Halloween Sneak Peek

Tonight was the neighborhood Halloween carnival and costume contest. I won...I mean Parker won first place in her age group. Several moms did quite a double-take when they saw her, expecting cute sweet Parker. She also has a stuffed animal also wrapped in fabric that is part of the costume. She also wanted to take her list with her in case people asked what she was, but I talked her out of it.

What I'm doing instead of blogging...

I'm making a Halloween costume.
Here are the specs I've been given:

Halloween planning started early this year (not that I'm any more ahead of the game than normal). Long gone are the days of cute lady bugs or bumble bees and store bought costumes.  This year, Parker is determined to combine elements of all the gross and scary things she can think of into one costume.  I tried to get her to draw a sketch (so she'd quit talking about it), but she did a list instead.
She'd like to be "a mixture of a vampire zombie ghost devel frankin stine".  She'd like "flowing sleves, worn out cloth, faded white dress" and "blood on teeth".  Also "fangs, but not the plastic colored ones", "poofy hair, black circles around my eyes, wings, and bolts on my neck".  Also spiders and fake eyeballs in her hair.
She's also requested a smoke machine for when she makes her entrance. Entrance into what I'm not sure.
Should be easy enough, right?  In addition to the costume, which needs to be finished by saturday night, I have to help make an "all about me" poster for school on Monday, and at some point we need to carve the pumpkin. 

Here's a pretty picture of her I took this summer but never posted. 

The back story on the shoes

It's been a busy first 3 weeks of school.  It didn't help matters that we started out the week recovering from jet lag and food poisoning (me) and about 40 lbs of laundry after returning from vacation.
While we were in California, we were wandering around La Jolla and Parker saw a pair of shoes she's been wanting forever.  I've been putting her off, but since school was starting, I figured ok. 

You don't wear socks that show with these kind of shoes, and since Parker's feet are about as delicate as a rose petal, there was a frantic search (by Bob - I was ill and couch-ridden) on the sunday before school started for just the exact right pair of teeny tiny socks for Parker to wear with her new shoes. NOT wearing her new cool shoes on the first day of school was NOT an option.   He came home empty handed, but called around and finally found a store that carried them.  So for the first day of school, we lubed up her feet with a non-chafing stick that runners use, and I went to fetch the socks while she was at school.

 "Canoe" socks.  Two flavors. 

All is now well with her shoes and socks....but those tiny socks are about the size of a walnut when they're all balled up in the laundry and it's just a matter of time before they all disappear and the quest will start over.  I'm hoping by that time the weather will be cooler and she will have moved on to boots.

better pics

Here are some better pictures.  More commentary tomorrow.  

First day, quick pic

Better safe....

She bumped her head twice yesterday.  Today she's not taking any chances.

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Here's my last ditch effort to keep what's left of my garden from frying.  Nothing is really producing except for the jalapenos, but last year the tomato plants had a lot of new growth and fruit in the fall, so maybe they're worth saving.  Even when it's blazing hot out there, the umbrella makes it sort of nice.  If I could find some that I could hook a hose up to and have them serve as a sprinkler too, they might be a permanent fixture.

Looks like things are going to be cooling down!!

Getting Ready for School

We've passed the half way point in the summer and the weeks are going to start sliding by more quickly now....although the days are still pretty long.  Especially when it's 104F day after day.  I don't think I've posted a close up of Parker's missing front tooth, so here it is.  The big tooth is already growing in.  Also notice the feather.  I hope it'll pass dress code when school starts.

We did some back to school shopping the other day....she did a little fashion show for me.  This is going to be her signature look I think.  The bottoms are 'jeggings'....jeans+leggings.  And the plaid shirt is her new favorite.  She's found a loophole in the Can't Wear The Same Shirt Every Day rule by calling it a vest. 

More jeggings.  Notice the shoes.  I found white Converse on clearance for $4, and I let her paint them.

Here's a blast from the past.  2 years ago, before kindergarten, we did a similar fashion show.  I was trying to show her all the different ways she could wear all the cute clothes I had gotten her.  My plan was to print them out for a little 'look book' for her so she could pick out her outfits from that.  But the white 'backdrop' I tried to construct was too small and I was defeated and lost interest, so I never printed them or posted more than one or two.  I'm pretty sure this was the only time most of these clothes every saw the light of day. 

 

I tried to include a little slide show of all the rejected kindergarten fashions underneath this....hopefully it works. 

When Parker was a toddler, older ladies would come up to me in the grocery store and admire Parker and tell me to "enjoy it, they grow up so fast".  I never really found that to be true until lately, but I think I'm going to start going up to moms with 2 year old dressed in cute floral dresses and hair bows and let them know that their days of choosing their daughter's clothing are seriously limited. 

Completed apron

Here's Parker's completed apron.  I tried to post this a long time ago, but my phone to blog situation wasn't working. 

Fwd: Look

(message from Parker)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Parker Post
Date: Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:47 AM
Subject: Look
To: Mom <cgpost@gmail.com>, Dad <bpost.ut@gmail.com>

Help help I'm stuck in a comicbook

Summer - full immersion

We are starting week 4 of summer...8 more to go I think. So far Parker has done 10 days of swimming lessons and a week of Vacation Bible School. Shortly she'll start some kiddy tennis lessons and a week of gymnastics morning 'camp'. In between all that we seem to be keeping pretty busy with trips to the pool and bike rides (she rides, I run along side her. Our record is 4 miles) and playdates with friends. It's hard to keep up with blog posts because the second I sit down to post, I have someone hanging over my shoulder reading what I type or wanting to look at the pictures. Now that we're getting more into our summer routine, maybe I'll be able to eek out a bit more time to post.  (I know I always say that....)

 In other news, Parker lost her first top tooth last week.  This makes 3 total she's lost.  I"m ready for the other top one to come out too, but it might be a while.

Ok, I have to move aside now so Parker can look at pictures of herself at swim lessons.  Told ya.

Birthday party pics

A couple weeks ago we had a birthday party for Parker.  This was our first 'at home' party for her....in the past, we've always invited her whole class and had it somewhere like a bounce house.  Luckily this year she was into the idea of just a few close friends and doing things at home.  Since she has a summer birthday, it makes it easy to just invite a few girls and not everyone without the word getting out that someone was excluded.

When the girls arrived I had some pizza dough rolled out, and they all gathered around and make their own pizza. 

 While we were waiting for the pizza to cook, I did a quicky face painting job on them (they could choose a heart or a star) and then they ran around a bit and we did silly pictures. 

 After pizza and watermelon and fizzy lemonaide, they colored their aprons (sort of backwards....it would have made more sense to color aprons first and then wear them to make pizzas, but time didn't permit.  I drew everyone's name and a cupcake on their apron with a washable marker and then they used permanent fabric markers to trace over the parts of my design they wanted to keep, and then colored them in.  The fabric markers and the aprons were folded up at the end and put in their goody bag. 

 

Parker hasn't finished hers yet....I drew a cake on hers instead of a cupcake.

 After that we played charades which they enjoyed.  Funny note: Parker has always called charades "smithereens" because she can never remember the right name.  

Then it was cake time.  Parker requested a homemade cake like I did for Bob's birthday.  It's chocolate devil's food (mix) with dark chocolate ganache (scratch) icing.  Next time I might do more kid friendly flavors, but everyone managed to eat theirs.  Everything goes down easily with Blue Bell ice cream (Vanilla bean, per Parker's specs).  

After that she opened her gifts and the parents started to arrive to pick everyone up.  I think everyone had a good time, and Parker was thrilled with it. It wasn't really a ton of work, and Bob was a lot of help which made it pretty non-stressful.   I'd surely do it again if we kept the guest list this small. 

Cutting ice cream cake

Like the bracelets?  It's really 15 ponytail holders she bought with her own money.

Giant radish...

... for sale.

First harvest

Happy Fake Birthday

At Parker's school everyone brings cupcakes or cookies for the class on their birthday.  I'm pretty sure there are district rules about serving everyone sweets, but don't worry about that part.  Since Parker has a summer birthday, we just pick a day at the end of the year and announce that it will be our cupcake day.  Last year I bought cupcakes and that was fine, but this year I decided to make them myself.  Believe it or not, I've never made cupcakes (not counting as a kid).  Luckily, Parker wanted a certain mix from the store that had colored sprinkles in it ("confetti") so I didn't have to do them from scratch.  I hear that the box and from scratch taste about the same anyway.

Parker wanted to help.  She poured the batter with me hovering over her and dictating her every more.  "That's enough in that one!  Little more in here.  That's enough!"

 

Next was icing.  They looked really pretty like this - light blue frosting with some sugar sprinkled on for a little sparkle.  But we couldn't stop there.  Parker announced that her theme was going to be tie dye.  I don't know where she gets this theme business.....her Gigi I guess....but she's big on wanting to know what the theme of all events will be. 
Cupcake newsflash:  Wrappers are all the rage now.  We made homemade wrappers out of doilies and painted them to give them a tie dye look.  Even Bob helped.

The finished product.  Pretty cute, right?

Big artsy picture, like the food bloggers do.  I added little candy stars, which don't quite fit the theme I'm told, but added that little extra guild on the lily.

I managed to get them up to school without smushing any of them.  In Parker's class, you can dance with friends or do a solo while they sing to you.  To my surprise, Parker did a solo.  She's very comfortable with her classmates apparently.

My cupcakes got rave reviews, and several of the kids carefully slipped their wrappers of and took them home.  

I hope this didn't have too many pictures to load properly for all of you.  If so, let me know and I can break up the posts into parts for faster loading.

Saturday Fishing

So the day after the busy friday was Saturday, the neighborhood kids fishing tournament.  Bob had his annual ill-timed golf tournament, so I got to do the fishing gig solo.  It was our first year to participate, and I wasn't sure what to expect.  Parker isn't much of a fisherman, but since a lot of the other neighborhood kids were doing it, she wanted to be a part of things. 

This is someone's back yard.  Really.  Now I know why their house cost $100k more than ours. 

There was NOTHING biting this year.  Every year prior to the tournament, they tag a bass with a certain tag, and if you catch him, you get $100.  If he isn't caught that day, the offer still stands for the rest of the year.   Parker was a little disappointed that she didn't catch a fish, but was very relieved that she didn't catch a turtle. 

After a while, she and her friend lost interest and played on a neighbor's swings. 

They give out trophies for the biggest fish, the youngest angler, etc.  Since there were so few fish caught, one kid got most of the awards.  Parker wasn't eligible for a trophy, but she won the drawing!  She got a new fishing pole and a tackle box.  She promptly came home and dumped out all the tackle and filled it with her little toy animals. 

Later that same evening.....she wanted to go back out and try for the $100 fish again. 

We didn't catch anything on our second try that day, but Parker got in lots more practice casting.  There are much worse ways to entertain a child than sitting on a dock on a pretty spring evening.