Spooky Stuff

You know it's going to be a golden day when the first thing you hear from one of your kids is, "Mom, (the dog) puked on my floor."

Delightful.

"Fortunately," even though it was before 6 a.m., I was wide awake, as I had 1,000,008 things to do today. 

One of which was load the CR-V to the gills. It honestly looked like we were going camping. In actuality, we were just going to a couple hours' worth of classes and then a harvest party. We had everything from a ladder to duct tape to 36 Ninja Turtle apples to about 5 dozen monster mozzarella fingers, a couple dozen deviled eggs, about 250 prizes, dozens of things needed to set up a carnival game, traffic cones, backpacks, costumes ... I could go on. 

Oh, and we had ghosts, who were traffic cones in a previous lifetime. (They were needed for an obstacle course.) 

We decorated them with stuff we had on hand, in about a half hour. (Sorry the photos are a little blurry, I had the wrong settings on my camera.)

We started off like this, but I decided they looked a little bit too much like they might be headed to a Klan rally.  :0

So, we decided to give them rounded heads. 

Much better. :)

Annabelle gave them some cute faces.

They were pretty cute riding around in the back of our car!

At the carnival, we helped set up and staff a sensory table. We put creepy things in dollar store bins, covered them up and the kids had to guess what they were. We have everything from witches' fingers to a heart, a couple of her pets (a rat and a furry spider) and last but not least, a skull. We scored a plastic skull at the dollar store, and decided to cover it in fruit leather, to mimic skin. It looked even worse than it felt - good thing the kids couldn't see it!

SPACEY SOUNDTRACK: As we were working around the house yesterday, we had a long spacewalk playing in the background. 

Here's a great photo from NASA of Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly emerging from the International Space Station, ready to go spacewalking!

Though Kelly now holds the records for the American astronaut with the most days in space (total, and consecutive), it was Kelly's first spacewalk. (Flight engineer Kjell Lindgren was out there with him.)

The two were out there for 7-hours and 16-minutes. During that time, NASA reports they "applied a thermal cover on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer; applied grease to a number of components in one of the latching ends of the Canadarm2 robotic arm; and began work to rig power and data system cables for the future installation of a docking port to the station that will be used for the arrival of the Boeing Starliner CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft."

Most of the time it was pretty intense, focused work, but Kelly did take a moment to take this fantastic selfie.

         Image Credit: NASA

Grounded

JARRING: Last night, we finally got around to using some of CJ's hot hot hot peppers, making some salsa verde with tomatillos from our garden plus some ghost chili peppers.

We handled the ghost chilies like they were hazardous material (which they can be). Picture gloves, goggles and roasting them outside (after reading about the hazards of cooking them indoors). 

One of the chilies was spread among six little jars of salsa. (See the orange bits above? That's what you should be afraid of.)  After canning them, I worked up the courage to taste a little of the leftovers. My lips tingled a little afterward, but it wasn't too hot. I vote we double up the chilies next time!

Speaking of produce and the garden's bounty, today we were back out to Marra Farm today for another field trip. 

This time we got to work the land!

Our group of around 20 spent about an hour or so weeding. 

The balance of the trip collecting acorn squash, which will be headed to a local food banks. 

Our work was supervised by a friendly manager from Lettuce Link.

MOVIE MAGIC: Just a couple of nights ago, our family was talking about claymation, and how you hardly see it any more. Imagine our delight today, discovering the European Space Agency had just posted a clay-animated version of the Rosetta (comet landing) mission!
https://youtu.be/4Oo8KnTsyk0

The video above was produced by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. It explains what Rosetta and Philae have achieved as well as how the mission has impacted our knowledge of our very own solar system. 

The Royal Observatory Greenwich ha also produced a clay-animated video about space rocks, and how they tell us about our own planet. 

https://youtu.be/xYOPnqB-9j8

Howloween

THE HORROR!:  Saturday morning the kids donned their Star Wars costumes again, and we headed to Experience Music Project for a special "Howloween" event.

Admission was free = awesome!

Here's Annabelle's short recap of the morning. 

On October 24, I went to EMP museum for “Howl-O-Ween”, an event where they had activities and such that you could do. The first thing we did was watch a small section of “Monsters Inc.” On the big Sky Church screen. We then got scavenger hunt sheets, which required us to look for things around the museum or answer trivia questions such as what the Wicked Witch of the West’s (from the Wizard of Oz) castle guards were named. Another activity we did was make Halloween bags and masks. We also participated in a costume parade where you’d come on stage and say what you were dressed as. Of course, we had to stop and play our favorite game: "Tenya Wanya Teens". It was very fun and I’d like to go again!

By the way, did you know these soldiers at the Wicked Witch of the West's castle were named Winkies? (Finding that out was part of our scavenger hunt.)

Here's what CJ had to say about Howloween

On October 24th, 2015, we went to EMP for their "Howl-O-Ween" event, where we would trick-or-treat* and fill out a sheet with trivia questions for a prize. The sheet has us answer different trivia questions, for example, what the name of the dragon in the "Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic" exhibit**, and Kurt Cobain's 1993 Halloween costume, which was Barney the Dinosaur. On the back side of the sheet, we had to draw a monster, give it a name, and give it a favorite food. I named my monster "George," and said his favorite food was ribs. When I turned in the sheet, I got a stylized guitar pick as a prize. Lastly, there was a costume parade where we could get up on stage, say our names, and say who we were dressed as. I am dressing as Luke Skywalker this year for Halloween.

*By that, they meant crafts. I think it's a very loose definition of "trick-or-treating".

**In the exhibit, although there were signs talking about dragons, none of them mentioned this dragon's name. We asked the volunteer if he knew the name, but he said he didn't know, so mom had to Google the dragon's name. It turns out the dragon is named Adalinda, and she was donated to EMP by the North Seattle Opera.

While at EMP, we just *had* to visit the Horror Film exhibit, since it's almost Halloween and all. 

 We saw lots of cool monsters, props and costumes, including this famous suit from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.

And this friendly zombie ...

We spent some time in the Science Fiction portion of the museum, of course. With all of the "Back to the Future" stuff in the news recently, we had to stop and admire the hoverboard, of course. 

Here, the princess ponders a control panel.

I took this cool pic of the kids and Tweeted it.  

We were rather flattered by EMP's response ...

How 'bout that? :)

HOOPLA:  We recently took on a bit of a project. A couple weeks back we received an email from the school the kids attend a few hours a week asking people to be on the lookout for outdoor furniture and a portable basketball hoop for the playground. We happened to spot one on the Buy Nothing group we're a part of and a kind neighbor was nice enough to donate his hoop to the school. We had to go pick it up (it being about 12 feet tall, and made mostly of heavy steel), and transport it to our place. Once we had it here, we decided to service it, so that it will be trouble free for years to come at school.

We ground off rusty spots in the paint ...

and then repainted the pole a nice flat black.

We even fixed a couple of cracks in the backboard with some stinky epoxy (which worked really well, might I add), and then repainted the backboard (a nice flat white).

Christian and I delivered it to school early this morning and set it up. Hopefully, it gets a few more years of good use!