Anyway, Wednesday was interesting. Princess had her first "Harvest Festival" feast and costume parade at school. It was the expected milling about of 5 year old kids. I got there early enough to (barely) find a parking spot and help her change into her costume.
It's her new holiday dress with a pair of wings. Later that night we added purple sparkle makeup, lip gloss, and her loot bag was a watering can. They had a rousing game of musical chairs in which Princess proved herself to be entirely too genteel for such an aggressive game, offering her seat to the poor sad little kid next to her. Then we all trooped out to the large blacktop in the back of the school so the kids could travel around the perimeter to such tunes as The One-eyed, One-horned, Flying, Purple People Eater and an instrumental version of Ghost Rider in the Sky. They made about 5 circuits before everyone, including the kids, got tired of the whole thing. Princess frolicked around the whole time, enjoying her wings and twirly skirt. I got bored fairly quickly but shrugged and figured it looked like the kids were having a good time. On our way out to the van, Princess asked "so, what was the point of that?" I laughed and said I had no idea, but she sure looked beautiful in her costume. Oh, well.
I'm bad and didn't take a pic of Tag with his gumball machine outfit, which, unfortunately fell apart while trick or treating. We leaked balloons all over the neighborhood until the friend I was walking with offered to let him use an old costume of her son's. He finished the rest of the evening as a bespectacled pirate which I think he actually liked a bit better since he could run in that outfit.
I'll get a pic of Pebbles as a dinosaur later today. Her costume was purchased and actually could be used as pajamas now.
The trick or treating itself was an adventure. I took the stroller for Lil' Miss which turned out to be a heaven send. She went up to doors for the first 5 or so houses until she found out that riding in the stroller was more fun than trying to keep up with the other kids. We went walking with our neighbor and her two kids and they had such a hoot. The evening was absolutely perfect for haunting the streets, with a thick salty fog that left a lot of trees dripping just from ambient moisture, and all of the old, bent, twisty trees and shedding eucalyptus. We just stuck around our part of the base instead of going to the new housing, aka the "rich" housing (which is a misnomer since most of the people in the "rich" housing have the same pay grade as we do, they just got lucky). There were only about 4-5 houses on each street with their porch lights on, but we also managed to be either the first or second people to come by the entire evening, which at first didn't seem weird until the clock rolled around to 8:30 and we were STILL either the first or second people at each door. By then people were two fisting the giving of treats. I weighed Princess' bag of loot after we got the kids home and in bed. Just her bag came to 3.5 pounds! It seemed silly to me that all of those people went only to the new houses when I'm sure we came back with a better score in a shorter amount of time than they did. Oh, well, trick's on them. I heard of one house that just left their candy out in a box. The next morning they woke up to find that the raccoons had figured out how to unwrap candy and had made a terrible mess. The wife took the box inside and didn't touch the mess at all, which confused the man telling the story, until her husband came home and was made to pick it up all by himself. We can only guess whose idea the outside box was.
Anyway, Pebbles was able to fit her petite little self into a size 18m costume, which led to a mass measuring of the kids this morning. Pebbles is 2 feet, 8.5 inches, Tag is 3 foot 7.5 inches, and Princess has put on another inch in the last couple of months for a grand total of 4 feet 2 inches tall. She's already grown out of her whole last crop of clothes, you know, the ones I got right before school started. ::sigh:: I'm sure this is the generational lament of the ages. Or, one of them, at least. :)
Anyway, Man's on CQ recovery today. Someone needed to swap and Man figured it'd be better to do someone a favor now and then be able to call it in after little Freida puts in an appearance. We all know what a treasure sleep becomes in those first couple of months. So he called me up at 7:45 yesterday morning to ask if we had anything going on yesterday night, then that was the last I heard of it until he called back at 5:30pm or so to let me know that he started CQ that very morning and wouldn't be home until today. Just goes to show, you never know when your soldier will be coming home in the evening, or if.
So today we're measuring kids, watching Toy Story 2, and getting ready to finish some grocery shopping so he can sleep. Speaking of Toy Story, Ratatouille comes out on DVD on Tuesday!! We havn't seen it yet but we have a standing policy of buying Pixar movies.
Also, don't forget to set your clocks back an hour before bed tonight. Daylight Saving Time ends at 2am tomorrow morning and we all get to sleep an extra hour.
Unless you have kids.
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