Trick or Treats, Sick and Sweets

We received Eliza's blessing dress in the mail from Grandma Dorey on Monday. So adorable!

She wouldn't hold still, so Landon tried to help. . . . 

On Halloween night Landon and Hallie went trick or treating. 

Landon with some friends from the branch.

Mike, Eliza, and Diamond stayed home and passed out candy. Not all the kids (teenagers, mostly) wore costumes. Mike and Diamond had them do at least a little something to get a treat, and most of the kids took it in good humor. Highlights included a Spanish speaker and his friend, a French speaker: 

Kid: “Bonjour, Madame.” 

Mike: “I’m not a ‘madame.’” 

Kid: “I just told you I was a French speaker.” 

Fair enough. 

Another kid said he could do a back flip off the porch, but then he decided not to. No treat for him. Our last visitors of the night were a teenage girl dressed in black with a painted nose and whiskers accompanied by a young man in round wire-rimmed glasses and a mock turtleneck shirt. “What are you?” Mike asked. “An intellectual,” the boy replied with a formal reserve worthy of the most erudite academician.

On Wednesday Eliza woke up coughing and sneezing. We thought it might relate to her teeth coming in, but that evening Mike came home from work sounding froggy. So, from Thursday through the weekend we had two sickies spreading the joy throughout the house. Mike’s voice is completely shot. Hopefully this clears up for him by Tuesday, otherwise he’s going to have to get creative with the live spoken portion of his online classes. Eliza has had a hard time sleeping and eating because of her stuffy nose, but she keeps smiling through it all. That is, when she’s not coughing, sneezing, or crying.

Between selling the condo, buying the minivan, and consolidating the finances, we’ve had a lot of recent activities designed to set our house in order. This last week, Hallie, Diamond, and Sara organized the kids’ old clothes and toys to sell them at a mom-to-mom sale at the War Memorial. They sold about a third of what they set out, including a few big ticket items. Sweet! Plus we have things all set for another mom-to-mom or yard sale in the spring.  

The kids played around a bit in the den yesterday afternoon. Landon hid under the futon cover and had Eliza giggling up a storm playing peek-a-boo with her. Eliza also showed off her climbing skills by scaling from a chair to the couch to the baby gate. It would have been all downhill from there, so Dad nudged her back over to the couch. 

"Gotcha!"

(Love that wiggly tongue! That she's using it to clean  her snotty nose, not so much.)

Eliza has really taken to standing and walking a few steps at a time. She’s so quick at crawling now that she’ll even bear walk when she’s really in a hurry.

Landon graduated from his preschool program and now has extra time for Play and Say, Play Central, and Pipsqueak PE. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn while he blows off steam through the winter.