Beach Races aka Family Pictures 2008

Happy Halloween

We started the day with Mina's class party! Pappa and Miles came to join the fun. They had breakfast treats, played a number of games and acted out some fun Halloween poems. I helped with the "Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin".
Miles doing the pumpkin toss. He thinks that he's in kindergarten too.

Miles meeting the class witch.

Back at home, with our pumpkin collection. M&M drew several of the faces!

Our little bat getting ready to go out!

The bat and the dinosaur.

Miles out on the candy trail.

A cool pumpkin display in our neighbourhood. We aren't sure what that mark is on the top left of the picture. Spooky.

This year's favourite Halloween stories from school have been:

Jack Prelutsky’s “It’s Halloween” (a favourite of Mina's teacher)
Virginia Mueller’s “A Halloween Mask for Monster” (Mina can read this to Miles)
Kathi Appelt’s “Bat Jamboree”

HAPPY HALLOWEEN by Jack Prelultsky

It's late and we are sleepy,

The air is cold and still.

Our jack-o'-lantern grins at us

Upon the window sill.

We're stuffed with cake and candy

And we've had a lot of fun,

But now its time to go to bed

And dream of all we've done.

We'll dream of ghosts and goblins

And of witches that we've seen,

And we'll dream of trick-or-treating

On this happy Halloween.

Haunted House and Skeleton Dance

I've been looking for some good Halloween videos to share with the kids. I was happy to find these ones...

Disney's The Skeleton Dance
Disney's The Haunted House

Mr. Miles the Baker

Yesterday morning, Miles and i did some Halloween baking. He has a serious future in both baking and taste testing. We made bagels for Mina's class party as well as some Halloween-spiced sugar cookies. To decorate the pumpkins, we made Cynthia Lair's Yummy Yam Frosting and used some green sprinkles for the stem. If we eat up all the Halloween cookies and still have room, I was thinking of making some Skeleton Cookies for Day of the Dead.

Pumpkin Carving

Here we are starting to carve the pumpkin from Oxbow Farm. After we took out the guts, we took it up to a "Pumpkin and a Poem" Night at the school!

What is a quarter note?

Here is a picture of Mina warming up for piano class. At home she practices on a keyboard that was given to us by her great, great Aunt. It is a keyboard that i played when visiting my Aunt's house.

And playing afterwards. The weather has been awesome lately!

Oxbow Farms

After a summer of gardening and worm-hunting together, Seattle Tilth instructor Sarah Cassidy invited our family to her farm's fall party. Sarah is a truly shining and inspiring person. She and her husband own and farm Oxbow Farms. Today was the farm party. It was awesome.

Miles could have stayed all day...

Picking out our pumpkin

the pumpkin patch and beyond

they had a pumpkin taxi to the parking lot. miles thought that was great. at bedtime, he mentioned that this was his favourite part of the day.

the pig roast. local and organic.

The field of dinosaur kale. I love this stuff! They planted this batch back in the spring.

Fresh cider...sssssssssssssssooooooooooooooooooooooooo good!

Sorry about the lack of posting lately. Life is brimming with joy and activity - this includes playing in the mud with Miles. I'm hoping for a quiet night of blogging and tea soon...

October Already?!

Halloween art and scary faces!

Flowers from the market... Once again, we have enjoyed getting familiar with some of the local farmers, cheesemakers, breadmakers and the gelato stand! I'm going to be really sad when the season of farmer's markets come to an end.