The Heathen Housewife

If I were the kind of girl who ever chewed her nails, I’d be doing that right now as I try to stretch the lengths of time between hitting the refresh button on NPR’s Election Guide. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that Obama will win – I did my part by voting this morning, Sophie in tow while Julie was at pre-school. It’s looking like Al Franken has a good chance here in Minnesota as well. Even if the “good guys” do win this round, we are still in for a hard slog getting back on track. So much damage has been done to our country and our world in the last eight years. *sigh*

But enough of that. I have a lot of other catching up to do. I tried to post over the weekend, but my site host had changed the server on which my blog resides, leaving me all confused about how to upload my photos and, had I gotten that far, publish through Blogger. But that is all straightened out now.

I am so totally zonked because it was a busy week and weekend for us, and we are sharing around a cold, which Julie came down with on Friday, I started in on Sunday, and now Sophie’s sick too. We’re all stuffed up, snotty and coughing. I’m hoping I’ll be able to talk clearly by tomorrow night since I’m starting a new series of my Blankie class at the LYS. I’m actually excited about that – I have some new tricks up my sleeve to share with my students – ones that I haven’t discussed on the blog and may hold back on for a while.

But here come the fun pictures! The girls and I headed to our local “pumpkin patch” (in Knollwood Mall’s parking lot) and found a few good ones.

The girls were interested in the pie pumpkins, and when I explained that they were meant for pies more than for carving, Julie insisted that we needed to buy some to make a pie. Well. I’ve never bothered making pumpkin pie entirely from scratch – my understanding has always been that the pulp from the cans was pretty much the same as that direct from a pumpkin, with a whole lot less work.

I only wish I had taken pictures along the way, but my take on the issue is that yes, baking and pureeing and straining the pumkins is a lot of messy work and that no, the result is not at all discernibly different from the can. Still, it was a good experience to have under my belt. I ended up making three pies in the end. We ate one, I put one in the freezer, and the third I split in half and gave to my two favorite neighbor families.

This isn’t the most flattering photo in the world, but Julie took it, and I think she did pretty well.

Oh, and look! Julie knitting!

She’s tried knitting before, but last week at the library I was perusing the knitting books, and she noticed one for kids. It sparked her interest, and the next day we ran to Michael’s and bought her her very own needles and yarn. This time, something clicked, and she actually knit a row or two before she got bored and wandered off. Since then, she hasn’t asked to knit again (yet!) but she has been asking good questions about my knitting. “Mama, why are your stitches so much smaller than mine?”

And then there was Halloween. Uncle Dave came over for dinner and then came along with me and the girls as we went trick-or-treating. While I made dinner, they set up some decorations outside. I can’t believe how warm it’s been here lately. We’ve been playing in the yard without jackets for days!

They still had a bit of time left before dinner, so Dave led them in one of those foamie art-and-craft activities. Halloween finger puppets.

And then dinner was over, and my little witch and my little froggie were all ready to traipse around the neighborhood. Sophie kept saying “One mo house!” even after she started stumbling with fatigue.

We only managed to get one pumpkin carved, but the girls did it with me, and we had a good time of it.

I found this awesome stencil on the internet somewhere, and couldn’t resist putting it on the back of ours.

We had a very small candy binge when we got home – two pieces each – and then we left a giant bowl out for the “candy fairy,” who took it away and left a nice little present in its place.

The girls were thrilled with this scenario, and really liked the piggy banks they received. It’s funny – we did keep a bit of the candy, but they really haven’t asked for it yet. I’m down with that.

Sunday, we had a birthday party to attend. It was our second time at Pump It Up, and it was some crazy fun. Sophie was big enough to really enjoy it this time.

I took about a million pictures that night, but it is almost impossible to get a decent picture of kids moving that quickly.

Julie did a good job helping Sophie out when she had the chance.

Joe even managed to have a good time…

And Uncle Dave had his share of the fun too.

We are so lucky to have him in town again. He’s a total smart ass, impossible to have a serious conversation with him…but he is SO GOOD with the kids – so funny, and really a good-hearted guy.

That’s going to have to be enough for now. I’ve been upstairs three times since I started typing this, twice for Julie and once for Sophie. I have a feeling I’d better go to bed soon if I want to get anything close to a decent night’s sleep.

Oh, and guess what – I just did one more refresh on that NPR page. Yahoo! It’s looking like Obama’s gonna win. Let’s hope there’s none of the late-night craziness like there was last time. I can’t believe this, both in terms of the current political turnaround, and in the historical sense of moving beyond the race barrier, at least for this particular milestone.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 2:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.