How to Make a Tasty Father-and-Son's Camp

Ingredients:

1 Father

1 or more Sons

1  Grandfather (optional, but improves flavor greatly)

20 Twinkies

450 marshmallows

50 cans soda

4 packages hot dogs or similar, with buns and condiments

Tent and sleeping bags

Matches (and lighter fluid for those who have achieved Eagle Scout or who have paid their camping dues)

Stick

Use matches (and lighter fluid) to start fire.  Give stick to Son and let him poke fire/cook hot dogs/toast marshmallows/eat Twinkies/drink soda as required and as long as Mom doesn't find out.  Father and Grandfather should stay up all night deep in conversation to guard camp against roaming feral hogs.  Return home next morning and scoff when Mom asks what activities were planned.

Holiday Update:

The Witch has been a good Witch this year.

A very good Witch.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving celebration started early this year with Pippi's schools turkey trot. Parents were invited to participate, so I walked 10 laps, the equivalent of 2 miles around the track. Pippi did 13 laps or 2.5 miles. Bardo played on the playground with some friends while Pippi and I walked for the Red Cross.

Pippi also had an in-class pilgrim celebration that she was pretty excited about. She wore her indian hat for nearly twenty-four hours straight and made a sword out of scotch tape and paper to tuck into her belt. When she came home from school after the celebration she was very excited because her teacher had allowed all the children who chose to be "indians" to take off their shoes. Here's a picture of Pippi in her beloved hat showing us her sour face.
Bardo needed to show his sour face, too. Doesn't he look like Nick, here? I'm sure this mouth will be able to consume a half pumpkin pie quickly when it reaches full maturity.
Even though we were far away from family, we still managed to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday thanks to wonderful friends. For Thanksgiving we trekked the 5 blocks to our friends the Lewises where they hosted an amazing feast with several other families. We only had to prepare 4 things. It seemed like so little that the Warlock decided to make 2 turkeys (one with a super special brine and one fried--thanks to our neighbors the Farrells) instead of one. He also couldn't resist making mashed potatoes with cream and cream cheese and more cheese, and of course, garlic. The one bite I allowed myself was pretty tasty. I went out on a limb and made Wild Rice Stuffing. I tried to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, mostly because I take up a lot of space these days. (The following candid and unflattering shot was courtesy of Pippi, once again.)Pippi spent the morning volunteering to help with the cooking and devotedly watching the turkey.Hunter watched the turkey particularly carefully, as well.

Questions from perfect strangers that irritate me in my hormonally charged state

Now, I'm only irritated when it's people that I have never met before in my life or see only occasionally, like the bagger at my grocery store. Friends and relatives can feel free to ask me these questions.

When are you due?
Got a name picked out? What is it?
Are you excited to have another one? (Seriously. I can't imagine why anyone would get into this with a stranger. I do happen to be very excited to welcome another girl into the family, but what if I wasn't? What do people expect with this silly small talk?)

There's Hope

Today I had a little activity with the 12 and 13 year-old girls at church. All of them are very cute and very sweet, but the best news of all is how they still adore their mothers. Really. Almost every girl, without any prompting from me, shared a story of how their mother saved them from a babysitting difficulty. (The topic of the night was babysitting.) So maybe I still will have a good 5 years of adoration from Pippi if I play my cards right.

Halloween

Pumpkin carving, root beer with dry ice, and trick-or-treating all made Halloween SO fun for our little Belle and our little lion. Belle loved the social trick-or treating with the Warlock. The lion loved that too, but he loved the all-you-can drink cooler full of root beer placed at his height for easy dispensing more. We are so grateful for our fun and safe neighborhood.

A Special Talent

For those of you who've wondered how the Warlock can put down so much food and entertain us all with farm stories during the course of a meal, I don't have pictures of how extremely wide his mouth can open or how far his cheeks can stretch. But, no one can deny that the ability to eat half of a pumpkin pie in less than a minute is pretty amazing. The closest competitor was one quarter of a pie behind. Thanks Taylor for taking the pictures.

Harvest-time Trivia

Q:  How fast can somebody eat half of a pumkin pie - the big one from Costco?

A:  In about 60 seconds, if competition is involved.  But you don't get to taste a lot of it along the way.