Sugarland

MPA LITE: I apologize ahead of time. This entry is not the most cerebral or educational. It is, however, chock full o' chocolate and carmel-ly goodness that only Halloween can bring!!!

BUG OFF!: So first thing this a.m. I got some startling news via Facebook (hat tip to my friend Undine in Montreal). Are you sitting down? ... It turns out a roly-poly/potato bug is NOT an insect. It's an isopod, belonging to the Phylum Arthropoda, and Subphylum Crustacea.That's right, not a bug at all. It's closer to being a lobster. Apparently there are ginormous ones that roam the ocean floor (to borrow a line from Auntie Renee, "Wonder how they taste with butter. ...").

All these years of roly-poly lies and misinformation. ...

Oddly enough, just yesterday CJ was asking me about potato bugs (a/k/a Oniscus asellus, which has scads of regional names including armadillo bug, cheeselog, cheesey-bug, doodlebug, pill bug, roly-poly, parson's pig, potato bug, roll up bug, slater, Hodidod, Carpenter, Wood Bug, sow bug, pea bug, Chuggy-peg and Chuggy-pig). He asked if they can live after their shell (exoskeleton) is broken. I told him maybe for awhile, but probably not for too long. CJ being CJ, he decided he would make a machine that fixes roly-polys' protection when he gets older.

So, I shared this newsflash with CJ and I found a diagram of pill bug parts which we reviewed. From further reading we learned a roly poly might have 4 to 5 different shells in its life, as it sheds old ones when it outgrows them. I pointed out to CJ this was really good news, because if the bug - er, isopod - is able to grow a new exoskeleton, having a broken one might not mean its demise!

Also worth noting: Isopids are small crustaceans with seven pairs of legs of similar size and form.

An aside: In our roly poly research, we discovered EnchantedLearning.com, which has lots of info sheets and label-me diagrams across the spectrum of school subjects. Fantastic!

BUDDING BEETHOVENS: Friday means Muskigarten and today's class was fantastic as always. The kids actually wrote quarter and eighth notes today and have a true feel for what they mean! For the parent participation part of the class, teacher Nancy read "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" to the class. Perfect for the season, it's about a mature woman who is followed home by something whose feet are going CLOMP, CLOMP, and whose pants are going WIGGLE, WIGGLE, and whose shirt was going SHAKE, SHAKE, and wearing gloves going CLAP, CLAP, and a hat going NOD, NOD, and a pumpkin head going BOO! BOO! The kids (and parents) got to use a wide variety of percussion instruments to represent the sounds. The kids LOVED it (and I thought it was pretty fun too).

HO HO HORROR: Let's just get this over with right off the bat. I am an idiot. I foolishly waited until the day before Halloween to try to procure green hair spray for CJ's costume. I should-and do-know better. What's funny is if I still lived in SW WA, I'd be fine. There would be a half dozen stores really close to home I could stroll into and pick up what I needed. But here in the big mean city, things are different. I have to compete with three million other people for things like green hairspray and non toxic white paint. ...

So today we stroll into the Ballard Fred Meyer today ISO the goods. I head for the spot where a sprawling Halloween display lived just a couple of days ago. But wait ... what's this? No orange, no black - it's a sea of red and green. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we are officially skipping Thanksgiving this year and going STRAIGHT TO CHRISTMAS. Oh freaking no. We schelp up to a small display of the Halloween leftovers, near the customer service desk. There, I mill about with the rest of the losers who didn't plan ahead. Needless to say, no green hairspray to be had. I envision the next 5.5 hours of me and the kids stopping at dozens of stores between Ballard and Lynnwood in search of the stuff. First stop - Walgreens in Ballard. Really just a drugstore, from past experience I know it has surprisingly weird stuff in stock, so I've got my fingers crossed. As we pulled into the lot, Annabelle noted, "They're named WalGREENs, so they should have green hair color." I LOVE that thinking. So we storm in, expecting/praying to find green hairspray and lo and behold, after Mom did the Spidey crawl up the shelves, I found a box of colored hairspray shoved way back on an 8-foot high shelf and SCORE!!! There was one can of green in there. I am ashamed to admit how excited I was by this.

GONNA FLY NOW!: Today was The Day. "Our" new park was supposed to have its construction fences removed and be open for fun! So, when it was time for Kirby's noontime stroll, naturally we headed down the block and up the hill. The excitement built with every step. Would it be open? Along the way Annabelle admitted, "My heart is pounding."

Sure 'nuff, when we crested the hill, the fences were gone and happy kids were on site! There will be countless reports from Bayview Park in the future, so let me just say it was worth the wait!!!

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: About a month ago, when we were in Cookies, a local bakers' supply shop, CJ spied a haunted house (gingerbread house) kit and wanted to buy it. I told him we don't need no stinkin' kit - we could build our own, and that for sure we'd do that before Halloween. Well guess what? Today is Oct. 30. Since I am basically fanatical about not breaking a promise to the kids, today was gingerbread-haunted house day. We went all out. Our walls were fashioned from limited-time-only gingerbread Pop Tarts (tasty-but really too soft for our purposes-I wouldn't use them again). We had 5 colored sugars, cereal straws, Reeses Pieces, Halloweeny sprinkles, mini chocolate chips, fruit roll ups, Cracker Jack, candy corn and other sugary shapes. I made three colors of royal icing to act as our edible glue. We got our structures standing and as soon as it was time to decorate, Annabelle declared her intention to build a sweet house, not a scary house. Fine by me. So the kids spent about an hour decorating their places. CJ wanted to eat his immediately, but I was able to talk him out of it by giving him construction debris to snack on.

MONEY HONEY: "I'm rich! RICH!" Annabelle shouted as she extracted a $1 bill from a Halloween card sent by her grandparents. CJ, too, was quite pleased with the dough, having a new appreciation for cold hard cash after his tooth fairy visits. CJ says he's spending his $ on Cheez-Its and chocolate chips. Annabelle says she's saving her $ for something special-to be named later.

BACK TO SCHOOL: Friday night CeeJ and Bee walked the hallowed halls of their alma mater - Whittier Elementary, where they both attended preschool. It was the annual Whittier Halloween carnival. It was packed and chaos as always, but lots of fun and the evening ended on a high note, when CJ won the cupcake walk. Being the sweet brother he is, without hesitation, he shared his winnings with Annabelle.