Adventure Playground Adventure

It's a beautiful fall day - perfect for a bike ride to Adventure Playground with Molly's buddy, Chaidan. Molly and Chaidan rode down in their matching trail-a-bikes, and Clara toughed it out in the trailer. Clara got the spotlight in the pictures today due simply to the fact that Zach followed Molly and I followed Clara (we respected the Playground's very reasonable close parental supervision rule). Clara got a huge kick out of the painting (find enough trash, nails, or broken wood and they give you either paint & paint brush or a hammer & nails to do whatever you'd like with). Molly got into the nailing this time.

As I write, Molly & Zach are presumably still there - Clara had to head home for her nap.

Zoo Day

We joined the masses out of school today (Veteran's Day) and had a lovely morning at the Zoo with friends. Here's Molly going in for a kiss on the head, Clara posing for a picture of the hat (by her request) lent to her by Karuna, and an elephant enjoying a tree branch.

Slide Ranch 2009

Last weekend on Halloween Day we took a day trip to Slide Ranch. Clara was thrilled at milking the goat (she still talks about it!) and Molly was really interested in the Bone Grove (the farm has a place where they leave their dead animals for scavengers, and they did a dia de los muertos thing with the kids that day).

Halloween

The Princess and the Bee had a lovely Halloween with the neighbors. Clara was thrilled to be part of the "big kid" crowd and gathered loads of candy *just* *like* *Molly* (and Nate and Oscar). Thanks to Nate's family for sharing the Bee costume. And thanks to Oscar's family for hosting.

We experimented with the "let them eat as much candy as they want for 3 days only) approach to the candy. It seemed to go okay, until about 1:30am when Molly puked all over her bed. We revised the rule to something like "you can eat candy during the day for the next few days, but we're not going to let you gorge on it all at once". Molly seems on board with it. Clara, less so.

The Princess Costume

Molly was a Princess for Halloween this year. This came about after a year's worth of ideas for her costume. Last year, with the excitement of the Fire Truck costume, Molly started spouting idea after idea of what she would be next. We decided to write down her ideas, rather than settle on one just then. And, occassionally over the course of the year she would add to the list. It went like this:

Tanker Truck
Cowboy
Chicken
Rooster
Food
Icecream
Superman
Jetplane
Scooter
Car
Scooterbike
Ballerina
Chocolate Crunch*
Traffic Light
Princess
Pony
Horse
Goat
Ladybug
Necklace
Sheep

In the last few months, Princess kept floating to the top as her favorite idea. And so, when October rolled around, we were not surprised when she picked Princess, with almost no hesitation. And I'm not sure how it came about, but she also settled on the idea that I would make her Princess costume. Yes, I would sew it.

Lucky for me, Nona and Nana came through town just as I was realizing how completely unprepared I was to actually make a princess costume. The Firetruck had been easy and fun (lots of opportunities for Molly to be involved). I just couldn't get my head around how this Princess costume would work.

But we figured it out. Molly drew up her plans for what she wanted, picked out the fabric and ribbons, and made her crown almost entirely by herself (all I did was cut the parts out per her plans and staple on some elastic).

I think it came out pretty good, if I may say so myself!

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* The "Chocolate Crunch" idea is straight out of the Thomas video: "Thomas and the Chocolate Crunch". To me, that sounded like a sugary cereal. I think it makes more sense in British, though.

Princess-making

Here I am working on the home made pattern... the princess had to take time out of her busy painting schedule to be fitted.

Halloween Parade

Zach had fun with the girls on the preschool Halloween Parade this year.