Happy Halloween to All...

No one was more excited for Halloween to come than the Cruz kids. Every day for 2 weeks Siena would ask "is it time for Trick-or-Treating" and we'd have to count down the days. Costumes were ready, pumpkins carved, candy in bowl to give out...the time finally came for the big night!

Yaya and Papa Ron have had quiet, peaceful Halloweens the last couple of years so they decided to come enjoy the festivities at our house. Yaya handed out candy and ooh'd and aah'd over the cute little monsters and critters that came to the door.

Mason the airplane! If I ever make an airplane costume again, I'll have to make hinged wings. Some of the 70's style stairs and rails in our neighborhood posed a challenge to this captain and his wide wing span.
Fortunately Princess Belle was on hand to come to the rescue if the path became too narrow or the doorbell too hard to reach! Speaking of which, here's the gorgeous Princess!

The dashing duo in full costume regalia!

Happy kids!

It was a fun and memorable Halloween for the Cruz kids. The only way I can think of to end this spook night post is to quote the kids' favorite Halloween book: Happy Halloween to all and to all a Fright Night!

Meet My Daughter: Ramona Quimby

For a weekend with nothing planned, we sure were busy. Saturday. Pumpkin carving day. With Mason's gigantic pumpkin, this was no small task.
You've gotta get creative when cutting the lid. Herbie anyone?

Siena opted for 2 small pumpkins this year rather than one large one. The boy pumpkin is on the left and the girl on the right.

Mason's pumpkin was inspired by Chick Hicks. See the resemblance?

We also worked to finish up Mason's airplane costume. Pictures of the final product to come on the Halloween blog.

Some little girl today decided to cut her pretty bangs that we have spent the last 6 months growing out. Just when they were about long enough to go behind her ears, she got her hands on some scissors and the idea in her head to give herself a bit of a trim.

After sending her to a timeout to consider the error of bad haircuts, I found Tommy napping next to the evidence. He looks guilty, doesn't he.

Mad though I was at the time, it was hard to stay mad at her as she was telling me through crocodile tears I just wanted short hair!

Here's the finished product.

Not only did the antic remind me of something my favorite childhood character Ramona would have done, but now Siena even looks a bit like Ramona!
While Siena was giving herself the haircut of doom, I was making sure the kids had the proper music on the ipod to give them the necessary history and appreciation of music. It's important that kids learn the right music at a young age. In that vein, we've included:

Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley and the Comets

Great Balls of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis

La Bamba - Ritchie Valens

Runaround Sue - Dion

It's My Party - Leslie Gore

Dancing Queen - ABBA

99 Red Balloons - Nena

I Love Rock & Roll - Joan Jett

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper

Eternal Flame - The Bengals

We Built This City - Starship

Ghostbusters Theme Song

I'm sure Papa Ron is both proud and disgusted at this list!

Mason's already getting his Jerry Lee Lewis on!

Babies + Birthdays = Big Weekend

October is a busy month for us. Lots of birthdays, Halloween, and numerous other social activities - this weekend especially. So of course it's the perfect weekend for me to come down with a cold. Oh well, the show must go on.

Saturday started much as it usually does with Seina's dance class. They're working on a cute dance routine to "Let it Snow" for their December recital. After the dance class we had to come home and work on a project for Mason's school. That left about an hour for lunch, shower, and changing and on to my niece Tristyn's birthday party.

Costumes were encouraged at Tristyn's party but as I'm not quite done with Mason's airplane costume for this year, he had to wear last year's race car driver costume. He did soop it up by adding the racer helmet.

Siena snuggling with Abuelo Jose during the cutting of the cake.
The little princesses - Cinderella Siena and Snow White Tristyn.

Tio Joel, fittingly, was dressed as Grumpy.

Digging in the hay for candy and treats!

Tia Mandi (aka the Wicked Witch from Snow White) and Tristyn. Mandi had the best Wicked Witch make up - I was a little frightened. Hopefully my reoccuring childhood Snow White nightmare doesn't come back tonight.

Kendra and Andre forgot their costumes but got to get some snuggles in with Joel and Mandi's puppy.

After the birthday party, it was time for my cousin Chelsey's baby shower. The kids all got to hang out at Heidi's house with the guys. For those of you who don't know my cousin Chelsey, she's the one person in the family we NEVER thought would decide to have kids. Course, she's also the one person in the family who never ceases to surprise so there you have it.

Mary Lou, Heidi, and Chandra put on a wonderful shower. They served high tea including amazing food. Even the tea was great, and I'm not much of a tea drinker.

All guests were also tasked with decorating a onesie. Amanda and my aunt Joanne, of course, came up with this one.

Heidi had a little accident with the brown paint. I guess there are limits to how hard you can squeeze it.

Here's the baby carrier Chelsey received...my mother noticed that apparently you can nurse while walking your baby around. Everything's about multitasking these days.

Mary Lou made this wonderful blanket for her newest grandson.

After a great night at the shower and staying up late to watch the Beavers lose to Washington in overtime, it was time for busy weekend part 2: Siena's birthday party!

Yup, my little baby Siena turned 5 on Saturday, celebrating her birthday with her birthday buddy Papa Ron. The kids were excited for today's party as well. So was Tommy.

Yaya was a huge help as ever and as you'll see in later pictures, we certainly needed all the help we could get. She brought all of the finger foods and decorations. We couldn't have pulled this off without all of her help.

She even put Mason to work sorting napkins. He's a good kid and was more than happy to help.

Here's the birthday girl! She's sporting her Belle halloween costume today for her party. We even had to put her hair back in a low pony tail just like Belle.

The birthday buddies play horsie before the guests arrive.

Officially it was supposed to be a Wii playing party but the kids seemed more than happy just to play with the toys together so the Wii thing didn't totally happen. That's totally fine though and Chris and Siena did manage to get a little Wii resort action in.

Similar to Heidi's brown paint fiasco, we had a couple big mishaps ourselves. Papa Ron was kindly helping to break up the ice and managed to stab the bottle of Coke with a knife, sending cola spewing all over himself and the kitchen.

Siena told me that she wanted a pink, heart shaped cake. While at Michael's last weekend, we bought some special heart shaped cake pans. This morning the kids helped me mix up the cake batter and bake the cake. They also helped to mix the frosting. Unfortunately, I forgot to grease the bottom of the cake pan which led to a disasterous result when trying to get it out of the pan.

As for the frosting, the pink frosting I got from Micheals was gel like, which I've never used before, and it ended up coming out of the container in a giant chunk leaving the frosting closer to crimson than pink.

The best I can say about this cake is that it looks anatomically correct. And the blob of cake didn't seem to faze Siena.

The good news is that it tasted better than it looked. Maybe next year we'll buy a cake.

Siena got a lot of wonderful presents. We got her a camera of her own after she's filled up the memory cards on both of our phones.

Cool girlie toys and a happy Siena!

All the kids had fun helping Siena with her presents.

How does all this stuff work?!?

The kids had a great time Play-Doh cooking after present opening.

I realized after everyone went home that I forgot to give out the treat bags to the kids as they were leaving. Can I blame a Ny-Quil hangover? Ah well. It was a great weekend and everyone had fun. Now on to another busy week.

Rainy Day Sunday

Apologies for no blog posting last weekend. I was going to write about various trips to Fred Meyer in response to Halloween decor fiascoes, but we got sidetracked at the 7th birthday party of the century. Unbeknownst to us, Mexicans take birthday parties seriously. Mason was invited to a party for one of his classmates. 4 hours, 70 guests, 30 kids, 2 pinatas, and a 2-tiered cake later it was 9:00 PM on Sunday night and we all had to go to bed.

Luis got a job working for Enterprise Car Rentals and is working weekends now so it's me and the kids entertaining each other. That is, when Mason isn't on Google Earth.

This morning we met our friends the DeCiccos at Elmer's for breakfast and then made our annual Halloween-time trip to the Roloff Pumpkin Farm.

Here's Mason, Siena, and Giada checking out some animals at the petting zoo.

Did I mention it was raining all morning? Luckily the rain did eventually stopped and it did a nice job of crowd control. Siena happily sought out the puddles.
The kids went on the pony ride, even Mason who was too scared to do it last year.Siena and Giada are regular cowgirls! Especially with their pink raincoats.

Mason found the one vintage car on hand. That's his new "rock star" pose.

Little kids, big chair.

Since the lines were shorter this year, we went on the "Town Tour". We got to check out the play town that Matt Roloff built many years ago. This was cool. Mason and Siena wished they could live here and play on the farm day in and day out. Mason said he would never get bored living there.

The kids in the western town.

A couple silly kids with the little town church in the background.

I think I posted a couple years ago a picture of the castle as a still work in progress. It has since been finished and is pretty cool.

The Cruz kids wouldn't have minded some play time on the pirate ship either.

The famous "Bridge to Nowhere". This is actually listed on the Oregon register of bridges.

For the next 3 pictures, I should mention that if you don't watch and have never heard of the TV show Little People Big World on TLC, these will mean nothing to you. Anyway, on this day Zach Roloff was busy driving one of the tour tractors.

We got to meet Jeremy at the town and he was nice enough to pose for a picture with me and the kids. Again for those who have seen the show, the twins buddy Mueller was the one who took the picture.

We also got our picture taken with Amy again. The kids have seen enough episodes of Little People over the last year that they recognized the kids around the farm when they saw them and were especially excited to see Amy again. They remembered meeting her last year also. She was incredibly friendly and talked with everyone who approached her for a handshake and a photo.

After the pumpkin patch, I needed to get started on Mason's Halloween costume. Siena's is easy - Princess. Mason declared that he wanted to be an airplane. Not an airplane pilot, the actual plane. Since you can't simply go to the store and buy an airplane costume, it's up to you know who to somehow make one. This isn't included in my copy of the parenting manual. Regardless, it was straight to Michael's from the pumpkin patch for a few pieces of Styrofoam. Then later to Fred Meyer for some duct tape.

Now, if I may allow myself a moment of hubris...I am darn proud of this result. It isn't done yet - we still need to add propellers, some stripes, and the shoulder straps, but Martha Stewart, eat your heart out:

Well, the kids are in the bathroom putting temporary tattoos on each other so I should go intervene and put them to bed before they end up looking like sailors.