Pre-Halloween

'Twas the night before the night before Halloween and all through the Pauley house, two kids were rather squirrely and Trigger was acting like a louse.

Okay, that's all the rhyming I can do tonight. Let's just say that with two days left before Halloween, the small set around here are SUPER EXCITED and I haven't finished (started) their Halloween costumes yet. That's what Sunday is for, you know, the day before Halloween? Trigger is actually chilling out a little bit. I take him jogging with me and a good four or five miles seems to take the edge off of his endless energy. This colder weather has put a slight damper on my jogging plans so sometimes I dress him up in his Halloween costume to make him chill out. Something about having a plush jockey on your back makes you a bit humble. He's going as Secretariat. I just need to figure out a way to dye the rest of him red. (Just kidding Glenn.) Wednesday night, Glenn and the kids carved pumpkins while I was at volleyball practice. I came home just in time to help out with the yucky part (pulling out the pumpkin guts, bleccch). Some of us take our pumpkin carving pretty darn seriously.

Taking a final look at the art before making the first cut:

This piece is from Reina's Black Period. Also known as the Sharpie Collection. Some serious scoopage going on: Reina doesn't need a stinkin' spoon: I'll take a picture of the final collection of jack-o-lanterns once they are all on the front step. I still need to carve mine. That's also what Sunday is for.

This week, we had our first big snowfall of the season. We had about 8-9 inches and it was the wet, heavy stuff that takes down tree branches and is really fun to tromp around in at 6:30 in the morning while the mom is trying to quickly clean off the sidewalk. We didn't get enough snow for a snow day but the kids have really enjoyed playing in it since the storm. They are definitely Wyoming-ites.

One last little story, depending on the day, Will either jumps out of bed at 6:00 a.m. raring to go or we have to make repeated trips upstairs to drag him out of bed, coax him into his clothes and cajole him into eating breakfast. One of the drag/coax/cajole mornings this week, he was complaining that he didn't want to go to preschool. I said that he had to go so that he could keep learning his letters and how to count so that he could learn how to read and then someday, he could drive a car and do all sorts of grown-up stuff. He thought about it for a nanosecond before informing me that he didn't want to drive a car, he wants to be a pirate. I'm sooooo not letting him move to Somalia.