Weekly Wrap-Up – November 16th-22nd

This was a busy week of events for Hayden.

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I received the November Bark Box.  It was so cute!  There was a large squeaky turkey leg, an adorable stuffed porcupine chef with a hat and apron and crinkly plastic and a squeaker inside, and 2 bags of fall themed organic snacks.  The girls loved everything, and Lilly snuck right up and kept stealing the porcupine right out of the box in my lap every time I tried to take a picture!

It took her no time at all to get the seams open and pull out the stuffing, squeaker, and plastic bottle.  Lilly goes absolutely nuts when there’s a crinkly sound inside!

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On Wednesday, we all went with Hayden up to his school for the fall sports banquet.  The first thing they did was call him up for an Academic Award for maintaining honor roll while playing a school sport.  That was pretty cool! 

 

Then after the special awards were all given out by the coaches, each team broke out into separate classrooms to receive their letter, pin, and certificate from their coach. 

This was Hayden’s first time lettering, so it was a great experience for him.

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On Friday, I made my weekly shopping trip to Trader Joe’s.  I was so surprised and excited to run into an old dear friend of mine, Audrey Aivalotis, and her son, Matthew.  She’s an old friend from my working days before I had children, and we kept in touch into Hayden’s early years.  I haven’t seen either of them in probably 12 years.  She looks just the same!

I was so happy to see her.  When I suffered my first miscarriage, I’ll never forget how she came over to pray with me, and she brought me a little white bear to honor my baby.  I loved her so much for that!  She was really there for me during a difficult time.  I felt such joy in seeing her again!

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On Saturday, Steve gave out trophies to his team after their final makeup game since he and Hayden were away on the school field trip the Saturday before on Awards Day.  I got there just in time to see Hayden get his trophy!

And of course, Steve made a little speech about each recipient.  Those two are so funny!

And as soon as Hayden was finished at soccer, I had to whisk him off to his best friend’s birthday party.  He got to play laser tag with his friends and then go indoor go-carting.  What fun!

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That’s a wrap!  We’re off from homeschooling this next week, and Hayden gets out of school early on Wednesday for the holiday weekend.  I plan to get my Christmas tree put up and all of our presents wrapped before Thanksgiving.  We’ll be having some guests from church, so I’ll be doing a lot of tidying up, too.  And I hear that Walmart will be starting their Black Friday sale at 6 PM on Thursday!  So I guess I know where Hayden and I will be!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Weekly Wrap-Up – November 9th-15th

Wow, has the weather ever turned cold this week!

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I started off my week with another trip to Sandler Center for the Arts to enjoy the Virginia Symphony playing Beethoven and Mahler.

It was another stunning performance!  I do love the symphony so much, and it’s also my rare opportunity to get out without kids in tow for a little mommy time.  I usually go by myself, but this season, my neighbor friend had been going with me.  It’s nice to have some company!

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On Tuesday, Hayden was home for school for Veteran’s Day, so I decided to take the kids out for breakfast at Chick-Fil-A.  For an added twist, I took along a game I was reviewing called Snake Oil – Party Potion.  Man, we had the best time playing that game in the restaurant!

The kids and I were laughing so hard while we played that folks around us were smiling.  That was an awesome game, and it was so easy to take along with us because it was the smaller portable version of the game Hayden asked for and received for Christmas last year.  I loved it, and this was my first time playing it with the kids!

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On Wednesday, Haylee and I took advantage of having some free time without school this week and decided to have a little fun making her lapbook on Japan.  I got a great video from the library called Little Travelers: Japan, and we watched that while we made our Japan lapbook from Homeschool Share.  Most of the information for the lapbook came from the book “Look What Came From Japan,” which we were also able to reserve from the library.

Haylee absolutely loved the video and asked me if there were others we could get.  I did notice that several of them are available from Amazon Prime Instant Video, so we’ll probably watch the others that way.  It was wonderful, and we learned a whole bunch about the Japanese culture and customs.

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On Thursday, I received this beautiful tea humidor that I had ordered from eBay.  It was a little treat for myself!  I’ve always wanted one, and I got this gorgeous wooden box for about $11 shipped, so that was pretty good.  The seller had purchased it in a bulk lot from an estate sale and didn’t know it’s condition.  It came in the original box and didn’t have any scratches or anything, but the wooden frame around the glass in the lid had come loose.

 

It was a quick fix with some wood glue, and it was as good as new!  I love it!  I like to have one of my friends over now and then for tea, and it will be so elegant to serve them their choice of tea from this beautiful box!

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I also set about making myself a craft spinner fashioned after the popular “Clip It Up” by Simply Renee.  I saw some videos and blogs about making one yourself using an old lamp and a few parts from the hardware store, so I hit some thrift stores until I found just the right lamp.  I found this one with the spider lampshade frame included for just $4.25. 

I simply added 2 short threaded rods, 2 couplings, a locknut, 2 washers, and a finishing cap from Lowe’s in the lamp accessory department, and I was all set!  It took just minutes to disassemble the lamp and add the new parts.  I think it turned out so pretty, too!  I used some jumbo paper clips from the Dollar Tree to hang up my sticker sheets.  It now houses all of my alphabet stickers for my scrapbooks, and it only cost me about $10 to make!  Now I’m working on making a much larger floor model to house all of my other stickers.  I have to order some specific parts for that to get it just the way I want it, but I’ll share it when I’m all through!

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On Friday, I took the kids on a field trip I’d organized for my homeschool group to Bear Path Acres in Franklin, VA, right at the NC line.  I’d never been there before, and I was excited to have found someplace new to explore.  The facility houses rescued animals of all kinds, from domestic to exotic.  Here is a pacing lion that really seemed to want to eat Holden for breakfast!

Nobody could figure out why it took so much interest in Holden, and the female lioness was just as interested in him as we moved down the exhibit!  I suspect it may have had something to do with the bright red blanket that was covering him in the stroller.  Anyway, it was just a bit creepy!

We also got to see a really friendly grizzly bear that did some tricks.  Her name was Shug!

The trainer said she had gotten the bear about 4 years ago when it was severely neglected, abused, and malnourished.  She said Shug had never touched soil or been in the water before she came to Bear Path Acres, and Shug has become very trusting of the trainer because she provided so many new “first” opportunities to the bear.  She sure was big, but adorable at the same time!

And last but not least, the kids got to feed apple slices to some of the animals.

  

Because of a highway accident with fatalities caused by a drunk driver overnight, the ongoing accident investigation had some portions of the roadway shut down.  As a result, we had to detour on some back country roads, and it took us 2 hours to get there!  I thought we were never going to make it, but we finally did.  I felt bad for being half an hour late, because I had the money for the whole group, but just about everyone was late in varying degrees, so it was all good.  We had plenty of time to enjoy the animals, eat a picnic lunch with our neighbors who went with us, and still make it back just in time to pick Hayden up at school.  It was a very frigid but awesome day!

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It turned out to be a pretty fun week off from school.  I’m looking forward to trying to plan more field trips in the near future.  I just want to find some new and different things to do, even if it means taking a bit of a road trip.  This is our 12th year of homeschooling in this area, and I’ve done so many of the attractions so many times over that I’m ready for some new adventures!

I hope you all have a great week!

Weekly Wrap-Up – November 2nd-8th

This week marked a great milestone in our marriage…our 20th wedding anniversary!

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Tuesday was election day, and Holden was off school that day.  Since the following day was our actual anniversary, but I had a season ticket to the opera with my neighbor, Steve and I decided to celebrate on Tuesday instead.  Hayden would be home with the kids, and Steve planned to get off early so we could go to dinner and then do the twilight climb at the local Adventure Park of Virginia Beach.  I bought him a lovely cardigan to keep in his office now that the weather has turned so much colder.  I also bought him 2 dozen premium roses in pastel colors and baby’s breath and arranged them myself in a vase at home.   Aren’t they gorgeous?  He brought me flowers, too, which he never does, so that was a nice surprise!

Steve came in from work early as planned, and we set off to use a voucher deal I’d purchased back in August at a fairly new little British restaurant called The Highlander.  We knew we wouldn’t have a lot of time to spare since we were fighting rush-hour traffic headed the opposite direction of where the Adventure Park was located, so we tried to make a quick exit from home as soon as possible.  After sitting in quite a backup along the way, we finally arrived at The Highlander. 

As we exited the van, we could see the cook coming outside on her cell phone.  She quickly informed us that the restaurant has just one cook (her) and one server, and the server had failed to report to work half an hour before.  After a discussion by phone with the owner, they decided to just close up the restaurant.  The lady explained that all she does is cook, and that while she could still do that, it would all have to be free because she didn’t know how to work the payment machine.  UGH!  I told her it was our 20th wedding anniversary, and I had even posted on their Facebook page earlier in the day that we were planning to come at 5:30 to celebrate with dinner there.  She apologized but said there was nothing she could do.  So Steve and I got back in the van and decided that since we were turning around in what was still rush-hour traffic, we’d better just head towards the Adventure Park and see how much time we had left once we got over there.  Traffic was even worse headed out that way, and by the time we arrived, we only had half an hour to go before the 7-10 PM climbing session.  There is really nothing out there by way of restaurants, so we pulled into a 7-11 parking lot nearby.  As we got out, Steve said we should walk over to the Holiday Mart next door instead.  Apparently, it was a hangout for the gang in his construction worker days of old.  Big mistake!  They were no longer cooking food that late, and it was a nasty looking little place where only one of the hot water dispensers even had water that was actually hot.  Steve suggested I get a cup of tea, so I did that, even though the tea leaves were leaking into my cup and the half and half wasn’t even cold but sitting at room temperature instead.  Then he grabbed two bags of chips and told me to grab some giant slim jims.  So we checked out and walked back out to the van.  Here was our dinner.

Is that the most pathetic 20th anniversary dinner you’ve ever seen, or what?!?  At least if we’d gone in the 7-11, I could have had a yogurt and a banana or something else remotely nutritious.  Ugh!  I don’t even want to know how many calories was in that crap.  I merely ate it out of necessity.  Blech!  We sat there laughing until we were crying!  I can’t remember the last time I laughed quite so hard…the whole thing was so absurd that it was hysterical!

After this feast fit for kings, we pulled into the Adventure Park parking lot.  When we checked in, we found out that the Twilight Climb wasn’t from 7-10 PM as we thought, but instead, it was from 6-9 PM!  So we were now actually an hour late.  ARGH!  This evening was not turning out as planned in any way, shape, or form.  We contemplated just going home and celebrating another night rather than pay $76 for 2 hours of climbing, but I said I’d probably cry myself to sleep if we didn’t do something fun on this night.  So we decided to take what we could get. 

I’m so glad we did!  Steve and I had a fabulous time.  I’d done 2 purple trails with Holden when we went for the Nickelodeon National Day of Play.  But I wasn’t able to do any more difficult than that since that’s all he was allowed to do.  So Steve and I did 2 yellow trails and a green trail.  Oh, my goodness!  As soon as we started the green trail, I knew we were in trouble!  The second element on the trail had me stuck right in the middle of it.  I was holding on for dear life and exclaiming to Steve that there was no way I was making it across!  I knew I couldn’t fall to the ground or anything with that big harness on, but I certainly could have gotten myself tangled up in that crazy walkway if I’d fallen.  It had slanted boards that went every which way.  But when you stepped on them, they teeter-tottered like a see-saw!  I just knew I was going to go sliding right off!  He talked me through it, and I figured out how I could get to the other side.  I wanted off that trail so badly!  I was terrified of what was coming next, but the rest of it wasn’t nearly as bad as that one element!  Next time, I’ll know what to do, but it was so scary the first time through!  Steve was proud of me for facing my fears and getting through it.  He’s actually afraid of heights a little bit, and he said he hated looking down at his feet and seeing the ground below.  That last trail we did was 25 ft. in the air!  I managed to strain my left quadricep the first time we propelled down to the ground because I didn’t bend my knee to absorb the impact.  Lesson learned the hard way! 

But overall, it was a great bonding experience and a neat adventure to share together, just as I thought it would be.  Here we are in the office after we took off our climbing gear.

   

We’re not used to taking selfies, so you can see how our attempts at getting the right expression ended in laughter.  No doubt, it is an anniversary we won’t soon forget!  Our whole 20 years together has been a comedy of errors such as this, starting with our honeymoon, so this was nothing new in terms of disastrous evenings.  I’ll save that story for another time, though, LOL.

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On our actual anniversary, I barely passed Steve in the doorway on my way out to the opera with my neighbor friend.  I figured that’s how our anniversary would go!  I’m so glad we got to do a little something the night before.  Val and I went to see H.M.S. Pinafore.

  

It was an awesome show!  The story was so funny, and it had a wonderful happy ending, which is so rare for an opera!  They are usually tragedies. 

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The rest of the week was just a blur with nothing much to remember.  We surely won’t forget our 20th anniversary, though!  Steve said if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t change a thing.  And that’s because we got a good laugh out of it, and he said it’s hard to have spontaneous fun after 20 years!

Until next week…

REVIEW: Snake Oil-Party Potion by Out of the Box Games

My family was ecstatic when they found out we’d have the opportunity to review Snake Oil-Party Potion from Out of the Box Games!

 

WHAT IS IT?:

Out of the Box Games has a new addition to the Snake Oil family of games…Snake Oil-Party Potion!  This is a smaller and more portable version of the original Snake Oil game.  It can be played as a stand-alone game, or it can be added to the original game to bring you a host of new card combinations to add to the fun!

Just like the original game, this game is designed for 3-6 players, and the premise of the game is that after drawing random cards from the decks, each player tries to pitch a product to the designated customer using a 2-card combination.  Then the customer selects the winning salesman!  This is hilarious fun, and the combinations are endless!  You just never know what you’re gonna get!

Snake Oil-Party Potion is designed for ages 8 and up, and it’s available for just $14.99!

 

 

OUR EXPERIENCE:

My 15-year old son, Hayden, asked for only one thing last Christmas, and that was the original Snake Oil game!  After some research online and subsequently calling the company directly, they confirmed that there were no retailers closer than 2 hours from my residence that carried it.  I was so disappointed, since my son rarely asks for anything, and I really wanted to get it for him.  Then the vendor did something wonderful…they offered to let me buy it from them directly, even though they don’t sell the game directly from their website, and they even offered me free shipping, as well!  Well, I couldn’t pass that up, and Hayden was so excited and surprised when he opened it up on Christmas Day!  He has played it often with his siblings, and he absolutely loves it.  I mention this because as a customer, I was so impressed with the customer service I received from this company!  And because Hayden loved this game so much, I was pretty excited when I saw they had come out with the Snake Oil-Party Potion game! 

I should say that I had not actually played either game before this party version of the game arrived for my review, so my personal impression of the game was fresh and new!  I was not disappointed!

Since Snake Oil-Party Potion is so compact and portable, I decided to take it with us to a restaurant for breakfast one day when we were all off from school.  As soon as we finished our meal, I sent my 6-year old off to play in the restaurant’s playroom, and Hayden (15), Haylee (10), and I opened it up and briefly went over the rules.  Even though I’d never played it before, it just took a moment to understand. 

All we had to do was put the card decks on the table, choose one of us to be the customer, and then the rest of us had to draw out 6 cards each from the decks. The customer selected one of themes from the two sides of the card and laid it down on the table.  Then the other two people chose 2 of their cards to combine into a product and pitch it to the customer.  Then the customer voted on which product they’d prefer to buy, and the winning salesperson got to keep the customer card.  Play continued through all of us for each round.  Whoever had the most customer cards at the end of a round was the winner!  We played 2 complete rounds and then found we were still tied, so we had to play one more round to determine the winner, which was Hayden! 

Let me share with you some of the hilarious sales pitches that won over the customer during our game!

1. For the Snowman:
• Lake Mop – When your snowman melts, no matter how much water it produces, mop up even your lake-sized puddle with the Lake Mop!
2. For the Grandma:
• Dairy Cookie – Grandma probably has calcium deficient bones and doesn’t like drinking milk.  Have no fear…just enjoy some Dairy Cookies!
3. For the Clown:
• Tickle Putty - Worried that you won’t be able to make your audience laugh?  Worry no more!  Just pass out some tickle putty to get your audience laughing at everything you do!
4. For the Fire Fighter:
• Trumpet Rug – A special rug that alerts even off-duty fireman when there’s a fire anywhere in the city!
5. For the Dad:
• Nap Purse – When dad has to watch the kids and they’re driving him absolutely crazy, he can whip out his nap purse, which contains an ultra-comfortable nap mat, allowing him to take a luxurious nap anywhere he might be and escape the madness around him!
6. For the Treasure Hunter:
• Memory Coat – What would you do if you were out treasure hunting and realized you’d lost your treasure map?  Never fear!  You can just put on your Memory Coat!  It will help you access your memory banks so you can remember the content of the lost map.
7. For the Camper:
• Trampoline Chair – In case you’re out camping and get discovered by a wild animal, just use your Trampoline Chair to bounce your way to the safety of a tree!
8. For the Chef:
• Smoke Curtain – When you’re busy cooking and accidentally burn your gourmet dishes, just open your handy dandy Smoke Curtain!  It will whisk all the smoke away so your customers will never know!
9. For the Fisherman:
• Bubble Potty – No more bathroom emergencies while fishing!  When the fisherman needs to go, he just blows up this special bubble that he can sit on and go potty, and then he just tosses it in the lake when he’s done!
10. For the President:
• Victory Sled – When you’ve been out on the campaign trail in a remote, frozen place like Alaska and those votes come in declaring you are the Presidential winner, just hop on the Victory Sled, and let it take you across the terrain announcing your victory with loud speakers and video screens on-board.  It’s a real celebration station!
11. For the Mad Scientist:
• Gorilla Sponge – When you have big chemical spills in your lab, just reach for the Gorilla Sponge…it can soak up the biggest messes quickly!
12. For the Astronaut:
• Video Wish – Missing the comfort foods of home?  Just fire up the Video Wish machine to view and select what you’re craving the most.  The machine will then teleport your favorite dish right to your spacecraft!

Oh my goodness!  We had so much fun playing this game!  I can honestly say that I think I had more fun playing this game than any other game I’ve ever played!  We laughed over and over again.  We were having such a good time that we were starting to attract the attention of people in the restaurant around us!  It was a great way for us to spend the morning together. 

My 6-year old wandered out of the playground a couple of times and made up his own funny combinations.  He’s not quite ready for following the rules and taking turns because he gets so excited when he comes up with an idea that he has to blurt it out, but he can have his own fun just making up products without playing by the rules of the game.  He’s a bit young yet, but he will be able to join us before we know it.  I got to thinking that this would be fun even to play without a scoring system…then there’d be no winner, and everyone could just focus on having fun.  My daughter can be a it of a sore loser, so that might actually work better for her!

Seriously, though, this was a box full of hilarious fun!  I would definitely recommend it for families, and I imagine it would be a great party game, as well, since you can have up to 6 players.  I can’t wait to toss it into my suitcase the next time we take a trip…it would be a great, portable game to take on vacation with us!

Take a look at what other Crew members had to say about both the original Snake Oil game and Snake Oil-Party Potion by clicking the link below.

Weekly Wrap-Up – October 26th – November 1st

This week was a mix of emotions.

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After all my preparations, we successfully hosted our church congregation at our house for bible study, worship service, and a potluck afterwards on Sunday.  It went well!  Of course it didn’t take long for the kids to start making a mess of the house again, but at least it has a good starting point from here on out.

It was a very emotional weekend for me.  I suppose having everyone from church over was probably a good distraction from the overwhelming feelings of sadness I was experiencing, but it came in waves anyway.  You see, Sunday, October 26th, was also my mom’s birthday…the first one without her.  :(

You may remember that my mom passed away on March 28th of this year from lung cancer, just 6 short weeks after the diagnosis.  It’s been a rough year.  I tried so hard to push her birthday out of my mind that I even forgot to mail my sister’s birthday card, as she shares the same birthday with my mom.  I can only imagine how hard it was for this year, too.  She spent their birthday together with my mom in Arkansas just last year.  I’m so glad she got to do that. 

After everyone left, I talked to my sister on the phone, and we had a good cry together.  I did a lot of crying on Saturday, too.  I’m thankful for many things…that my mom is no longer suffering, that it didn’t go on for a long time, that she can finally be with my dad and brother again…but at the same time, I have such a deep sense of loss of her and of a part of myself along with her that no one else will ever replace. 

Here are some photos.

 

My parent’s wedding picture on May 21, 1955.

My mom in her younger days.

Mom and I together in the early 80’s.

 

Mom and I together in the late 80’s.

This is the last photo of me and my mom, taken as we said goodbye on Sept. 3, 2013.  It was the last time I saw her.

I will love you forever, mom!  Rest in peace with Jesus.

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By Tuesday, the weather briefly warmed up again, unseasonably so.  So I picked Hayden up from school and headed off with the kids to Sonic for an afternoon slushie during Happy Hour.

Always a fun break from the day!

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On Halloween day, we set out to have some fun with friends.  First, we met up with Gina Nall and her 2 kids at IHOP for some FREE scary face pancakes for the kids and a big breakfast for us.  It was a good thing we ate plenty, because I never really got to eat again that day!

Then after a quick pit stop at my house, we all piled into my van to head over to the Hampton for some adventures.  We went to the Goodwill Outlet there and did a little shopping, and then we went over to the nearby Bluebird Gap Farm for a few minutes so the kids could play on the playground. 

They weren’t nearly ready to go when it was time to trek back to Virginia Beach to pick Hayden up from school.  Our timing was perfect, and we were able to breeze right into the parking lot as Hayden came out.  Then when we got back to our house, Gina and her kids left, and me and the kids grabbed our costumes and went off to Krispy Kreme for some free donuts!

Hayden grabbed the hats off the table on the way out, and being the crazy boy he is, he got in the van wearing 4 hats at once!  So silly…

Since Hayden has made some friends at school now, and he’s too old to trick or treat, I thought it might be fun for him to get out and doing something different instead of staying home and passing out candy by himself, especially since almost no kids ever come down the dead end street where we live.  So I suggested that he and his friends, Antonio and Ashley, meet up at the local bowling alley for Unlimited Pizza Bowl instead.  He thought it sounded like a fun idea, so he arranged to meet a couple of his friends there.

They ended up bowling for hours and hours and stuffing their faces on unlimited pizza, and Steve went and picked Hayden up late that night.  He had a blast!

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Meanwhile, I met up with my neighbor, Val, and her girls, and we headed out at dusk to take the kids trick-or-treating.  Steve met up with us near the end when he finally made it home from work.  Here the kids are as we were starting out our night.

They posed for some pictures in front of the best Halloween displays along the way.

When we got home, the kids poured out their combined haul for a closer look.  They declared it a successful night!

    

I made a mental note to myself that now that I am working out again, I wasn’t even tired, much less sore, when we got home.  I felt great!  We sorted their candy into bags by category and put it all away after everybody picked out a few favorites.  Then we went up to get hot baths and head off to bed.  It dawned on me that Haylee’s only got 2 more years of this!  (sniff, sniff…they are growing up too fast!)

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And that was our crazy week.  What did your family do this week? 

With one holiday down, now it’s time to think about getting ready for Thanksgiving and then Christmas.  To me, it always seems like Halloween begins a season of holidays that passes so very fast.  It’s like a blink, and it’s all over, and a new year has begun before you know it! 

Weekly Wrap-Up – October 19th-25th

I was busy methodically cleaning each room in my house this week, ending each one with shampooing the carpet.  I never have time for deep cleaning during the school week, so I generally get caught up when we have a week off at the end of the month.  I had double the reason to get it all done this week, because we’ll be hosting bible study, worship services, and the potluck at our house on Sunday.  The building we rent for church services is not available next weekend, so once a year, we end up hosting it at our house!

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After church on Sunday, I went to Sandler Center with my neighbor friend, Val, to enjoy the Virginia Symphony’s Classics concert featuring the music of Mozart.  It was just the kind of classical I prefer…lots of string and wind instruments, minus the percussion and brass.

Beautiful!  Nice way to start my week.

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This week started out cold enough that I finally got to make the first fire of the season in our buck stove!

The kids and I huddled in the living room all day and stayed toasty warm!  I look forward to many more days of enjoying my fireplace.  Bring it on, winter!

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Needless to say, with all the cleaning I did this week, I didn’t have time for much else.  However, I did manage to go out on Tuesday to chaperone Hayden’s field trip to the Virginia Zoo with his digital photography class from school.  I drove separately with Haylee and Holden and met the school bus there.  Since we have a family pass, I got us and Hayden in apart from the school group, and then we rejoined everyone inside.  The teacher assigned 6 students to me, and we split up into our groups so the kids could go around the zoo, taking turns getting photos of various animals.

We had a wonderful time together!  It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and all the animals were out and about and very active because the weather was so pleasant!  Here’s my selfie with one of the giraffes!

Along the way, Haylee discovered a super-cool-looking caterpillar crawling on a railing, so I called Hayden over to see it, and he picked it up and let it crawl around on his arms the whole time we were there!  The rest of the students, the teacher, and even some passersby kept saying it looked like something they’d seen circulating on the internet that’s supposedly cute and fuzzy but extremely poisonous!  Hayden said “well, I’m all in!”  LOL  When it was time to go, he put it into an empty water bottle I had and took it back to school with him so everybody could see it.  I swear, it was the cutest, fuzziest, softest caterpillar I’ve ever seen!  Everybody back at school was apparently afraid of it, too. 

So when Hayden got home, we immediately searched for images of “Jeff-fa-fa” online to try and identify what kind of caterpillar he was.  Turns out, he’s a tussock moth caterpillar.  We put him in Holden’s bug habitat at home so we could watch him and observe him using the built-in magnifying glasses.  We read up on what he likes to eat, and we tried different leaves from our front yard until we found one he absolutely LOVED!  He devoured it so fast and started pooping all over the place!  LOL.  We put a moist paper towel in the bottom so he could have a drink.  He’s been in there loving life ever since we brought him home!  I guess we’ll wait and see if he goes through metamorphosis.  That will be cool to watch!

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After a hard week of cleaning, I decided to go out on Friday night with Hayden to the Haunted Hayride, Field of Screams, and Village of the Damned at Hunt Club Farm.  Here we are, just arriving.

Then here’s Hayden posing here to show that he survived the Field of Scream!

We thought the haunted hayride was really cool, and also the Village of the Damned.  We did both of those attractions twice!  The first time, we tried to be prepared for surprise scares.  The second time through, we knew what to expect, so we had fun messing with the actors.  Like when they jumped in beside us on the hayride with chainsaws and knives, Hayden just smiled and said “hi” quite casually, and they said “die!” in response!  LOL.  I had fun heckling them a bit on round two.  We had a great time.

Then we stumbled upon a really tall, really scary dude in a white wedding dress with a knife.  He was massive, and he looked so cool!  I asked him if I could take a selfie with him, so he posed here.  While i was getting the shot, he pulled up my hair in the back and pretended he was going to hack off my hair.  Everybody around us was laughing.  He was really funny.

 

Unfortunately, there was a bright light on a pole right behind us, so it ruined the view of the guy, who was super tall, but you get the idea.  We had so much fun!  I like taking time out to do special things with Hayden.  He saw a lot of his friends there, and he was the only one there with him mom.  But you know what?  He didn’t seem to mind one bit.  He loves his mom, and I love him, too.  <3

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I hope you guys have a great week!  I’ll be preparing to take the kids trick-or-treating for Halloween.  Haylee can’t wait to wear her candy corn witch costume.  She looks so pretty in it, too!

Until then…