Charlie's November Solo

Charlie played his second solo yesterday. It was at the Mesa Arts Center in their smallest venue. It was a very intimate - the audience was also on the floor, and Charlie had a clear view of his dad who was filming, as you can see how he notices and even smiles at him. He wasn't as prepared as I had hoped, but he did well considering how much else was going on this week, and he has improved since last time. His accompanist did a great job (ha ha, that was me!) Anyhow, I'm very ready to move on off that piece, and I'm sure he is too.

Halloween...

Florence and I began Halloween week by going to Mother Nature's farm. I had taken all the kids last year, but this year with all of them in school, it was just the two of us. It was really nice to explore the farm at her pace. If she wanted to linger, I didn't have to worry about the older ones running ahead. If she was ready to go, we could leave...of course she didn't want to leave. We rode the hayride twice. We visited some baby piglets that were only 2 weeks old. She pet the smaller goats - the smaller ones and the big cow scared her too much. She made her way quickly through the maze - it was quite impressive. In fact, she was out and walking away while I was only halfway through. And the haystacks were low enough that you could see easily over them; however, climbing over them would've been a challenge, and possibly humiliating. Fortunately, she came back to lead me the rest of the way out. She also got to decorate a pumpkin with stickers. As a bonus, Tony hadn't left for work when we got home, so he carried our farm smelling selves to a restaurant with outdoor seating.






We did our traditional trek over in Aunt Ginny's neighborhood. We gathered with all the cousins and walked about a block and a half. This year was huge for Florence and Patricia - they really got the whole begging for candy aspect of it this year. Patricia did mention a few times that she was scared, but Florence kept reassuring her: "It's ok, Tricia, we have flashlights". It was cute.






For our family, we went primarily with a Mario Party theme for the kids. Alexander dressed as Mario, Charlie as Luigi, and Florence as Princess Peach. Even though this was the first year Party City offered a Mario and Luigi official costume, I did ours from "scratch". Granted, I had overalls w/ yellow buttons leftover from a few years ago when Charlie was Mario - I handed these down to Alex. I sewed some yellow buttons on Charlie's overalls. We ordered newsboy caps in appropriate colors and glued felt on in the shape of their initials, and I got tshirts from Joanns for about 3 bucks. I painted on their mustaches with black face paint. I was pretty pleased with myself for being so thrifty. For Florence, I got a discontinued generic princess costume for about $6, and glued, again with felt, her "jewel" on the front. The creative part came when I realized that her blue jewel had a yellow outline. I hadn't bought yellow felt, so I used fabric paint to transform my white felt into what I needed. I also used the paint to write "Princess Peach" on her crown from Patricia's birthday party so everyone would know who she was. We even carved our pumpkin to look like Mario. Lucy went as Hannah Montana - we couldn't get her to go along with the theme. I couldn't complain too much as Party City had these costumes on sale for $10. The fun part for her costume was realizing Halloween weekend that even though the package said size 8-10, the shirt was actually a 4-6x. That was why we couldn't get her arms through the sleeve...so I cut the ends, and attached some self-stick velcro to hold them together after she had it on. We doctored up her High School Musical headset and off she went as a Pop Star. Since Halloween was on a Sunday, we were able to get double duty out of our costumes as a local restaurant was offering free meals to kids in costume - w/ four kids, that's quite a steal. We anticipated a low-key evening since some people chose to not decorate, etc; however, the kids pumpkins were all full by the end of their walk....even as I stole regularly out of them.




Tony stole the show as an 80s hair band rocker. He'd been working on this costume for weeks, though we were cutting holes in his shirt even in Ginny's driveway. Everyone loved it. The most fun was making the zebra leggings family friendly with discreetly tied sashes to hide his...well, you know...



I dressed up as Aunt Eileen. I went to her house and Uncle Jim help me steal some scrubs. She tried to con me into taking her shift at the hospital since she had to work that night. I had a dream (nightmare) the night before that I had attempted just that, so I had to decline.

All told, we had a wonderful evening. It wound up being a late night for a school night, but I don't think the kids regretted it a bit.