Lots of fun for The Man in the Yellow Hat, Damon, a small Tiger, Uncle Peter (aka Calvin), and the rest of us. I know I have been behind in uploading flickr and whatnot, so I put up the pictures for now. I will title, tag, and whatnot everything tomorrow. (click the picture to go to flickr.)

I have been non-stop since yesterday. I finished painting the porch (pictures later) and then started playing catch up with the stuff that fell to the wayside while I painted. Today I had a doctor’s appointment and then off to mom’s group.

I am trying to straighten the house before our Halloween visitors come by. Luke and his uncle Peter will be making the neighborhood Trick or Treat rounds with Damon and Fuller around 6:30 this evening. Esther, Peter’s wife Janet, Ben and I will be relaxing at home, passing out the candy.

Last year I ended up passing out candy Fuller collected because we ran out of the stuff we bought. So I was pretty nervous buying candy this year. Will it be enough? Will I end up with too much? I figure if I have some left over I can just put it away to give as treats for our Sunday School class.

I have an important question to ask, but before that I think it is important to point out some links as to why I think it is ok to “do” Halloween.

Christians usually fall into one of four camps:
1) they don’t do anything in October
2) they have a party at church, usually a celebration of Reformation Day or a Fall party
3) they have a Fall party at church one day and then go trick or treating on the 31st
4) they just go trick or treating.

Our family goes with option four for the fun of getting multiple chances to dress up and get candy. It ends up being completely secular to me. I grew up as a pastor’s kid who trick or treated, but wasn’t allowed to spend money on costumes. I like how we now make our costumes from thrifting or sewing for ourselves.

For me Halloween is candy and costumes. I don’t do the ghosts, witches, or goblins when I decorate. I prefer a generic fall theme complete with candles.

I didn’t plan on getting into this, but Rebecca started it. And I wanted to pass her post along because I know a lot of people who read here don’t read her (but they should!). The first article she links to is a great read and it was this quote that reasonated with me:

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: on October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

I remember my parents reminding us that exact concept when we would go out on Halloween.

Wondergirl posted a great letter her pastor wrote and is also worth a read.

And now for my important question: When your family passes out candy do you put it in the trick or treaters bags or do you let them take it from you?

My sister noticed I put four pictures up on Flickr and then they disappeared. The story behind that is I am behind on posting pictures (we have been busy and have pictures to prove it!) and when I started to upload them on Saturday, it interfered with the internet broadcast of the Auburn game. So I canceled the upload and didn’t do anything until today.

I have more pictures to upload, and I need to title and tag the ones I did today.

Unfortunately, until I finish the front porch, you may just have to wait.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning. I just woke up and couldn’t get my mind turned off again to sleep another 30, 10, or even 5 minutes. Instead I gave myself a little talking to.

“Alicia, there is no reason you can’t get out on the front porch and finish it by Halloween. No reason. Get busy.”

And so, when Damon left for work this morning, I was busy taping down plastic tarps on the second half of the porch. I finished priming by noon. And then around 1:30 I started putting the light yellow color on. I just finished the first coat and I will do the second coat tomorrow and then add the dark yellow on the accent trim.

It should go much faster tomorrow because I won’t have to do the prep of taping down the plastic (the mental stumbling block that kept me from proceeding- I HATE prep work). I also have figured out how to get the really high parts without using the extension ladder, which is now I my list because I almost fell from it twice. (Look for future pictures of the bruise I expect to appear on my forearm in two days.) I did manage to dump a tray of primer onto the plastic during one of the falls. And both Fuller and Maple have accented their bodies with touches of yellow paint and white primer. My hands are a testament to my hard work today.

I think we are on track for having this project done by Wednesday. So exciting!

I haven’t been working on painting the front porch like I need to. I had a few set backs like rain and attitude. But the rain has subsided, the attitude has adjusted and hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get my grove on for painting. I still have the goal of having it all pretty by Halloween.

I also am going to pick up some LED Christmas lights since our front porch light is wonky. We put up regular Christmas lights last year, but LED uses 1/10th the energy and will last even longer.

And if we want to eventually switch out all our Christmas lights to LED, it needs to start with one strand. I can’t wait to show you pictures!

Busy day today.

I have My Family Dinners this morning. While I am spending about 3 hours to myself preparing next month’s meals, Damon will be working on Fuller’s costume for the Fall Costume Party this afternoon. And Fuller will be doing his best to build the best block tower ever.

Then there is the fun of the party. Seeing other kids’ costumes, playing games, hanging out with other adults and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. So much fun!

What does your Saturday hold for you?

As I said in the previous entry, I would jinx myself to boast that Fuller had two accident free days in a row.

We have an Ikea train set ready to give Fuller when he has had five accident free days in a row. And today we have to reset the counter because we I had two big messes to clean up.

But even with the messes, I still have cause for excitement. He no longer insists on sitting on the potty chair in the living room, and is attempting to empty the potty chair on his own. Yesterday he even attempted wiping himself!

Again, I find myself stuck in the vortex of parenting dreams and wishes. I’m so excited my little boy is growing up. I just miss days of cuddling while I fed him his bottle and zipped him up in his footie pajamas.

I’m probably jinxing it by even telling you this, but Fuller has had two accident free days in a row. He has been doing everything on the potty now, still in the potty chair, but not in his pants.

I am really excited about this development because it means my son won’t be the first kid to go to college who isn’t potty trained.

Fuller is really into the reward part of potty training. When we first started out, he never understood the candy for pee concept. But what did speak to him was getting to play on the computer. In Fuller’s language he got to play Teletubbies, which was actually a shortcut to the PBS kids website. These days his go-to site is the one for Super Why. He loves to watch the clips from the show and sing along. The other day he was really belting out the Super Why song (W-H-Y spells why) and… well just check this out.

Our church’s Fall Costume Festival is this Saturday. I was working on Fuller’s costume last evening and handed it over to Damon to work his magic. He assures me it will be ready for Saturday.

He is going as The Man in the Yellow Hat. Which I like to think is a step up from his Curious George costume from last year.

I am trying to decide if I should dress up for the party as well. I was a frog last year, but don’t like to repeat myself. Looking at all the halloween costumes out there, it gets a bit overwhelming. I think I could handle being Raggedy Ann (I have the hair for it), since it isn’t really short (no Wonder Woman for me!) and looks pretty warm. And I like being a cuddly cute character instead of a sexy and or scary one.

What costume do you think your little one (or you!) will wear this year?

It has been an “off” week for me. I blame my lack of scheduling at the beginning of the week. I couldn’t remember what day it was today and when I finally decided it was Friday I was disappointed to learn it was actually Thursday.

My out of kilter body/ mind disconnect reached comedic proportions today when Fuller and I returned from a trip to the thrift store. I was going to unlock the back door and somehow my keys slipped from my fingers.

Within a nanosecond my keys fell in the space between the back door and our concrete block step. This space is about a quarter of an inch wide. No way could my hand fit in there to grab the keys. To make the ordeal even more fun, Fuller had to go potty.

(I got us into the house, but I’m not going to publicly share how.)

I tried a few different tools, but the what finally worked was using some wire to slide into the ring and carefully pull upward through the crack.

If my keys were my teenage son, they would be so grounded.