What-What?! Week of December 20th

 This last week was Corwin's 11th birthday!  We went ahead and celebrated on his birthday.  This year, he picked out a carrot cake, which the husband made (from scratch!) and I decorated.

Excited to open presents!

This is a pretty cool set :)

We got him an enameled metal dice set

It came in this lovely tin

"Mom, you read the front and I'll read the back"

Saffron picked this out for him!  It's this cool ice blizzard wolf fantasy figure toy thing.  He's making the same face as the wolf.

This is a card game that Oz picked out for him -- I haven't gotten a chance to play it with him yet, but the boys played and it sounds fun.

The peanut gallery

11 candles made it very bright!

I have approximately a million blurry photos of Corey trying to blow this one last candle out. xD

This next week is Christmas, so there'll be a lot more photos next week! :)

What-What?! Week of November 8th

To re-iterate from last week:  This year, Osric dressed as Link from Legend of Zelda, Saffron as a Japanese Kappa, and Corwin as Luigi from Super Mario Brothers.

Saffron being an evil kappa

What's this?!  A pirate meets a kappa!

The way to defeat a kappa is to bow to them -- they are very formal and will bow back, causing the water on their head to drip out and severely weaken the kappa

Dramatic pose is GO!

I don't know what's up with this face, but I thought it was hilarious

LENS FLARE

I could not get Corey to smile at all until I talked him into doing some Luigi poses and dances.  He was all smiles after that :)

The husband and I got out our pirate costume pieces, pretty much at the last minute

We always have to do this picture xD

Beyond getting dressed up and taking pictures, we also played some games and generally just hung out.  The husband and I set up a giant board game in the house, from the back door all the way to the end of the hallway.  We laid out pieces of construction paper as game board spaces, and had the kids move from space to space.  Each space had candy on it, and then they also had to complete an activity -- we did things like "Do your best zombie impersonation", "Combine two foods to make something gross", "Throw the slime ball into the basket", and "Sing a spooky song".  It was a lot of fun and definitely a "do again" activity.  As far as I could tell, there was no trick-or-treating in our neighborhood at all, so I'm really glad we were still able to have some fun.

What-What?! Week of November 1st

 This was a big weekend!  It was both Saffron's birthday on Thursday, and Halloween yesterday.  I took it off as a long weekend, since I haven't taken very much time off this year (go figure).

Saffron turned 13, so she's now a teenager and everything.  Wow.

For her cake, she had a Victoria sandwich cake -- this is a British cake, very similar to a pound cake, with strawberry jam and whipped cream filling.  It was excellent -- very buttery, and a nice change from more conventional American cakes.

(Don't count the number of candles... we might have run out >___> )

Lots of presents!

It was only after she started trying to open presents that I remembered how difficult this unicorn wrapping paper is to tear...  oops

Some manga -- Flying Witch books 7 and 8

And a comic book -- this is a Squirrel Girl comic

This present took two people to open it... it was the birthday of hard to open presents xP

More BOOKS!  Chronicles of Chrestomanci

Harry Potter Lego set -- this was the one she really wanted, the Room of Requirement.  This set's pretty cool, I like some of the mechanics related to how they hide the door.

Oz picked this Harry Potter set out for Saffron --Rise of Voldemort

And Corey picked out the board game Clue -- we actually played this as well, and that was pretty fun

I'm only posting one picture of Halloween -- it's taken me forever to upload / post just these pictures, so I'll be posting more next week.  Here's Osric as Link from Legend of Zelda, Saffron as a Japanese Kappa, and Corwin as Luigi from Super Mario Brothers

What-What?! Week of October 4th

The grandparents requested child pictures, so here are some from this last week -- the weather was delightfully not too wet, so we spent some time riding scooters / bikes.

Saffron's too tall for her bike now.  Not sure we're going to fix that before the rains come this year, though -- probably looking at something more like adult sized now?  She's getting tall.

This is like my life in a nutshell.  Turn around and BAM!  There's Osric, doing his Osric thing, right next to me.

Oz was pleased he got this so high -- surprisingly, it stayed up for a few hours.  How do you know you don't have toddlers in the house anymore?  I'm thinking this is a good indication.