Trick-or-Treat!

Since the crazy October Nor'easter blew into town right before Halloween, trick-or-treating was postponed throughout the land.  Our town held it's trick-or-treat night last Thursday.  And, as we have done the last few years, we went trick-or-treating with Sarah and her littles (Ben of course stays behind to man the haunted house he creates each year).  We headed over a little early, to catch up with our friends, have some dinner, and to help with the set up of this years (very scaled down) haunted house (a first for the girls).

Grace however could not be convinced that putting fake bones on the front lawn would be fun.  She chose to stay inside safely beside Sarah.

The three musketeers.

I love how they were all things found in nature.  And no, we didn't plan that to happen!

A couple of days later, one of the towns next to us (our adopted town) held it's trick-or-treat night.  Friends of ours who live there invited us to come along. So back on went the Halloween costumes, except this time the girls got to have their faces painted!

Note to self: spend more time figuring out the best camera setting to use for dim lighting. 

Clearly, there are benefits to snowstorms in October, if for no other reason than you get to go trick-or-treating more than once!  

{This Moment}

{This Moment} - A SouleMama Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. Have a delightful weekend friends!



Painting

Grace has really fallen in love with wet-on-wet watercolor painting.  Not only is it an absolutley beautiful style of painting (every picture looks incredible) but it's also something that, right now, is just hers.  It is only done when Emma is not at home.  Not because we don't think Em couldn't handle it (because we all know she could), but mostly beacuase sometimes it's just nice to have something that is yours and yours alone.  Emma's time to learn wet-on-wet painting will come, but until that day arrives this is something special just for Grace.  Whenever she has painted, the house has been quiet, beautiful music is playing and Grace just gets lost in the beauty of it all.  It really is a truly magical time.

Our Tree of Thanks (A Month Long Adventure)

In the wake of the October Nor'easter we discovered that we had a perfect branch in the yard just waiting to be used for something special.  When I asked the girls what we should do with it Grace replied: "We should make a Thanksgiving tree!"  What a perfect idea!  I have wanted to do something like this since they were little, and given the perfect tree branch and Grace's idea, I took it to mean this was the year to begin this lovely tradition!  Last night, was our first night with our Thanksgiving Tree and Grace shared that she was "...thankful for Mother Earth" and Emma shared that she was "...thankful for Mama".  We continued today (as you've seen above) and will each add another leaf to the tree each day for the entire month of November.  We invite you to stop by anytime and add a leaf to our tree!  We can't wait to share all that we are thankful for with everyone at the end of the month!  And if you're so inspired to join us in our month long thanks giving adventure we'd love to hear what you are thankful for too!  



October Nor'easter

Our adventures with this nor'easter began Saturday night around 7:00pm when we lost power.  While we had heard that wide spread power outages could occur, for some reason I don't think many of us put much stock in it.  After all, we are hearty New Englanders.  Winter storms are part of our way of life up here.  Or maybe it was the fact that this winter storm was taking place in October, which is clearly not winter by any stretch of the imagination.  Regardless, we embraced this storm for all it was worth and commenced with Candy Land and let the night roll from there.  Shortly after this picture was taken we all headed up to bed.  Our bed and the girls each had blakets on it since the night promised to be very cold (thanks to the lack of power and therefor heat).  It was a rough night of sleep, listening to trees and their branches falling all night.  Thankfully the girls slept through beautifully, David and I howerver, did not.  The next morning we woke up to this:

We had been smart enough to put key items in the milk box as well as a cooler the night before.  It was really neat seeing the milk box full, and it was lovely not to loose all the perishables in our fridge (like we had eight weeks earlier during Hurricane Tropical Storm Irene.

Cake was had for breakfast.  This was mostly due to the fact that we don't have a gas stove and cannot therefor eat the traditional New England storm breakfast of pancakes or french toast!

There was lots of time spent upstairs in our room, snuggled under the lovely blankets.  We read in bed. Colored in bed.  Snacked in bed. Snuggled in bed.  And pretty much lived under those covers until we could not take it anymore and had to head out.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  As long as we could get warm. 

We never did get to carve our pumpkins. 

Thankfully, LL Bean had this lovely camping stove just waiting for us to come along and give it a good home.  We put it to use right away and made a lovely pot of mint hot chocolate.  After all, what good is playing in the snow if you can't warm up with some hot chocolate?

My Facebook status update on Halloween said it best: "30 hours after losing power we finally got it back! While we had a fine time roughing it, the hardest part was being without heat for so long (especially since it was so cold out. 20 degrees last night alone!). We actually put the old fashioned milk box on our front porch to good use, and piled on lots of blankets and had lots and lots of snuggle time! So grateful that the girls share a bed so that they had eachother to keep them warm (under their five blankets) when they weren't snuggled in bed with us. Loved waking up this morning to Dave saying to me: "I love that we weathed yet another storm together." And so begins the tenth anniversary of the day we got engaged!"