Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween! This year, Nick went as Link from the Legend of Zelda game and Ashlee went as Princess Aurora (also known as Sleeping Beauty.)



Look closely at the one where Ashlee is with some of her classmates (top right). You might have to click on it to enlarge it a bit. It seems that the "princess" has decided to give the poor girl in orange some bunny ears for the photo. I never thought a kindergartener could be that obnoxious! I had to put this one up because it makes me laugh! Ashlee looks like a football player posing for a team photo!


Trick or treating was a lot of fun. We went over to Janie and Andrea's neighborhood and Ashlee was pleasantly surprised to her see her old friend Josie from preschool whom she hasn't seen for at least a year, probably longer. All the kids had fun running from house to house and getting LOTS of candy.



There is a guy in our neighborhood who goes all out for Halloween. He decorates his entire property including parking a skeleton-driven hearse on the street. The creepiest part was the weird creature riding behind the skeleton. It seriously freaked me out! It was pretty hard to see in the dark so by the time you get up close enough to the window to see what it really is, you're face to face with it and that's when you wet your pants with fright! Ashlee was scared so I had to pretend that I was perfectly OK with it, even though I wanted to scream like a banshee! What is a banshee, anyway?? Hope you all had a great Halloween!

The Big Day!

Ashlee came home from school at the beginning of October and announced that she had invited half of her Kindergarten class to her birthday party. I panicked a little bit, but then calmly reminded her that we were only having a family party at home this year because she had a big princess party with lots (ten, to be exact) of her friends last year. After seeing the disappointment on her face, I told her we should make a compromise--we would invite two friends and go to Chuck E. Cheese's. Thankfully, she was very happy with this arrangment.

On the day of her birthday, we ate out at Red Robin and the waiters sang her a happy birthday song and gave her free ice-cream. Good for both Ashlee and me! :)


At home, she opened more presents and finally got to blow the candles out on her My Little Pony cake.

I usually go all out making the cake, which is extremely time consuming. I wised-up this year by putting a Pony on the cake instead of trying to frost one with 3,000 different rainbow colors.


Queen for the day at Chuck E. Cheese and opening the number one present on her list -- Pinkie Pie's Balloon House! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!


Enjoying the day with Erin and Samantha. Here Nick is showing only a very small fraction of the tens of thousands of tickets he won doing a variety of games. Good job Nick!
Happy Birthday Ash!

The Tooth Fairy Cometh!

This tiny little tooth that had been loose for weeks finally made its debut the day before Ashlee's 6th birthday. She was pretty darned excited. So excited that early the next morning she woke me up to tell me that the Tooth Fairy had come in the night and left a whole dollar under her pillow! I said,"Wow! That's SO exciting! And today is your birthday, too!" She paused to think about that for a second and said,"I get to open presents today AND the Tooth Fairly left me a dollar!"

The Tables Have Turned!

The other day, Ashlee and I went to Michael's to track down some pipe cleaners for Nick's Halloween party craft. While waiting in line to check out, there was a display with little tiny plastic characters that I think were to use to decorate scrapbook pages. Ashlee pointed to one and said,'Aww, Mom. Look! There's a little Frankie dog." I said, "Oh, that looks just like Frankie. How cute." Then she points to another one and says in all seriousness,"And look! There's you and Daddy!" I expected to see a girl and a boy or something like that. Instead, I found that she was pointing to one that had 2 monkeys on it! I protested,"But those are monkeys, Ashlee!" She started to giggle and said,"I know, you and Daddy are monkeys!" I said,"I can't believe you said that, you monkey!!" Then we both started laughing really hard. We laughed all through check out and all the way to the car.
She was using my own joke against me. Sometimes, when we're watching Animal Planet and a chimpanzee comes on the screen, I say, "Ashlee (or Nick), how did you get on TV?" I never thought that such a sweet, innocent-looking girl would actually use the same joke on me! What have I done?