Buzz and Jessie

Way back in September I shared the plans for Michael and Sophie's Halloween costumes.  Since the forecast for tomorrow's trick-or-treating is not camera-friendly, I costumed up my buddies on this 50 degree afternoon and snapped some photos.

















These were all taken at our new house.  In most of the photos our property ends where the kids are standing.  More on that when we come up for air.  The whole packing-moving-unpacking ordeal has been kicking our butts!



Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Fruit Cups

To keep them busy and out of the way, I'll be taking the kids to a Halloween party on our moving day next weekend.  Since spending any amount of time cooking in the next week is unlikely (I also have a desperately-needed hair appointment and parent-teacher conferences in the middle of all of this), I opted to bring this make-way-ahead option.

I spent Friday evening following the directions at Crab and Fish and am pleased with the final product. These are a combination of Dole pears, peaches, and mandarin oranges in 100% juice.  I'm not sure if this always is the case, but the expiration date on the peaches in all three packages was notably easier to remove with rubbing alcohol than the dates on the other fruits.  Although this whole project turned out to be much more time-consuming and expensive than pretty much any other dish-to-pass, doodling while catching up on shows in my jammies was probably a better choice for my sanity than baking something in the midst of moving.

I linked up here:

Homecoming

Last night we went to my school's Homecoming parade.  With another busy weekend of packing and Mike's birthday ahead of us, we skipped the game to get the kids (and us) to bed at the usual time. Michael and Sophie had a blast, and I think they finally believe me that I'm a teacher who teaches really big kids.

Speaking of preparing for the move, since this process has been a long one (the sellers are using their 30 days of occupancy), and the kids don't really have a concept of what two more weeks means, we made a countdown chain a couple of nights ago.  It was a great between dinner and jammies activity.

It really speeds up the pajama and tooth-brushing routine to have tearing off a link as a reward!

When I went in to work yesterday, one of the classes had decorated a hallway with chains like this.  Their chains and ours are all for "home coming," I suppose.