Go Diego, Go!

I don't John knew what was up today. I guess that was a good thing, so we didn't have to listen to it all day long. After nap, we clued him in. He got dressed in his Diego costume and headed out to his school's festival. He enjoyed it and then we came home to eat some dinner before heading out for the main event - trick or treating.

We set our pumpkin's out and waited for some kids to appear. Meanwhile I took some photos of John and John conversing about the pumpkin and the little things John found to attract his attention.

When some kids appeared on the street, we headed out to cover two nearby cul-de-sacs before heading home to hand out some of our own candy. Even with our short trip, we have more candy than will get eaten in the near future. If you've ever seen our candy bowl, you know this is true. Just today I threw away candy from Valentine's Day. The trick - I put it in a stainless mixing bowl on the bar. JHP knows what's in it, but out of sight is out of mind. Same goes for me, too.

-EBP-

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Hot Air!

Saturday night we all went to the Ballunar Liftoff Festival held right in our backyard at NASA's JSC. While I don't think we all thought it was such a hot idea to have brought JHP to this event when we first got there and for a while after that, I think the finale of our evening might have changed our minds. We missed out on the evening flight as the winds were way too high for the balloons to lift off. You can tell the by the flag in the first photo. Even after sundown they fought pretty hard to keep those two balloons in control via long tethers. And a note on the globe balloon in the second and third photo: This was it's debut. It was created by using satellite imagery inkjeted onto the fabric and hand sewn together. And it was really cool!

Lots of standing/sitting around with large crowds is probably not the most ideal place for our child at this age. We've asked a lot of him is the last few weeks with all the adventures we've been on. Overall on this adventure, he did pretty well. He's just two and while the half hour of glow was really cool, what led up to it really didn't hold his attention for any length of time. One day his parents might learn not to ask so much of him.

-EBP-

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Pumpkin Carving

After promising John that we'd carve the pumpkin today, it was finally time to do it after lunch. He almost wore us down because he asked so many times when we were going to do it. We assembled what we needed on the back porch and got started. Daddy cut the top and started to scoop out the insides. JHP's job was supposed to be scooping. But once he saw the messy insides, he wasn't much up for it.

So while we worked on the pumpkin carving, John worked on decorating his little pumpkin with markers.

JHP had picked a spider out of the pattern book. I punched the holes. I tried to get John to help, but he wasn't much interested in watching me punch holes. Then Daddy and I carefully cut the pattern out of the pumpkin.

Once we cut it all cut out and the pieces removed, it was time for neatening up out design. That was mostly Daddy's job.



And here's our finished work.


Funny story: On the way home tonight (more to come on where we were at), John asked if we could sing Happy Birthday to the Spider Pumpkin. Well, I guess. Daddy pointed out that it WAS kind of born today. So when we got home, we lit the candle, turned out the lights, basked in our achievement, and sang Happy Birthday to our spider pumpkin. The JHP tried to blow of the candle.

-EBP-

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