins need a big mouth (I would make a good pumpkin evidently).
The plan was the kids would stay in tonight and hand out candy. But as seven o'clock was approaching and not a single trick or treater had shown up, we started the think the whole night was going to be a complete bust. So after talking it over with Ginger, we decided the kids could get into their costumes and go the houses around the cul de sac. I think the reason we weren't getting any traffic is that we're off the main road, so I was hoping that by having the kids out walking around people on the main road would see us and realize there was loot to be had in our area. After hitting three houses I was thinking my plan wasn't going to work, but on the fourth house a group at the street saw us and started down our street. So lickity split we headed back home and the kids distributed candy for the next hour and some, which put them going to bed about an hour later than normal, but I figure it's Halloween and it only happens once a year.
The kids were extremely excited about the fact that they had gotten some candy from the neighbors and I'm pretty sure Catherine would have eaten everything she got had we let her (the little girl does love her candy). But as excited as they were about getting candy, I think they liked giving it out even more. And I'll bet kids love coming to our house, Quinn is very liberal in handing out candy (everyone would get five or more pieces it seemed). And we had two types of candy. Candy with peanuts (or that was made in plants that produced other things with peanuts) and peanut free candy. Quinn was giving out the "tainted" peanut candy while Catherine was giving out the peanut free candy. Catherine would always ask if anyone had peanut allergies, and we had three people throughout the night that said they did which I found interesting. At the same time a lot of the parents thought asking was a really good thing given how many people these days seem to have some type of food allergy.
Once we got the kids in bed, right after every knock on the door Quinn would yell for me and start quizzing me about how many kids were at the door when I answered it and what were they dressed as. I'm fairly certain he was forcing himself to stay awake so he wouldn't miss out on anything. The traffic ended just before nine, but I was amazed at how late it had started. I thought it normally started earlier. Maybe it was off because Daylight Savings Time hadn't switched yet and it didn't get darker until later than previous years. Anyway, no one really showed up at our house until almost seven thirty, but then we had a lot of traffic for the next hour or so.
Today was the school field trip to the Cox Farms pumpkin patch. So of course it was freezing this morning. Once again there was a nice layer of frost over everything.
Quinn was still pretty bummed that he wasn't going to get to go to the pumpkin patch, but he did a pretty good job of not letting it upset him too much. So after I took Quinn to school I headed back home and we got Catherine ready to go and meet up with everyone at the farm. We didn't actually get there at opening time though and we ended up being about half an hour late (because Catherine did nothing but stall all morning refusing to eat her breakfast). Once we eventually got to the farm it was warming up a bit, but it still wasn't what I would call warm yet. I did decide to ditch my jacket in the car before we went in since I was convinced it was going to warm up some later (which turned out to be the right call). Catherine meanwhile was initially in several layers of clothes and multiple coats. She eventually ended up ditching the vest.
The farm was crowded. I mean really crowded. I mean I know it's been crowded the last couple of years when we've gone, but this was ridiculous. There must have been about 50 to 100 school buses out in the parking lot. So all the lines for the rides were incredibly long. We ended up not doing the hayride just because of the amount of time we would have been waiting in line. And it only got worse. By the time we left the hayride line was stretching about five times as long as it was when we originally decided not to do it.
All this meant we did very little slides since all the lines were so long. And I couldn't believe how rude most of the kids were. Poor Catherine is pretty laid back, so kids were continually butting in front of her. Ginger and I had a minor scare at one point because of that. Ginger had walked Catherine up to one of the lines and once Catherine went into the house before the slide Ginger came around down to the bottom to wait and watch Catherine come down with me. At this point I could see Catherine inside the house, but all the other kids were butting in front of her. After several more minutes of her not coming down and me not being able to see her, I went into the house myself (I was going to put the hammer down and force the kids to form a line and not cut in front of one another), so imagine my surprise when I go in and Catherine isn't there. And I look down to where Ginger is and Catherine isn't there either. I had a mild one minute of complete and utter panic before Catherine ran up and found me. Turns out so many kids had butted in front of her she had just left and went on another slide (without bothering to tell her parents of her plan). The weird thing was that analytically I knew there was no valid reason to panic, but even though I knew that it didn't prevent me from accessing the situation and starting to panic anyway.
And as rude as the kids were, some of the teachers were even worse. As I said, there were a ton of buses there, which meant there were a lot of classes there all being chaperoned by teachers. So some teachers with a couple of kids would get in line on a slide, then later all the other kids from the class would show up and the teachers would just let them in line in front of everyone behind them. I mean I know why they did it since they're just trying to keep their class together, it just seems rude to do that to everyone behind them (can you tell it happened to us?). I liked the place better a couple years ago when it wasn't as popular or crowded.
So much for fall. This morning the car was coated in frost as was the ground and everything in the front of the house. The car said it was a whopping 31 degrees out. It did warm up some later in the day, but it took a while. And what's the deal with not being able to find an ice scrapers. I must get one ice scraper every single year for Christmas, but then the next year rolls around and my ice scrapers are nowhere to be found. Somewhere out there I suspect there's a commune of ice scrapers on the lam. And they each probably take one sock with them when they leave. Think about it, it would explain a lot.
It's suppose to be cold again in the morning tomorrow, which is going to be a pain since Catherine's suppose to have a field trip to a pumpkin farm tomorrow. Sure would be nice if it was a little warmer tomorrow than it was today so we're not freezing out there, but from looking at the forecast it's not looking too promising. And this year Quinn won't be going since he's in the elementary program now and he's quite disappointed about it. We've tried to explain he's going to get to do things that Catherine doesn't (like the trip downtown the museum and ice skating later in the school year), but that doesn't seem to make any difference and he still thinks the fact that he's not going isn't fair.
Ginger and Quinn left early this morning to head up to the school to finish setting up for the fall fair. I almost got to sleep in for a bit, but the garage door opener broke and Nana kept trying to close the door while I was trying to sleep. Eventually I had to get up to go see what the problem was (the sensor light had fallen off in case anyone cares). Once I was up though, I didn't really feel like going back to bed.
The fair had been moved indoors since it was still raining Friday night and it didn't let up until about an hour or so before the fair started. By then it was too late to rearrange stuff (and the ground outside was still pretty wet anyway). Since Quinn is in the elementary program that meant he was responsible for running a couple of the games throughout the day. At one point he was in charge of pumpkin bowling and later he was responsible for the can game. Quinn is all Mr rules when running a game. You dare not bend the rules or else you will face his wrath. Okay, so he'll just berate you a bit and tell you how you're suppose to play. He did let his friend Franco play the can game for free once, and then let him have a prize. When asked later why he let Franco have a prize even though he didn't play he said it was because he was told "Everyone that plays the can game is a winner and gets a prize." Since there was nothing about paying in that statement, anyone playing the game would therefore qualify for a prize regardless of whether they paid or not. I tell you, you have to be very explicit when talking to him these days.
I barely saw Ginger throughout the fair except for a brief bit at lunch. She was always rushing off to take care of some emergency or situation it seemed. All this meant I got to hang out a lot with Catherine.
Catherine ended up playing a couple of the games over and over. The lollipop tree and the spin the wheel for the prize ended up being her favorites (I think because she got fairly decent prizes from those games versus just a sticker or something from some of the other games).
I managed to lock my keys in the car at one point. It was when we were preparing for the costume parade. I got Catherine's costume out of the trunk and evidently set the keys down (in the trunk) while I was helping Catherine get into her costume. And once I got Catherine's costume on I just closed the trunk (oops). Good thing I got her costume out so she could be in the parade before I did that. Luckily once the fair was over I borrowed Ginger's key's and took the kids home in her car and dropped them and Nana off (and they got to hang out with my cousin Will who had just arrived for a visit). I grabbed a set of spare keys and then headed back to the school where I spent the next couple of hours helping tear things down and put furniture back where it belonged.
Once we got home and eventually got dinner for the kids I got to see Will some. I introduced him to the Wii. Sadly I'm losing my touch and as I was playing with Will I managed to drop 200 skill points in bowling (I almost lost my PRO status). Will played around with the boxing for a bit and decided he was king of the ring and challenged me. The first game was pretty close, but I managed to win by knockout. Subsequent games weren't as close and looked more like Clubber Lang beating on Rocky Balboa in the first part of Rocky III. In fact, I won all the games we played by knockout, and none of them went more than one round. My favorite line was Will claiming it was the controller, but then refusing to switch controllers with me because "at least this way I can claim it was the controller." He got me back in the bowling by beating me there and causing me to drop the aforementioned 200 skill points over the course of several games.
So Quinn's school was participating in the Vienna parade tonight. They dressed up as Native Americans. Which had it been any of the 35 days prior to a couple days ago would have been fine, but we suddenly are in the middle of a minor tropical depression that's just dumping rain for the past couple of days (and is threatening to contine into the weekend, when the school's Fall Fair is suppose to happen). Ok, I'm slightly exaggerating the tropical depression a bit.
Since the school requested parental supervision for the younger kids during the parade we decided I would would go with Quinn in the parade and Ginger and Catherine would meet up with Ken, Karen and Amanda to watch the parade (since they live in Vienna, it seemed like a good idea). The parade was scheduled from 7 PM to 9 PM. And I think there were less than 100 groups and we were about ten groups away from the end. The teachers at the school thought it would be a good idea to get there early. So we all leave the school at around 5:30 PM and we drive over to Vienna. Ginger drops Quinn and myself off (it's before six at this point), and we wander around until we find the spot for our group. And we were the first ones there. And it was raining. And I didn't have my good camera because we had brought it, but the memory card was still in the computer from the night before where I was working on pictures for Ginger's fall fair and had taken ill and quit working before I returned the card to the camera. So all in all it was going great so far. Let's add that the group in front of us is all young teenage girls for a dance class that has a huge stereo system in a car blasting music so the girls can practice. And when they practice they keep pushing Quinn and myself off the road. Did I mention it was raining?
At 6:30 or thereabouts the rest of the kids in Quinn's class show up. I did have the small handheld Nikon with me, so I took some pictures with that, but it blows chunks when taking pictures in low light, and outside at night is just about the worst situation. About had an hour later a brass band starts congregating in their spot right behind us. Have I mentioned the rain? Around 6:45 or so the rain finally starts to taper off, so thank goodness for small favors. And about that time Ken shows up with my good camera and a compact flash card I can borrow. Excellent. Things are looking up.
Around 7:00 the the decide they need to get the kids to line up in formation otherwise they think when they actually start moving, they won't be able to get the kids ready fast enough.
Because our group so close to the end, we didn't start walking until almost eight o'clock. So the kids were lined up for almost an hour. And they start getting antsy about ten minutes after lining up. And finally right before we started walking, what happens? That's right, it starts raining again. So we walk the entire parade in rain. Now it wasn't a downpour, but it was a solid constant rain.
At this point I thinking let's just beat feet and get this over with. But the group in front of keeps stopping so they can perform their dance numbers. At some point one of the teachers puts Quinn's hood up. So now he's dressed in authentic Native American dress, that is provided Native Americans wore bright yellow colored rain slickers with hoodies.
About halfway through the parade we pass Ginger and Catherine on the sidelines. They run out to try and explain to me where they parked the car (which I vaguely get the location, but not really). They then run back, but Ken, Karen and Amanda have motored (they thought Ginger and Catherine were going to join us and they decided they didn't need to be out in the rain anymore and left). So Ginger and Catherine then have to walk the rest of the parade with us. Once we finally finish, it stops raining, as if on cue. Unbelievable. At this point Catherine also enters meltdown mode. With it now being almost an hour and a half past her bedtime, every little things is setting her off. Once she realizes she didn't get to say goodbye to Amanda it just gets worse. Luckily once we got in the car and heading home things got a bit better after we stop ed at McDonald's to get something for the kids (it calmed Catherine down and Quinn hadn't eaten dinner, so it worked out well).
