Trick or Treat!

E was a knight.
Cees was a rock star.
Tim was Eh! Steve.
Tara and M were Siamese twins.
Jane was Darkness.
Kate was a witch.
Erik was half monster / half human.
Sylvia was a leopard.



Now they all are on sugar highs. And Kate is freaking out over Tara getting MORE nerds than she did. Which is terribly unfair.

Enjoying Halloween

We had a Halloween party at homeschool club today. Some one sure did enjoy her food.

Morning Light

This morning, this is what we saw out of our kitchen window.

Pumpkin Killer

Quote of the Day

Sylvia, about thirty minutes after her 'supposed to be going to sleep' nursing. Bouncing around as usual 'I want to nurse!'
Me 'You already did nurse.'
Sylvia 'I did not! I just had milk from your button.'
Me '...'
Sylvia 'If I don't nurse, I will die!'
Me 'I see'
Sylvia 'You don't want me to die, do you?'

Pumpkin Carving

I would post more pictures, but Tara cut her finger pretty badly (not too serious, but lots of blood) so I got busy taking care of that. She actually is the only one who finished cutting the pumpkin, all the others are still half cut in the middle of our living room...



We saved seeds to grow our own pumpkins again next year. Now I just need not to lose those seeds.

How NOT to Poach An Egg

Poaching an egg.



A skill I obviously haven't mastered yet.

Fall Colours

Just because I am not ready to admit that winter will be here soon.





I didn't hear Tara telling me 'Do you know it snowed a little bit at M's place?', where she spent the night. I did not hear that at all!

Frigging Cold Caching

It was frigging cold today, makes me wonder why the heck I wanted to live in New England. It looked so innocent. Nice colours, sunny skies, I knew it would be no problem at all taking a bunch of kids caching. That was before I felt the wind. And had to come to terms with the fact that winter is fast approaching. Blech.



We had a great time anyway. Did maintenance on some caches. Figured would be easier to get that done before we get the first foot of snow. (feh, I don't want to even THINK about snow!)



I love this old locomotive.



I also love this public tomb. Yes, I know I am weird, I just love cemeteries and the history surrounding them.



But the best (and weirdest？) thing was this play ground right next to the cemetery.



The kids spent way too much time playing, while I was freezing off my butt and taking pictures of grave stones. Too bad the van was too far away to just abandon the kids and flee to it. It was darned tempting.



Finally made it over back to New Hampshire and found one cache (way to go, Kate!) and the kids had a McDonalds dinner. The people at McDonalds felt so sorry for me that they gave me a coffee. Maybe I should have worn make-up after all :p

The Long Awaited Hair Cutting Pics

Before Jane decided to cut it:



During Tara's cutting / buzzing:



Afterwards:



Sylvia observed it all, and decided 'I want to be bald too!' For a while, I gently tried to discourage here, but eventually I threw my hands in the air and said 'Fine, go for it!'



Now they all look like Erik



This is why the kids told me to post the picture of Erik, Erik, and Erik when it happened. They came up with the idea, I was happy to oblige.

Visit Largerfamilies Dot Com

Come visit us at the new and improved LargerFamilies.com, where I just posted an introductory post.

Enjoy!

Deep Do-Do

Today, we were out caching and Deep Do-Do was our most favorite cache of the day.

And yes, of course we had to find it in the dark. We were in the area to do maintenance on another cache, when Kate saw the listing for Deep Do-Do and desperately pleaded us to go there and do that cache. And who cares about the darkness anyway, we wouldn't be deterred, since we are experienced geocachers.



Can you tell where this story is going? Can you imagine those five experienced geocachers crawling around and inventing new curse words while we felt our boots sink deeper and deeper into the do-do? It wouldn't have been so bad if it only had been our boots I guess. One by one, we slunk back to the car, cleaning off our boots when getting there.



Time for PAF!

PAF is an often used acronym in geocaching, it stands for Phone A Friend. Not that we would ever use it of course, and don't you dare to tell anyone that we did so on this cache. Our reputation would be shot! Not like we had much cell phone reception there anyway, so it's very believable that we didn't do it.



We exercised our first PAF option. He helpfully told us 'Nope, haven't found it, but everyone says it's an extremely easy find.' We heard 'You guys really do suck!' After crying for a while about the unfairness of it all, we used our second PAF option. She was not any more sympathetic, but at least she had found the cache and could give us a big hint. Big enough for the girls to find it within a few seconds when they went back.



Phew, now we could go back to our illusion of being great and wonderful geocachers. We just won't tell anyone about the PAFs we needed.

We had dinner in Tim's Deli and Restaurant, and then found our way home. We never knew Tim had his own restaurant, the things you find out about your teenagers!

Love is...

Drawing your sisters for your class at homeschool group (I did see your question Epijunky, I hope to post about our homeschooling soon, life just has been a wee bit busy ^^)



I really liked the way this picture turned out, they were wearing exactly those clothes when she drew them.

Happy Love Thursday!

The Art of Lying

Background: Cees had left his water bottle on the table. Sylvia noticed it, walked up to it, opened it, and took a big sip. Cees comes walking into the kitchen and sees her doing that.
Cees, in a questioning voice 'Who said you could drink my water?'
Sylvia, very self assured, 'Mama did.'
Cees, not convinced, 'I dont think she said that.'
Sylvia, without a pause 'She said "Here! Drink some of this water!"'
Cees, deciding to ask me directly 'Mama,did you say that?'
Me 'No, I didn't!'
Sylvia, very matter-of-factly 'Well, she said it anyway.'



Fast forward to later that night, after Cees asked her 'Sylvia, do you promise not to drink my water again?' Sylvia sweetly replied 'I promise!' Picture this including big, blue, trustworthy eyes and a halo circling her head.

Five minutes later, Sylvia is at the kitchen table drinking Cees's water again. We didn't even notice, until she volunteered, in a happy tone 'I broke my promise!' while putting down the water bottle.

Quote of the Day

We saw a low flying air plane, which was observed by Sylvia. She pauses a few seconds and then states 'If that air plane didn't have wings, it would have to stay on the floor.'

It was amusing to see part of her thinking process. She obviously was wondering what made the air plane fly, and concluded it must have been the wings. She wanted to share that observation with us. I love those little windows into her brain.



Another one today, before we went out in the rain 'Don't worry mom, my hood is connected to my sweater, so I will be ok.' while pulling up her hood. I didn't tell her that I hadn't particularly been worried about her ^^

Brothers

Space World

Can click on the pictures to see bigger copy.







This was Jane's homework for comic drawing class at homeschool club 'Make your own comic'.

Sunday Afternoon

Too tired to do more than post a few pictures. Y'all can make up a story to go with it. Be sure to include a wet Erik.









Oh, and we found seven caches, which is not bad for a Sunday afternoon.

Argh!

Anything I get organized, with much effort, will be undone by the kids within the next 24 hours. I am sure there is a lesson in this, but I am not grokking it at the moment.

For now the lesson feels like 'Don't even bother!' :p

Fall in New England

Leaves are turning
Ready for snow
I am not







Last night, we had a lot of rain, so the trails were quite flooded in some spots.





The colours are late this year, but spectacular as always.