It’s almost enough to make me wish I had a bathroom scale, seeing how much candy the kids brought home last night. Enough that Ariel couldn’t lift it all by herself. My husband, who was the one to take them out, took a pillowcase along so that when the trick or treat buckets got full they wouldn’t have to turn back.

We have a bunch of excess candy because we didn’t get that many kids down our street. Fortunately, my husband figures he can take most of it to work to give to customers. Sounds like a great way to get it out of the house. With the stuff the kids brought home we have more than enough.

I let Ariel take one piece to school, although I think her teacher won’t let her have it at snack time. She has her regular healthy snacks too and I warned her that she does not get to bring candy any other day. I don’t want this to be a habit, after all.

But at least the holiday is done and over with now. We’ll be heading out to the Halloween store later to check out the discounts, as some of the costumes could make great dressup clothes for a Christmas present.

I’m stil hoping for more entrants into my Halloween costume contest on the forum. Yes, I’m going to keep mentioning it until submissions are done.

[tags]halloween,costume contest,halloween candy[/tags]

Ariel always makes me laugh. At 4 years of age, the line between reality and fantasy really is thin.

Today she demanded that I pay attention as she watched Leap Frog’s Letter Factory. “See??” she demanded. “THAT’s how you get to the letter factory. You drive straight and then turn and then turn and drive straight.”

Yes, I had a very hard time not laughing.

She’s been after me to take her there, and my excuse has always been that I don’t know how to get to the Letter Factory. She doesn’t buy that I don’t know how to get to the Frogs’ house to start.

We had a little talk about television not being real. She is not ready to believe that yet. It’s sure sweet at times, though. Other times… well, I’ll be glad when she gets it.

[tags]kids,children,family,television,reality,preschoolers,letter factory[/tags]

I’ve been using Media Center on my computer for some time. I’ve had problems with it here and there, and I definitely think TiVo creams it so far as being user friendly, but it came with my computer, so why complain about what’s so readily available.

I’ve been having trouble downloading the guide for some reason lately. This is supposed to happen automatically, but lately it hasn’t been working. Today it had no data for any channel, and I had noticed the other day that only about 3 days’ worth of data was available. It’s supposed to have about 14 days.

In sheer annoyance, I went in and completely started over on telling it which guide I needed. That did it. Hopefully it will stick, but I have what appears to be the full guide for my channels now, and it’s recording the shows I want again. I don’t think I made any changes, so I don’t know why this should have been any different from telling it before to download the guide. Read the rest of this entry »

We actually got out of the house pretty early today, and it’s not a school day for Ariel.

We decided to head over to the park right after breakfast because it has been so hot lately, but it was so nice and cool outside this morning. I think our timing was perfect. By the time we finished walking back home things were definitely heating up outside.

It’s so nice having a park within walking distance. It takes about 10 minutes to get there, but that’s pretty easy.

Gage is finally getting bold about playgrounds. He used to be afraid of swings, but now he loves them. He was laughing his head off today. He’s still deciding how much he likes slides, but he’s at least willing to go down them on his own.

Summer may be coming to a close, but in my area we can expect warm weather for some time yet. It’s nice getting the occasional cool morning, rather than reaching 90 degrees out before 10 a.m. We’re still reaching that high inside the house many days, but it doesn’t come until the afternoon.

We’re getting ready to take our summer vacation soon. It’s in part a celebration of my 5th wedding anniversary, but also because we want to visit family up in Oregon and Washington. It looks to be a great trip, but with money being tight, it’s going to be a bit challenging to not overspend.

We are taking several steps to limit our expenses. Even though gas is expensive, it’s going to be cheaper to drive up than it would be to fly then rent a car. We’ll have some basic snacks and water in the car.

With two small children, there will be a lot of potty breaks. No avoiding that, especially since they’ll also be ways to tire the kids out so they won’t get too cranky in the car.

We are fortunate enough to have relatives live at reasonable stopping points for each leg of the trip. The drive is about 1000 miles, so it would be extremely difficult to do in a single day. However, with relatives in Sacramento, we have a very nice stopping point to get a few hours’ rest out of the car without getting a hotel room.

Visiting family is a great way to make a family vacation inexpensive. With most families it’s lots of fun too. But what if you don’t want to visit family this year? Read the rest of this entry »