Halloween 2013

My feelings and perspective on many things have flipped in the past year, including Halloween. Still didn't want my kids to over-indulge in candy but did want to encourage their creativity and fun. Everyone got to chose anything they wanted to be, no constraints on a unifying theme or only re-using items from the dress-up box.

David fell absolutely in love with the Punk Skeleton costume he spied at WalMart, which he called a "cary kelitin."

Charlie wanted to be a super hero, so I suggested we make him some muscles to wear under his Batman pajamas, and found an awesome mask and gloves online to complete the look.

Samuel looked on the same website and chose the wizard costume.

Isaac decided he didn't want to dress up at all. He helped me pass out candy at the door while Mark walked his brothers around the neighborhood. David came home after just our street. He was cold and thought he had plenty of treats already - about 8, ha!

Aquarium in Idaho?!

Yeah, so I was pretty surprised to learn just this past year that there is an aquarium in Boise, the Idaho Aquarium. I saw a homeschooling mom or two post about taking her kids, even raving about it, so figured we better check it out. We did so after one of Isaac's Boise-located soccer matches. I was skeptical when we got there. I mean, how could a tiny warehouse between the mall and a car dealership be all that awesome? And it was pretty expensive! But, to support local business and see what was interesting and unique, we went ahead with our plan. I'm glad we did.

The coolest thing to me was how much was touchable. The typical tidepool stuff like starfish, but also the rays (we got to feed them, for extra $), and lizards (at an aquarium?). There was also an interesting live mangrove display.

I wouldn't go back as often as, say, the zoo but I would go back if we were studying something that could be reinforced by another visit. It's was a fun family activity.

McCall Snapshots

A dozen years, or really just eight months ago, I wrote here of begrudgingly going up to McCall but with hope for heading there again in the summer. Continuing the trend of this mostly fabulous year, we did make it up to the condo before Labor Day. Our week included warm sunshine on the beach, playing in the water, hiking into the woods to make our own secluded smores firepit, riding ATVs (Mark spent the better part of one day fixing the older one), Ice Cream Alley, and even having breakfast at The Pancake House one morning -- something I cannot recall ever doing with our kids, and so not in the past ten years.

Pancake House by Tom Stewart Photography

Another surge of awesomeness in my August was finally getting a smartphone, an iPhone 4S to be exact (picked because it's connector would attach to all my iPod compatible devices). I mention that because I chose to use the phone's camera in place of any of my fancier models for sheer portability and perspective (I did it again on my quick trip to Seattle), and to explain the noticeable difference in quality of photos.

On our drive home we passed a roadside fire that was clearly just beginning to take off into a much bigger disaster. Shortly after rounding the bend past the worst of it, our truck broke down. We were so grateful that it was shortly before closing time at the NAPA in Council, a few miles behind us on the other side of the fire, because Mark convinced a couple employees to bring a new battery to us on their way home from work. Our boys made the best of this hot, boring wait. We got to watch firefighters, including a helicopter, put out the fire in the distance.

The truck problem turned out to be electrical beyond just the battery and it was another stroke of luck that it was temporarily fixable - enough for us to drive home safely and be put more completely to rights the next day.