fall festival

last night was our redeemer lutheran church’s annual fall festival. earlier in the day i volunteered to help set up for a couple of hours. then scout and i headed out to the fun.

it was a perfectly cool evening for the festival.

{ posing with a friendly scarecrow. }

{ one of the three pony rides. }

{ pink hair do and a pumpkin tattoo. }

{ bouncing in one of the jumpers. }

{ halloween sweet treat after a delicious beef brisket dinner for me, hot dog for scout. scout had three desserts which included a root beer float, a piece of pumpkin pie and a two scoop sundae. that doesn’t include all the candy she won as prizes from the games. }

Pumpkin Eater

The truth of the matter is that I cheated a little bit. I bought two pumpkins from the grocery store. The truth of the matter is I’m not sure we’ll be able to afford the pumpkin festival this year. And the truth of the matter is that Scout still had fun carving a pumpkin even though she’s 19 days early.

{Taking the “lid” off and scooping out the insides.}

{Little Pumpkin Jack.}

{She was trying to say cheeseburger.}

{Watching and feeling the Santa Anas.}

It’s been a lovely day. We carved Little Pumpkin Jack. Ate pasta salad and pizza. Found some neat sticks. Played in the toddler park. Felt the warm wind against my back. And finished my History paper. It’s all good.

Pumpkin Patch

With Shawn home on Fridays we were able to attend the Lombardi Ranch Pumpkin Festival without having to brave the elbow to elbow crowds that flock on the weekend. It was a nice day for picking pumpkins. Unfortunately it was also a bad parenting day, weekend I should say. Jem is going through those wonky hormones mixed with ADD and ODD. But I count my blessings anyway. As frustrated as I was, as exhausted as I was, as bad as I wanted to throw my hands up and give up, we made a weekend out of what we could.

{We bought a few gourds for decoration. But when we got home and I really studied it, I asked Shawn, “What was God thinking when he created this thing? Really?” They are just one of the oddest creations.}

{Beautiful colors. Now I know why they call them Indian Corn. Beautiful Indian Summer colors.}

{Fields and fields, and a few more fields, of this shocking orange colored pumpkins. We saw quite a few green pumpkins too.}

{All the kids climbing in, out, and on top of this big pumpkin reminded me of when I was in kindergarten. We had a huge pumpkin that we’d like to play in, especially on a rainy day.}

{We told Scout this was where she would be if she wasn’t a good girl. And then she let out a sinister giggle.}

{Looking for the perfect stem on a pumpkin.}

{Stopping for a bried moment to hang out with Daddy.}

{Sitting down. For a split second.}

{Making creepy crawlies to decorate the house with.}

{A unique piece of artwork.}

{How I make use out of some construction paper, a ghost cookie cutter, some embroidery floss, and a Sharpie pen.}

Trip to the Beach

Out of all the days to go to the beach today should not have been one. After stuffing our faces with croissants and doughnuts on the 101 freeway we took the scenic route up Kanan Road to the beach. We got there early and we ended up leaving early. The fog was a thick as pea soup. We spent about two hours just watching the waves, the surfers, runners and walkers, and the funny little birds that seem to run 20 mph looking for sand crabs.

Even the ocean was a drab gray.

A massive clump of seaweed.

And a very brave, and unrelenting, seagull.

So we didn’t get to swim in the ocean. But we did get home, where it was stick to your car seat interior HOT, and went swimming with Scout. Gotta ♥ having a pool.

Almost Easter

When I was a little girl, (albeit, I was never really little, but young), I absolutely loved Easter. Any holiday that gives you a reason to do arts and crafts and be rewarded with a basket full of chocolate was a-ok in my book. I loved yellow chick Peeps. And Cadbury Eggs. Who doesn’t crave the milk chocolate with fun fillings?

I remember one Easter, I was about ten or eleven, when my step-Grandmother, my step-Aunt and my twin step-Cousins came to California for a visit. The six of us took a trip to Cambria and San Simeon to visit Hearst Castle, in the pouring rain mind you. On Easter Saturday we spent the night at a run of the mill motel. My cousins and I immediately changed into our bathing suits and spent hours in the heated pool and pretended to play pool in the rec room. The next morning everyone slept in, yet the “Easter Bunny” tracked us down and managed to hide some very lovely baskets. And matching pink fluffy bunnies. My cousins and I held onto our bunnies once we got the castle. Years later I found out the my Aunt, Grandmother and mom had all fallen asleep early and forget to hide our stashes. Luckily one of them woke up early in the morning and hid our baskets among the cheap motel furniture.

It’s years later and I still love to color my eggs. I’ve always used PAAS kits, they bring out such gorgeous color on such a simple object. This was Scout’s first year at really getting into the “holiday spirit” and she thorougly enjoyed the little wire dipper that comes with the egg kit. She stomped her feet and slapped the counter when the vinegar didn’t dissolve quick enough. She tried squeezing the eggs. And then she learned she had to gently put them into each cup. And say the color she was using. Purple, pink and blue were easy. Green, not so much.

We also braved the early morning crowds and went for a visit to the Los Angeles Zoo. Every year they have arts and crafts for the kids. There’s also a long line for bunny touching. A few children with broken hearts because they can’t take the bunny with them. Others completely disinterested.

She wasn’t up for the cardboard bunny ears either. What did catch her attention were the gorillas walking around, the giraffes stretching their necks for some green vegetation in the nearby trees, and…

Yes, a bubblegum slushie.

Oh, and one picture with Daddy.

Do you see that delicious little blue and white dress with little birdies? I made that! (I know I haven’t spent much time talking about my sewing classes, as a matter of fact I am not taking them this month or next for Jem is now in football. But I have been indeed sewing and one of these days you will see some of the items I’ve completed. One of these days.)

The rest of the night I’ll be working on Scout’s Easter basket and probably sneaking a few peanut butter eggs, (I’ve traded the yellow chick Peeps for them), and some Cadbury Eggs. Of course.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful Easter.

City Lights

Last night I took a sudden car trip with Shawn to one of his job site’s in downtown Los Angeles. While Shawn did a building inspection I sat in the van. I ate Cheetos. I ate a package of Hostess crumb donughts. I drank one Snapple Peach Tea. I drank one large Arizona tea, peach flavored. I don’t know how long I sat in the van but I brought along a good book and delved into the stories of the Medici family and Leonardo Da Vinci. I settled into the van, legs across both seats.

And then it hit me. I found myself breathing in the city. A pinkish glow to all the lights and what they reflect. Twilight settled in. Building lights burst through windows. A rush of traffic coming and going from the airport. A roar from an incoming airplane. The clink of keys from the security man walking around the perimeter of the construction site.

The air was cool and moist. Not quite winter, not quite spring. I gazed the constellations. I took in the numerous blues of the sky. And then we hit the road. Driving on the 405. Lights shading in buildings from tiny slits of windows. The whitewashed Children’s Hopsital standing so quietly. Red lights flashing, “Gentlemen’s Club”. Three baseball fields filled with Little Leaguer’s. A woman driving past in a burgundy Corvette, her cotton candy like hair wisping the night breeze.The white stream of lights coming over the mountain from another freeway. The Getty Musuem lights shining in the mountains to lead the tram to the neatly paved parking lots. In the dark night I saw three flag poles standing high. What residence owned them, I could not say. But there on the high mountain stood the American flag. To the left of it stood the California state flag. I could not see the third flag as it flapped through the wind.

I just know that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the city at night. Too long. I’ve almost forgotten the color of the sky, I think it looked a lot like this:

Walking Zombie

That’s how I feel right now.

It started Thursday night. Shawn and I drove to Knott’s Berry Farm out in Buena Park. They were having a Scion night and the first 2,000 Scions would get free tickets for everyone in their car. They were insanely busy. But even after driving for 2 1/2 hours we seemed to have been to 2,001 car, (not really), we had to drive home. We’d gotten there at 7:30 and they were already denying people entrance. Supposedly they were giving out tickets at 7 p.m. but I think there was a snafu and tickets were given out earlier. Oh well. We ended up cruising to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena. Chicken and waffles. They really do go together.

But by 5 a.m. I wasn’t feeling right. Needless to say that it was so bad that Shawn had to take the day off to take care of Scout because I was too sick. I slept most of the day. Of course, I insist we still go shopping and out for the night on Saturday. I tried to be a trooper even though my chest was hurting and my knees were weak. I made it to the showing at Valley of the Dolls after almost losing a babysitter, (my mom got stuck near the freeway and couldn’t restart her car, luckily it eventually started), and some misdirection, (Mapquest isn’t always the most reliable source when it comes to directions).

In instant cure in my spirits:

Bow Wow Trad Blythe! Shawn got my early, early birthday gift, (as in my birthday isn’t until Thanksgiving this year). But I ♥ her so much. I don’t know what her name will be yet but oh the plans I have for her!

We ended the night with a delicious dinner from Buca di Beppo that we couldn’t finish, (yummy leftovers though), and seeing Saw V. I have to say that this movie left a lot of questions for a movie that was dubbed “the final” of sequels. But it was good. Not great, but good. What left me very disappointed was there was a preview for the remake of “Friday the 13th”. Now this is one of my favorite horror flicks and it saddens me that people are ripping off the original. Not only that, the whole Jason phenomenon is over. As in “over six sequels ago” over.

By the time we got home, at 12:30 a.m., I was done. But we promised to take the kids to the LA Zoo for their Boo at the Zoo. Nothing but problems. Our drinks were solidly frozen. My batteries in the camera died. Scout was so tired from the day that she decided to fuss most of the time. I bought batteries but they only had two! I felt like this at the end of the day:

It didn’t help that were thousands of people going in and out of the zoo throughout the day. People should get licenses to manuever strollers! Shawn had enough and snapped at me. It was just one of those days where we were all trying too hard to have fun.

So the rest of the weekend was spent working on this:

Baudelaire by Cookie A using Sundara Sock in Glacier.

After all this I learned I have walking pneumonia. It’s like “Night of the Living Dead” around here. I’m trying to work through it because there is always so much to do. How four people live in chaos I can’t explain. Right now I’m mostly concerned with cleaning, a deep cleaning, before the holidays approach. I promise to take it easy. Easier.

There are a lot of things

Friday afternoon is usually when my weekend begins. There are movies to be watched, knitting to be done, food to be made and weather to be enjoyed. There is housecleaning and relaxing, though never at the same time. There is sleeping in and staying up late.

There are park trips.

And kisses.

There are pumpkin patches.

And funny faces.

There is knitting.

There is also luck.

Without getting into detail a family member of mine was very generous in helping with some financial problems. There was some tears of joy and some of sadness. An instant release of stress, the burden has dissipated. There have been lists of things to do, things we need and things we want. There are holiday plans. There are a lot of things.

Thank God for famiy and friends.

Reflection

The story actually begins with something that occurred last week. (I am going to try and make a long story short, so bear with me.) I was a part of a mother’s group in the city I live in. I decided I would help and be a part of a birthday party committee to help celebrate the one year anniversary of the website’s making. Basically it came down to me needing a break from the stress. I had offered to do the baking for bake sales, but the bake sales turned into these elaborate and complicated plans. Neither of which interested me. I had let some of the women on the website know that I would be taking a computer break but I would still do the baking. I had let the manager know I didn’t want to be in charge of all of the plans, yet I would still participate. That day I got a phone call telling me that I needed to get on the computer and that I couldn’t take a break. After that there was a volley of emails, none of them friendly or supportive. This made be rethink being part of a group. While most people were understanding and contacted me to see if I needed anything the manager did not. Her concern lay only with the party plans. Fast forward to Friday. I was getting ready to do the baking for the sale on Saturday morning. I was preparing for our babysitting co op meet. I was putting my stuff together for the knitting night gathering. Then I get an email, from the manager, telling me that I wasn’t welcome to join the babysitting co op because of my “mental condition”.

Well, if you know me you know that I did not take this lightly. My “mental condition” has never stopped me from being a mother, an employee, a wife, a student, a friend. My “mental condition” hasn’t inhibited me in the least. My last email to her was that she was just trying to find excuses to take me off the group due to her own personal opinions of me, (this was after speaking to a number of people on the group and asking them how they felt about the situation), and that in no uncertain terms did I want to associate myself with someone as hypocritical and controlling as she was. Not to mention, that her son suffers from a form of Bipolar Disorder. I have to wonder how she would react if someone told her son he couldn’t be trusted due to his “mental condition”? What if he was told he couldn’t because an ignorant person just “said so”? Whose to judge who can and who can’t?

So over the past few days I’ve had time to be angry, depressed and contemplative. I’ve also had time to cool off and, to my dismay, realize that there are people out there who are so consumed by negativity that they have nothing to offer to this world. They see no beauty in other people. They disregard peoples feelings and beliefs. There is nothing good in the world for them if they cannot have control over everything. I now realize that she should not feel sorry for me, (and not just because I am a good mother and a good friend and that though she says others aren’t comfortable, I know the truth), but that I should take pity on her. Karma is a bitch as they say. This will come back to her threefold. And maybe then she will truly understand compassion for others.

I tried to make the best of my weekend. I tried not to think of how unhappy I could be, but I basked in the happiness at hand. Shawn and I took the kids to The Descanso Gardens, which I’ve been wanting to go to every time I see Jillian post about it. I even went to Skein in Pasadena, (finally). I didn’t purchase anything but not because there wasn’t anything there that I didn’t like. More of a financial thing. As in: I-don’t-get-paid-til-next-week type of thing. They had some lovely Rowan and Sublime Cashmerino that I had my eyes on. Shawn already knows we’ll be going back. Oh, he knows.

So, I have to say that I’m lucky. Because even though I have a lack of faith in humanity at times I can never disregard the beauty that world has to offer.

There were gorgeous flowers even though you could feel Autumn approaching, I have a feeling that in the Spring time that the gardens are insanely colorful.

Roses.

Koi ponds.

Wild Mushrooms.

Spiderwebs.

Dragonflies.

Even wildlife, aside from the every day squirrels looking for acorns.

And a little family cuteness.

It’s nice to be able to appreciate what the world has to offer. All you have to is open your eyes and your heart.

To The Fair And Back

The LA County Fair is back and I had to leap at the chance of going when we were given free tickets and free parking, (a $44 value). That and the fact that we missed the Ventura Fair back in August, we just had to go. We arrived at 9:30 and stayed til about 4:00 and I’m still sore and tired! But it was absolutely worth going. I hadn’t been to the LA County Fair since I was 15 years old.

I don’t remember the place being so big or so expensive. I guess when you are a child and your parents pay for everything you don’t remember, or appreciate, it. It’s a little disheartening though. As we went from station to station and saw piglets, lambs, giant bunny rabbits, hairless rats, I thought to myself, “It’s sad but there are so many kids out there who will never even get to see farm animals”. A very sad thought indeed. I’ve been lucky that I was raised around farm animals and that I was lucky enough to ride a horse. LA is too much of an urban society. With the economy declining so many ranchers are abandoning their farmlife. It doesn’t help that there isn’t much farmlife around here to begin with.

Then I also realized the prices of the Fair were pretty high so that decreased the chances for some families to come visit all the great things the Fair has to offer. Here at the LA County Fair we paid $4.25 for a large soda, $3.50 for a 12 oz. bottle of water, $7.50 for a small tri tip sandwich, $7 for a bag of cotton candy, (and did you know that the average sized bag of cotton candy only costs 10 cents to make? How’s that for a killing?), 10 tickets to play games and go on rides cost $5, but the average game “cost” 6 tickets as did the rides. It costs 9 tickets, per person, to ride this beauty:

That means it would cost a little less than $10 for 2 people to ride. We skipped this.

I can now see why this particular carnival circuit only have to work 6 months out of the year while travelling to 3 states here in the West.

So we spent our very expensive outing trying not to think of the numbers but of all of the attractions they had. I spent the majority of my browsing looking at three things.

The first:

and then some of these:

and this pretty little girl:

My second focus was to check out the Tapestry department which houses the judging for canning/preserving, cake/pie/cookie making, knitting and other needlearts, and a variety of other crafts. Again, disheartening and maybe even a little disappointing. There were absolutely beautiful projects. I can’t believe the talent of some people as they create jewelry pieces using thousands and thousands of little seed beads. Or some of the creative ideas that people put together and pieced into a wall size quilt. But the lack of participation was sad. So few projects as compared to the Ventura County Fair, (and they aren’t even half the size of the LA County Fair). Shawn asked me why a person would enter so many of their own pieces. The only answer was that there just weren’t people participating. So many of the people who entered were from the Pomona area, (which is where the Fairplex is). I only saw one woman’s name on the tag that said she was from the San Fernando Valley, which is where we used to live, (much bigger than Santa Clarita). Anyway, I would have liked to have seen more knits. The good thing to come out of this is that I told Shawn in no uncertain terms that I would be entering next year now that we have a reliable car to travel. (Driving 600 miles altogether to drop off, visit and pick up the items in our 1986 Lincoln Towncar seemed unrealistic.) I’m going to enter til my fingers shrivel up from all the work I’ll be doing in the next year. I’m determined.

And third, the food! Throughout the day we bought a delicious tri tip sandwich, an order of cheese fries, an order of yammies, (they are deep fried sweet potato fries with cinnamon or marhsmallow on top), a large funnel cake with strawberries, AND a deep fried Snickers bar:

This is a recent thing, deep fried everything. I heard a lot about it on The Food Network but since we haven’t done the fair, we hadn’t had any experience. They had deep fried hot dogs, White Castle burgers, frogs legs, Twinkies, Pop Tarts, Snickers, turkey legs, potatoes…The list goes on. But a lot of the deep fried desserts were beckoning us to try. Shawn picked out the Deep Fried Snickers. I had a bite but the inside was so hot that it burned my mouth. The funnel cake was much more appealing to me. But again, it’s about the experience.

Shawn and I had a good time, but I think our wallets came out a little dented in the process. But it’s only once a year, right?