Trick or treating at school

At school today Helaina's class went trick or treating to 5 other classrooms and some school offices. They couldn't bring in their costumes so Helaina wore her "cutest witch" shirt and orange witch skirt (the pics a bit blurry because we were in a hurry this morning and didn't have time for a photo shoot). When Helaina's teachers saw her in her skirt and tights they went bananas. I think they tend to gush a bit over the girls because Helaina's class is made up of 12 boys and only 4 girls - what a ratio!

Checking out her stash at home.

She got mostly "healthy" snacks (lots of pretzels, animal crackers, fruit gummies and snackwell cookies), plus a few lollipops and some chocolate bars. I sent in chocolate crunch bars for her to share with her class. Last night when I was debating sending in fruit snacks instead of chocolate, Jim poo-pooed it. He said "Give them what they want - candy." and I was glad I did!

The school nurse gave all the kids a new toothbrush. I asked Helaina which she liked better, the pink toothbrush or the orange pumpkin lollipop. I'm sure you know what her answer was!

The Fall Pumpkin Patch Party at school

The cafeteria at Helaina's school was transformed into a "pumpkin patch" today. Mommy's and Daddy's were invited to attend the party. The kids were treated to donut holes and apple juice then they played games, ran around like crazy and got to "pick" the pumpkin of their choice.

Helaina's pint-sized pumpkin pick.

Jumping for joy as she tossed a beanbag through the pumpkin's face. Life's simple pleasures.

She was supposed to toss the hula hoop around the pumpkin bags but she had to do a little hoopin' first.

One end of the cafeteria has an entire padded playground area complete with slides, bikes and things to climb on. Helaina is no longer content to crawl through playground equipment. Nope, now it's up and over the top, geez. Helaina's big brother Josh was able to escape childhood with no stitches or broken bones, which was amazing considering he was the ultimate daredevil. Hopefully Helaina will also escape those injuries (maybe if we encase her in bubble wrap and never let her leave the house).

This was the last weekend for Fall festivities at Hafner's so we took Helaina one final time. Promised her last weekend that she could get her face painted and she definately remembered. She saw the face-painting girl sitting on a hay bale, ran right over and practically jumped in her lap. We told Helaina we had to get a ticket first so she took off running to the cash register and said to the other girl "I get ticket?". Extremely excited. (Helaina insisted on wearing the shirt Aunt Terry and Uncle Mike sent her.)

Horse drawn wagon ride around the grounds with her sparkly pumpkin cheek.

Last horsie ride of the year, and Daddy's glad. This horse was big and Helaina kept slipping in the saddle so Jim had to hang on to her with a death grip for the entire ride. What Daddy won't gladly do for his little girl. Look at the smile on her face that a $2 horse ride brings!

We let Helaina go into the petting zoo pen yesterday, which was a BIG mistake. Just as I'm racing toward her and screaming "No, don't do it - it's all full of goat poop and pee!!!", Helaina (already bent down) picks up 2 big handfuls of straw from the ground and throws it up in the air yippee style. Ok, yah, her hands were covered in a combo of wet, yellowish-brown goat and llama pee and poo. As I grabbed her by the wrists she says to me "I wash hands? I all done" (yah, you think?). We get her out of the pen and use about 1,000 antibacterial hand wipes and a gallon of hand sanitizer. Got her home and scrubbed her hands with soap and hot water for a long time. Eeeewwwww.

Bye bye Mr. Goat - see you next year, maybe.

The Lantern Festival

Last night's Lantern Festival was a good time. We had a great variety of Chinese food to eat, Helaina got to go nuts with her friends, decorate her lantern and then parade around the parking lot while proudly carrying her lantern. Jim tried out the new light for his video recorder and it worked great. We've got lots of footage of the parade and will post some after editing.

Paper lanterns, paint, tassles, beads, batteries, decorated chopsticks, patience and sharing were what it took to create the personalized lanterns for each kid (and there were LOTS of kids).


"Wait me!!!"

This was only a small sampling of all the kids. It's a cute picture and would have been even cuter if I could have gotten Helaina to face my camera instead of looking at all the lanterns. Sigh. She's in the lower right corner with her back to me.

They played many games of duck duck chicken. Used to be duck duck goose when I was a kid - did something change over all these years? Helaina absolutely loved playing this game and would get up and run around the circle even if she wasn't declared the "chicken".

Storytime - she sat still for a while but there were too many other things going on for her to sit quietly for 2 entire stories.

Thank you, Aunt Terry and Uncle Mike!

When we got home from running some errands this morning a package had been left on our doorstep by the mailman. Much to Helaina's delight, it was addressed to her. "For me?!", she said. We cut away the brown paper to reveal a wrapped gift for Helaina. She squealed with delight "It beautiful!"
Sticking the bows on her head.

"You read it."

Unwrapping is half the fun.

Another squeal when she saw the gum. "Orbit", she declared.

Cute new shirt and pants to wear to school.

You'll notice that Helaina has on pink Hello Kitty boots in all the pictures. We bought those this morning for her and she hasn't taken them off since we got home - absoluely loves them. They are quite the necessity as it's been very rainy here lately and everything is wet or muddy. We're heading out tonight to our FCC Lantern Festival celebration which includes a yummy Chinese dinner and home-made mooncakes for dessert. Helaina will get to play with all her little buddies and when it gets dark there will be a parade outside with all the kids holding their battery-powered lanterns. Should be fun and mercifully the rain has finally stopped. I think Daddy and I should have bought some Hello Kitty rubber boots too.

A sneak peak at trick or treat!

For Halloween last year I wanted Helaina to be a ladybug. I looked high and low for a ladybug costume that was cute AND reasonably priced. My search led me to $40 costumes and I refused to dish out that much money, so instead Helaina was a cute little pumpkin and she absolutely loved her costume. She didn't understand the hype about Halloween, but on Halloween night it didn't take her long to realize that all she had to do was ring a doorbell, say "trick treat" and "tank you" and she scored with candy. How adorable was she as a pumpkin - such a baby face!

This year she remembers very well what Halloween is all about and is anxiously awaiting the big event. In typical female form, she changed her mind about what she wanted to be at least 20 times - really. We checked out costumes in newspaper ads, in stores and on-line and every time she'd see something new, she'd change her mind and declare "No, I be this!" Here are some of her many choices before she finally settled: Uniqua, Pablo or Tyrone (all Backyardigans), Abby Cadabby, Elmo, Tinkerbell, bumble bee, witch, Dora, Kai-lan, Kiki (the Jumparounds), honey bear and a pumpkin. We were in Walmart a few weekends ago looking in the Halloween section, she saw a costume and yelled "I be that for Hallween!" We took it out of the package, tried in on and she proceeded to run through the aisles wearing the costume. She went up to one little girl in the store and said to her "you like my costume?" It was adorable and Helaina's thrilled with her choice. Tune in on Halloween for the complete outfit. Can you guess what she chose? (duh!)

Helping in the kitchen

Helaina loves to help in the kitchen no matter what the task is. While she was watching Blues Clues (which is a new favorite of hers) I went into the kitchen to start dinner. I began pounding out some cutlets and as soon as she heard the noise she came running to the kitchen. "I help! What we making? Cookies?" (cookies, how funny is that). I told her we were making pork cutlets. Her response: "I don't like pork cutlets." I told her that yes, she did and she said "Oh yah, I LOVE them!" She loved swinging the mallet too.


Funny Helaina:
I call Helaina our little parrot now. She hears EVERYTHING, remembers things we don't even know she's listening to and then blurts them out at the funniest moments. The other day I kept asking her to go do potty (because I knew she had to go) and she eventually said to me "No, I no have to. Told you million times!" Yowzers!

She's learned so much in school and many times yells out things the teachers say to the class. We went out to dinner at Tulley's a few weekends ago. At one point during dinner Helaina stood up in the booth and announced "Stop, look, listen! 5 more minutes to play!" and she did the sign language signals right along with it. We cracked up, along with the people who were sitting in the booth behind us.

She also goes around the house saying "keep your hands to yourself", "it clean up time" and "are you ready, are you ready, are you READY?"

The other day after Helaina used the bathroom we were in a hurry to go somewhere. I was helping Helaina and pulled up her undies and pants together all in one movement. She looked at me and very sternly said "no", pulled her pants and undies down, then proceeded to pull up only her Dora undies then her pants. "One at time" she said. When I asked who told her that she said "my teacher tell me". Guess what the teacher says is gospel!

Helaina sings

One morning last week Helaina was on a roll, singing songs and telling me stories. I went to grab the video camera to record her cuteness and of course, she no longer felt like performing when the camera was rolling. I still recorded her through the distractions (the dog and Dora) and coaxed the following out of her.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Benji, Duke, Earl and Coco

Since Helaina didn't get to ride a pony yesterday at the apple farm (poor child!), we took her to Hafner's this morning to satisfy her horsie urge. She rode Benji today, much to her delight.

Daddy and Helaina making their way through the hay bale maze.

Coco the clown was making balloon animals for all the kids. Helaina waited impatiently in line for her turn to ask Coco for an orange doggie.

Coco was very funny and began to sing "How much is that doggie in the window" while making the critter. You'd think that you had given Helaina the world with how happy she was with her free balloon doggie.

Sitting on the wagon pulled by Duke and Earl, 2 nice grey horsies who took us for a nice ride around the nursery grounds.

Feeding the goat some hay at the petting zoo.

So much for another weekend full of Fall activities.

More Fall Fun

We finally finished the apples we picked in September so we headed out to apple country again for another round of picking. We lucked out today with 5 varieties to choose from - red delicious, jonagold, empire, cortland and one other that I can't remember, all very sweet. We ended up with a variety that filled 3 bags. I see a pie or two in our future. One disappointment for Helaina was that the ponies weren't there for her to ride, bummer. Jim told her that they were home resting. Helaina thought about that for a second and then said "No, they home taking bath."

Riding on the tractor out into the orchard. Such a sweet face on such a wild child!

She spotted an "airpane".

"I climb this?" Uh, no ...

... not without Daddy. "Here, Momma. Put this my bag."

Big bite ...

... sweet and juicy.

She always has to sit down in the grass, pull a few samples and examine them.