Halloween 2009

Things have been pretty fast paced around here between the new home building process and all our other everyday things, so making three costumes this year was out of the question.
We took the kids for a trip to Wal-art and walked the Halloween isle. Keira saw a costume for a garden gnome and thought he was was Santa (the costume did look like Santa with the beard and red/black plaid outfit). Then, she saw the girl gnome costume next to it and was shrieking with excitement. There was no talking her out of being Mrs. Santa. So, one costume= done.
Devin wanted to be a train, not a train conductor or engineer- just a train. The only costume in stores was for Thomas the Train and there was nothing to it but, a poncho that had a picture of Thomas on it. Not exciting at all. So,I gathered some household items- a diaper box, a shoebox, a Big Gulp cup from 7-11 and some paper plate. And, Mike helped me assemble and paint it. He LOVED it!!!
Reagan was a toughie at first because every costume that we liked wasn't available in her size. So one day Keira had her play clothes out and she dragged out the skunk costume that I made for her two years ago. We tried it on Reagan and it fit perfectly. So, at least all those ours of manual labor to make the costume got two uses in return. The kids had a blast on Halloween. The pony company that hosted Keira's birthday invited us to their Halloween party with pony rides, a petting zoo, and a haystack maze. After playing there,we headed home to trick-or-treat through are neighborhood , where every neighbor loved their costumes so much that they emptied their treat bowls into the kids' buckets. Candy overload in this house!!

The Next Phelps.....

Twice a week during the month of October, Keira and Devin took swim classes at the Australian Swim School. And, all we can say is WOW!!!!! Devin started the month with having to go in with arm water wings and would scream bloody murder if you took them off. Eight 1/2 hours classes later and he is swimming, not just from me to the edge but, jumping in, swimming around with kicks/arms, turning around and swimming back. All of his teachers say that they have never seen a kid with so much natural talent. They said they usually can get kids his age to do the rescue type swim (if they fell in they could kick a short distance to get back to the edge) but,they are amazed that he can kick, float on his back fairly good, and does pop-up breathing where he comes up for air. We're not taking classes in November because we'll be too busy moving and travelling for the holidays. But, I think that when he has some time for a little more practice, I just might be alright with him swimming and me sitting by the edge of the pool watching. We'll see.
Keira has also progressed rapidly. Each level of classes has a test that they must pass before they can advance to the next level where they learn additional techniques and styles. When you pass the test, you get to ring a big cowbell and everyone in the building knows
what it means and everyone stops and claps. You should have seen her when she rang the bell, not knowing what people did, and she saw everyone cheer for her. From that day on, every time they went to class all the teachers heard from Keira and Devin was, "Do I get to ring the bell today?"