Stranded- Henry.

As the hurricane moved up the coast, we got multiple reports about how bad it was going to be.  At the very least, we were sure we'd lose power, as Pepco, our power company tends to go down every time it sprinkles.  School was preemptively cancelled for Monday and Tuesday and papa and June decided to stay in Ohio until it was all over (more because of the huge snow storm moving across West Virginia and Pennsylvania.)

I woke mama up at 7am with a report that weather.com said we were under the worst part of the hurricane. She tried to tell me it was neither windy nor raining, but I believe what the internet tells me.  Mama quickly started hoping the electricity would go out soon.

Luckily, she had a few crafts in mind for the long days we'd be stuck inside.  First we made crystal ornaments by dissolving Borax in hot water and hanging pipe cleaners in the solution.   

The next morning we had crystals.  This was really fun, but really only took up about 5 minutes.  

  

I went out into the hallway (I'm pretty sure I'd at least put on pants at that point) to decorate our front door.  June made the little pumpkins.  Grace and I decorated the big pumpkin.  It's a combination of all kids' Halloween costumes.  Yellow hair for Rapunzel (Audrey), pirate eye patch and sword (June and I) and a missing witch hat for Grace.  I even set up some glow sticks and the flashing flash light to make it look spooky at night.

Did you notice Miss Leah's door in the party pictures?  I decided I wanted to decorate our door too.  This is Frankendoor.  (And I put the stickers on too.)

Mama let me look at a kids' crafts blog and I got the idea of freezing toys in big chunks of ice.  Mama also made some colored ice cubes too.  Then she gave me big containers of baking soda and vinegar and an eye dropper.  I stayed busy for an hour.  Gerogie, notorious bath-hater, cried for 20 minutes, thinking we'd make her get in too.  After she realized she didn't have to get in, she had fun playing with bath toys on the outside of the tub.

On Monday night, the hurricane (now a superstorm) finally hit us.  It did get pretty windy and rained some, but it didn't seem like anything too dangerous.  Mama thinks there wasn't much damage because the big storm this summer already knocked down all the dead branches.  We parked the Camry under a big tree hoping it might fall down and crunch it, but the tree proved to be too sturdy and strong.  

On Tuesday, we still had power.  Mama and I set up the sewing machine and made a project of every stitch on the machine.  

And Georgie and I cuddled on the couch and pretended to sleep.

While we played, mama worked on a project for June.  June loves the Dolly Parton song "Coat of Many Colors," so mama decided to make one for June.  Just like in the song, mama made it all from scraps of fabric she had or that Aunt Jenni donated for the cause.  The patches are even sewn on to an old sweatshirt Miss Cooper gave us from when she was a kid.  We think Dolly would be proud.   

Pre-hurricane preparedness- Henry.

Miss Leah invited us back over before the hurricane to help out with a very urgent matter.  She had bushels of applesauce that needed to be chopped, boiled, squeezed and turned into applesauce. 

Mama was happy to oblige.

Especially when she heard Miss Leah had a squeezo!  I'm sure no one else in the world called them that, but mama went on and on about how many tons of tomatoes she squeezed in one of these when she was little.   

We couldn't find a proper ledge to attach the squeezo, so we improvised.  It looked a little goofy, but it got the job done. (Thanks to me.  I did most of the turning.)   At the end of the day, they'd canned 37 quarts of applesauce and we still saw no sign of a hurricane.

Miss Leah's Halloween Party- JoJo.

If you know Miss Leah, she loves a chance to dress up and have a theme party.  She and Miss Melissa put together an awesome Halloween party! 

Complete with spooky decorations and theme food!

In addition to the graveyard pudding we made, we also made these monster teeth from apples and marshmallows.

Outside, Miss Melissa put up a pumpkin pinata she'd made.  Youngest go first, so up came Tommy.

He is so cute.

Since I'm a week older than Tommy, i was next.  I wasn't really into it. 

 (Here's my gnome costume, by the way.  If only I'd agreed to the hat.  It was so cute!)

Next up, Olivia, dressed as Olivia the Pig.

I like how excited Henry looks in these pictures.  Like any of the little kids are going to bust open that pinata before he got a chance.

Maddie took a swing.

Then Henry the pirate.  He knocked a good sized hole in the side of the pumpkin.

Anna finished his work.  I think she should win for best costume.  That face paint was so cool!

When that pumpkin finally came down, it was full of candy.  Good candy!  Real chocolate!  Kit Kats and Reese's Cups!

The other Olivia seems mostly interested in the glow sticks.

While I went straight for the candy.

What do you mean I can't have more than 3 pieces BEFORE supper?

After a supper that went largely untouched by the kids, there were more games.  Pumpkin bowling, anyone?

And all the kids were lined up in the hallway to get their   desserts.

I love Halloween.  I made a mess of everything.  You might even be able to see the cakey handprint  I left on the wall.

After the desserts, I had to be stripped down. It's always a sign of a good party when your innie pops out to an outie.  great job, Miss Leah and Miss Melissa!

Henry was so jazzed and over-sugared, he was up twice barfing that night.  Hopefully that taught him a lesson about over-indulging on candy.

Down to 3!- Henry.

After our stream of visitors, we had a quiet week. 

Papa worked late a few nights.  One night, mama didn't feel like cooking supper or arguing with us about food, so she just let us eat cereal instead.  Followed up with candy necklaces left over from last Christmas. (Don't ask why she even bothered to move them up here.  She can't get rid of food.) 

June picked a flower on a walk and wanted to hang it on her bed.  She designed this flower pot to put it in.

News of Hurricane Sandy started trickling in.  Mama decided she was going to hold tight here in Maryland.  Papa and June weren't going to risk it and bailed for the Cleve.  Really, papa was going to meet up with the 601 guys and knew it would be easier on the rest of us (mama) if he took one kid with him.  June was so pumped!

That's a look of joy that only comes when you're in route to C-town.

Down one kid, mama and I devised a plan to get out of the house for a night on the town.   We shipped Jo off to Olivia's house for the night, then headed for the train down to DC.  It's a 45 minute ride by train.  We both read our books and on our way off the train, someone stopped to tell me how great it was that I was using my spare time to read.  (I finished the first Harry Potter that night.  It's awesome!)

We came down to the city to meet up with mama's high school friends, Miss Mindy and Mister Kevin.  They were in town for a conference and for Miss Mindy to run the Marine Corp Marathon.  We did some obligatory carbo-loading and walked around the capitol at night.   

No carbo-load is complete without ice cream!  When we bid them good-bye we jumped back on the train and headed to our friend, Miss Sara's house.  She travels a lot and gave us keys so we can visit there when she's gone.  We've already taken advantage of it many time.  I felt pretty cool when we got off the train at U-Street (super-hip and super-jumping) at 10:30 at night and got to walk to Miss Sara's house.  

The next day, we had to do some serious preparing for Miss Leah's Halloween party.  We decided to make dirt pudding- Halloween-style.

That's one spooky dirt pudding graveyard!

Why Tattle Fish?

We generally reserve our new blog names well in advance of actually needing them.  In fact, we might actually have one referencing four children back when mama and papa were dreaming about how great kids are (we must have been gone when that happened).  But if you've ever tried to find a blog name on blogger, you'll know that every single blog was snatched up in 2005, one post was written, and the whole thing was promptly abandoned.  (Curse you, Bilbo Bloggins!)

So we set out to find something that was fun and not terribly boring.  That proved to be fruitless for a few days.  (Update your blog or let it go, Kenny Bloggins!)  So we then took to walking around the house and naming random things and checking to see if that blog was already taken.  Then we happened upon this guy:

Tattle Fish was invented by Henry on one of those evenings when Brandon was working late, I was trying to make supper, and everyone was fighting with everyone.  Knowing that I'd probably send him to his room if he came in one more time to tattle on his sisters, Tattle Fish was born.  Henry also created tattle forms on the computer.  Circle who is being tattled on, X out who is doing the tattling, and circle what happened to you.  This form only allows you to tattle on hitting and pinching, a rampant problem that I actually wasn't aware of.  Needless to say, Tattle Fish has been a booming success for the one kid in the house who can read and write. I'd also like to note that Olivia is also included on the tattle form (she was over that night).  But we didn't want to publicly implicate her in our insolence for all time, so we didn't take a picture of her name.  But we're ready just in case.