Halloween Round Up And A Bit More

Kids change your life, blah blah, you've heard it all before. The one part that I didn't anticipate was how my blog writing life would suffer. I mainly default to pictures of Harper simply because that's quick and easy. Okay okay I admit she's pretty cute too so I know it's not toooo horrible for you. (It's not, right??)

But I sometimes miss my really bloggy life. Writing about my time in Belfast on Game of Thrones - OMG that was five years ago this month. I miss writing about LA, events, music, food, wacky stuff. Remember when I walked the entirety of Western Ave in the Fall of 2008? That was amazing.

Even just random LA things "ICME" = It Caught My Eye stuff. Like this one:

Saw on a car during one of my morning Constitutionals. Awesome.

 

 

You know what I'm obsessed with lately? Serial Podcast. From the amazing people who do This American Life. I first heard about Serial no TAL, and thought - really? One Story for hours and hours? Now I am HOOKED! I wrote them fan mail. I can't wait to listen to today's episode! I can't wait to see what comes of it all and I can't wait to know what their next Serial story will be! How can they top this? It makes for great exercise listening as you don't want to STOP until the whole hour is done.

 

 

I like to garden, not a ton, but planting tomatoes and beans is fun every spring. Harper liked picking beans and eating them right off the shrub. For fall I planted a whole bunch of kale. It was doing great and I was excited to pick some to eat. Then Harper got sick, I got sick, Halloween, etc. So I went out to look and...uh...WTF!?

Caterpillars!! Well, I hope there are lots and lots of beautifully healthy butterflies out there somewhere soon. Silver lining is, there are tiny sprouts of new leaves coming in the middle so maybe they got the first crop and there will be a second one coming along soon?

Fall seemed to arrive in late October. (Though today it's going to be 90 so whatever.) In the few moments we had cool weather, I introduced Harper to tea. (Plus I think it was nice for her cough roughened throat.) Chamomile and honey. I think she really liked the whole process including the teapot. Child sized Monkey teacups also helped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then of course there was Halloween.

Kurt carved a pumpkin under Harper's watchful eye.

She seemed to then  -- what's that phrase? -- look askance at it. But can you ever really trust a Jack-o-Lantern?

At Harper's Preschool they had dress up day on the 30th. Harper had two costume choices and chose Princess Leia for that School Day. Of course she didn't want to put it on after all. But being wiser than I ever expected myself to be, I took it to school and, well, what do you know? She wanted to wear her costume after seeing everyone else dressed up!

Big Ups to Uncle Tom Ford for the costume. Best Princess Costume Ever! (Elsa who?)

And the big night itself. We had a hand-me-down Tinkerbell costume that Harper also liked, but she was still being fussy about wearing it or the Leia costume for the actual night. I told her no trick or treating and especially, NO CANDY unless she put one of them on. She picked Tinkerbell and I just jammed it on her and we left.

We met up with the Other Harper and had two blocks of fun candy gathering. These first two pictures were taken by Other Harper's mom, Mercie. She is a fantastic photographer!

This was just me with my iphone...

Harper enjoyed herself quite a bit. And when we got home, I knew that she was going to love Halloween a lot from now on.

I quote Harper: "THIS IS ALL MINE!" while wrapping her arms around her haul. That's my girl!