Happy Halloween

I am the distributor of candy this year so thought I would blog in between trick-or-treaters. It was an odd day this year since Athena's school decided to enter the club of political correctness and not allow costumes at school. So this morning I sent my High School Senior off to school dressed as Mrs. Lovett and my 2nd grader had to wait until after school to wear her costume.
She did have a fun time at her "Harvest" party though. Shawn left work early and went with me as a surprise. She was very excited to have him there too! Then she was only home a couple of hours and asked to wear her costume so we put it on and had a photo shoot before dinner. Not sure if I was compensating for not getting to wear her costume to school, but I did end up with lots of pictures of Athena and only one of Hailey. Sorry Hailey. Maybe you can share some from your party with me? Hope everyone had a great night!

Oh yeah I can't forget Beary!

Open for business

I have an Etsy store!!! What is an Etsy store you ask? Well Etsy.com is a website devoted to selling handmade and vintage items. I have decided to see if I can make a few bucks with my hobby. If you want to check out my store (there are only 3 items in there so far) just click on my username over to the left under the My Etsy Site widget. Now just because you are my friend or are related to me in some way does not mean you are under any obligation to purchase anything. What I would really appreciate though is if you spread the word and tell everyone you know about it and maybe they would like to purchase something! :)

Carving Pumpkins

So last night we snuck in a last minute pumpkin carving session. With dance and play rehearsals it's hard to find an evening that we are all around the house at the same time. Hailey chose to go with a great Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. and Athena made hers Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas. She wanted to do Sully to go with Hailey's Mike but decided it was a little too hard. As alwyas the best part was watching their faces as they pulled out all the guts! There are a few more pictures on our flickr just click the link to the left if you want to see more. Hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween!

Missing Dad

Although it has been 15 years (as of yesterday) since I lost my father there is rarely a day that goes by that I don't think of him. Sometimes Athena will say something funny and I think "wow dad would have got a kick out of that" Or just the other day I was telling Hailey how all her music sounds the same and I had a flashback to High School and my Dad telling me the same thing. He has always been and will always be my moral compass. If I have a hard time distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong I try to imagine what he would have thought. Now this isn't to say that I always choose wisely but at least his memory keeps me a little more on the good side of things than not :) So everyone whose dad is still around give him a hug today or call and tell him how much he means to you. And if like me your Dad is no longer with you, try to do something that would make him proud of you today!

One gray hair

At first I convinced myself that it was just a really light hair from spending so much time in the sun, but today I am done with denial. I have 1 gray hair! So now what? Do I dye it? Do I leave it alone and go gray gracefully? Do I embrace it as proof that I am older and wiser? I have never been a vain person, I hardly ever wear make-up. Most of my clothes are from the clearance racks and I usually have a simple hairstyle that lets me only have to worry about getting it cut 3-4 times a year. I didn't freak out when I turned 30, I hardly even noticed when I crept over the closer to 40 mark. So why does 1 single gray hair give me so much to think about. Is it coincidence that it happens to be Hailey's senior year and I am nostalgic anyway? Well I know I am not the first person to find a gray hair, and won't be the last so I guess I will just do what I usually do in life and see what comes next.

Better living through baking update

So those of you that remember me talking about better living through baking are probably wondering how my experiment turned out (or maybe not) Well.... to be honest it was too hard to keep up. It seems that if there is homemade bread in the house my family eats it up in an instant. And since Shawn is the one that usually makes breakfast on the weekends it wasn't really fair to make him cook muffins and pancakes form scratch all the time. But what I am proud to say is that I have not brought a store made cookie into this house for over 2 months! And we have found lots of new favorites! I found having home made cookies around was really quite easy since I could whip up a big batch of dough but only cook a tray full and freeze the rest in ready made balls of dough that could easily be popped in the oven and ta-da fresh baked cookies whenever we wanted them! So yes we could save a little money making our own baked goods but it was really hard. But I will continue to make as many things as I can at home, mostly because I know that the cookies and bread and muffins that I make have none of those ingredients that I can't pronounce in them.

Field trip

I went on a field trip this week with Athena's class to Pioneer Village (nope not the one in Lagoon) It was a pretty cool place. All the buildings and things in them were either from the actual time period or exact replicas. Some of them were not much but a few walls of stone but there was a really cool old Victorian house that was moved from downtown Phoenix. The kids had a scavenger hunt where they had to answer questions about each building. Then there was a shoot out at the end of the day that the kids all got a big kick out of.

Funny thing that happened was our group kind of wandered around with another group that of a mom I know. Well we were supposed to hear a whistle for lunch time. We never did and as we were heading up to the gun fight Athena's teacher called me and said we were missing lunch. Oops! Then after the gun fight there were about 15 minutes to use the restroom and visit the gift shop. Everyone was just sort of hanging around in this one area until it was time to go and one of the kids said "what is that building?" Pointing across the way, so we went in to check it out. We were only in there about 5 minutes but as I was walking out I saw Athena's teacher looking around. She was looking for us again! What a great impression I made, hopefully I will still be invited back for the next one!

Suddenly Fall, Homecomings and Beary goes to school

Fall has finally arrived in Arizona. It is still strange to have a feeling I can only describe as spring fever in October! There are no 100's in the forecast and this weekend was absolutely perfect. Many hours were spent just sitting on the patio enjoying the weather, watching Athena on the swing set. Sunday morning a breeze even blew through that had me wanting a sweater and slippers. Yay! It's my favorite time of year once again.

Hailey did some dress recycling recently when she went to not only one but two Homecomings. First she decided at the last minute to go to her own with a big group of friends. None of which had a date so they just went all together and had a great time.


Then she was invited to Homecoming at Sunrise Mountain by a boy she met in Summer Theater. She had a good time at that one too. She got to see all her friends from theater and it was a surprise to them that she was going to be there.



This is a picture of Beary going to school today. Athena's teacher has a really great reward system for the kids positive behavior. They receive Maldonado (her teachers last name) money for exhibiting good behavior. Then on Friday's they get to "visit" Maldonado Market and there are various privileges they can "buy". One time she bought the honor of sitting by a friend. Or there is one that is wear your slippers to school. She has been saving up to bring a stuffed animal to school for a while now and was very excited to take Beary along today.