You have been BOO'd!

Halloween is the perfect time for good little goblins to come out and play. Spread the fun by leaving a bag of goodies with the Wee Ghostie poem and drawing below on the doorstep of a friend or neighbor's house the week before Halloween but don't let them see you! Click on the ghostie below and save to your computer, then print him out to add to your goodie bag!

Goodie bag ideas:
Candy
Puzzles
Games
Halloween DVDs
Toys
Coloring pages
Crayons
Fake vampire teeth
Halloween makeup
Stickers

Include this poem and the directions with your Wee Ghostie bag:

It all started with a little BOO
A knock upon the door and off they flew!
Halloween is almost here, the leaves are flying by
The pumpkins are ripe, there’s a witch in the sky!
Wee Ghostie came by the light of the moon
Put him in your window, it’s not too soon!

You have been BOO'd!
Choose two families and pass on a treat, make a copy of the ghostie and add it in so they can join in the fun! Put your Wee Ghostie in the window so others will know you’re part of the party!



Happy Halloween!

My favorite places

I'm on the net. A lot. And as I fumble around the baby and writerly sites, I pick up on some of the coolest blogs/websites out there. Just had to share some of my favorites!

Offbeat homes - my friend Jennifer's blog on some of the most creative and crazy houses on the planet.

Hippie sounds Another great site from Jennifer, she has excellent taste in music. ;)

Tree Hugging Family Get with the green, people!

Family Resource My buddy Julie's blog. Excellent information and she's a hoot!

Bea's Beatitudes My good friend Bea is a farmer in Tenn. A definite blogstop for herbal recipes, lore and great information -- sign up for the newsletter!

The Ardennes Ghost Project

Absolute Write -- I cannot thank this place enough for kickstarting my writing career. Seriously. If you ever even fancied a thought about writing, come and visit this amazing resource.

Many more coming but I need more coffee!

Feel better now!

I've been studying reflexology for years, combined with essential oils, this is a great simple way to better health!

Click here for your tooties!

So close!

We're in the final throes of housebuilding! Drywall started today!

1st day of school

Ok, I'm not as geeky as I look. It's taken me three weeks to figure out how to take the thingy out of the camera and upload photos to the laptop. Pfffttt. This is what I married Bryan for!

Oddpodz finals!

It's been a long time coming due to a recent overhaul to their site but the Oddpodz t-shirt slogan finals are here! Please vote for "work in progress" many many times. Mama has ten wee feet to shod!

I'll post a picture of the winner here!

Houston, we have space camp

And a visit from our cousin, Sophie!

of bats and men

Rowyn's GS troop worked on their Bronze Award this summer, completing three (and one more to come) bat houses for our area! I've been working with them on bat conservation and how they can make a difference! Great job, girls!

To create your own bat house, we loved these simple instructions: http://www.batmanagement.com/Batcentral/boxbuild/Small1.html

Go GO Speed Racer!

Syenna took to race car driving like a...well, like a 10yr old race car driver. She tore up the track!

Feeling moddy

How fun is this? I was named the new Children's Forum co-mod for Absolute Write, one of the most respected writer's boards on the net! I highly recommend this board for anyone even thinking of writing; it covers nearly every genre and can help with everything from getting started to celebrating your first novel. Come on over and say howdy!

Who me? Write a book?

Yep. Call me a late bloomer. After nearly fifteen years of Bryan bugging me to write a book so he can retire in style, I've started a ghost story. Now I've written ghost stories before but not with this much spirit. ba dum dum.

Check back here for updates, I'm on chapter six of Beyond the Pale!

I'm a Rockin' Mama!

How fun is this? I was asked by a fellow AWer to be her first in a series of Rockin' Mamas at sheknows.com! The link is up today so go check it out. I'm talking about Wynter's birth, how the girls all had "y"s in their names and why I'm a bad-ass mama. Ok, not really the last one but it's my blog and I'll shake my bad thang if I want to. :P

Check it out before I'm going tomorrow!

Up in the air, Junior Birdman

Rowyn and her cousin, Sophie, have left for Space Camp this week, courtesy of their grandparents. All the Tang they can drink and vomit on the whirl-a-girl for six days! This is Rowyn's first plane trip without an adult along so we were both a little nervous, so much for being the cool mom. I only tried once to get onboard with them...

The house is coming along swimmingly, just waiting for the last bit of ductwork to come in before we bring in the contractors for drywall et al. School starts in three weeks, eh, who needs a toilet?

Vyolette loves Gene

Who knew?

I always suspected one of my children would be a rock groupie but at 16 months? Tonight, while her teething kept her up, Vyolette saw for the first time her true love: Gene Simmons of KISS. She howled when she saw him in full costume and clapped as he tried to lick the camera.

I shudder to think of her at sixteen. Gene, you dirty old man. My door is on the left. ;)

8 Random things about me

Grrrrrr. I hate these things but here goes!

1. I am able to pick up almost anything with my toes.
2. I turned down graduate school to spend one more term at OSU and pick up a second major (history), then met my husband a month before I graduated and never went back to school.
3. I was once stranded in the middle of a river while tubing with my brother as teenagers. It took hours to get me back across.
4. I quit college at 18 and moved to NYC with no money (or brains) then returned to college after I figured out I couldn't make it without an education. Duh.
5. I can't stand many blonde actresses and most female singers make my skin crawl.
6. I found an ancient knife point while on a dig in Scotland, right in front of US tourists. Perfect timing. ;)
7. The first ghost I ever saw was my dog, Jake, a month after he'd passed.
8. I like to eat cottage cheese on my hot dogs. Wha?

Camp

I hate camp.

Well, not really. This past Sunday, the big girls went off to girl scout resident camp for a week and I had no idea how used to complete chaos I was. Two tiny girls could never compete with three cranky, goofy, popsicle-munching pre-teens.

Rowyn and Syenna went south about three hours. I kept having flashbacks to The Haunting where Mrs. Dudley kept saying, "no one could hear you scream. You're alone. In the dark." Real comforting.

Wynter was closer but the 100 degree heat put a real damper on the fun I was imagining her having. Hopefully they stuck all the girls in the pool and sprayed them with hoses.

I received two postcards from Syenna today:
"I had seven mosquitos in my cabin on the first night! We do lots of things at the beach. Sorry Dad, we had no choice, I have to do crafts."

"I want to go to day camp instead. The days are so fun , we are going swimming in a lake and rock climbing and hiking, it's real fun! I would like to do this as a day camp instead. That would be best. I miss you. I want to come back."

Er. No guilt here. She'll see me in therapy, I'm sure.

Trevor Luckman photography

MySpace works in weird and wonderful ways. Yesterday I was hit up to be the friend of Trevor Luckman, who lists himself as a photographer in Oregon. Being of the webbed feeted variety, I had to check out his work and discovered that he's from my home town area! No, we're not related.

He does lovely work in Grants Pass, OR. Please check out his site and say hello!
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5111231

Happy Independence Day!

Somehow Independence Day gets me into some kind of trouble. I'm usually minding my own business when WHAM - the car I'm in slams into the truck in front. At a stop sign no less. Just decided to hit the gas before the truck ahead moved. ????

Another year, Bryan and I sold ice cream off the back of our truck in downtown Portland, Oregon. We made enough to live off of for a month that day.

One year, I was in California visiting my sister and decided I absolutely needed to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. RIGHT THEN. You can imagine how that went over. TOAST!

This year we had a quiet (for a family with five small kids) and boring 4th of July -- until the tornado warning. Aside from it being a normal muggy crappy DC day, I didn't even see this one coming. No storm, no warnings then WHAMMO - tornado warning, get the ribs off the bbq, we're going into the basement. Rightttttttt after I finish this cocktail... Needless to say, all is well and though we skipped being evacuated at the National Mall (though that would have been fun too) we celebrated by researching Revolutionary era ghosts and playing with sparklers & morning glories. My dad would be proud. Of course, that's a whole other story...

NYC for the weekend!

Click on the photos for a bigger look.











I and five other brave mothers took our hormone-crazed, pre-teens into the big bad city of New York last weekend! After a lingering look at the Naked Cowboy in Times Square, we had a fabulous time at the Statue of Liberty, Mary Poppins on Broadway, shopping, the wax museum and popping in on the Today Show audience. Rowyn and I will never forget it!

Where's the bbq?

This is part of the deck off the kitchen.