5 Reasons Halloween is the Best Holiday Ever

Halloween is really the best holiday ever.  I remember my friend Nikki telling me when Flanna was a baby, that after her kids got a little older, she loved Halloween even better than Christmas.  I couldn't believe it at the time, but now I'm beginning to see why Halloween really could trump Christmas as the best holiday ever.  Here are five reasons why:

1.   There are tons of fun traditions to share.   At my house, we've participated in the following super-fun traditions (which have all brought me big happiness boosts, by the way!):  decorating our front bushes with "spider-webs," creating ghosts from dum-dum pops and tissues, picking out a pumpkin, carving said pumpkin, baking pumpkin bread, finding the perfect costume, going to fall festivals, and of course, trunk-or-treating!

2.  We have an excuse to buy candy and keep it in the house for a week or two.  Not the healthiest reason, but, hey, candy is fun now and then!  Especially Twizzlers.  Yum.

3.  We get to dress up and be silly.  I love love love that my whole family dresses up to trick or treat together.  This year, we won't have a theme for our costumes.  (We would've never been able to top last year's costume, anyway!)  But we're really excited about our outfits!

4.  There's no pressure to buy gifts or cook anything fancy.  No wondering whether the turkey is really cooked all the way through; no stressing over the perfect gift for anyone; no intricate recipes to follow, no hoping you didn't burn the rolls this year.  Heck, you don't even have to buy candy if you don't want to.  Just turn your porch light off and go trick or treating!  (Although I highly recommend passing out candy if you get the chance--it's probably more fun than trick-or-treating, I think!)

5.  Much of the fun happens outside during a time of wonderful weather.  And you know how experiencing nature makes me happy!  I mean, really--who can be sad when you're tromping through pumpkin fields on a breezy day, or riding on a hay ride bundled up beside friends, or walking down streets lined with gorgeous orange and yellow trees to trick-or-treat?  

So, what do you think?  Is Halloween the new Christmas?  All the magic but none of the headache?  All of the fun and none of the expense?   Or do you think it's too dark and spooky to claim rank among the top holidays?  I have to say, it really is one of my favorite times of year.  So there you go, Nikki, you were right!

What do you love about Halloween?

   

The Annual Fathers' Day Fishing Trip

We celebrated Fathers' Day for Robi with our annual family fishing trip.  Our friend Clark let us fish at his beautiful pond, and we caught so many fish that we lost count!  Now that's a good day!

Clark & Flannery looking after the worms (Flanna wouldn't use them as bait!)

About to weigh the big one!

Flanna cooing to her little wormies.

A frog we saw when we got home, at the pond at my sister's house

How did you celebrate Fathers' Day?

Speechy Sunday - Mothers' Day Language Activity

I've been working on getting many of my speech students to use "descriptors" (adjectives) in speaking and writing, and for Mothers' Day, what better person to describe than their moms?  For students who don't live with their moms, they can describe their grandmothers, step-moms, foster-moms, or aunts (just modify the center to say the title of who they're describing).

For this flower card activity, I pre-cut the flower petals, stems, and leaves to save time.  I let the students choose 6 petals to put around the flower center.  They glued the stems first, then leaves, then the petals, then the center.  Next, they wrote, "My mom is..." (or "my grandmother is", etc., as applies) in the center of the flower.  On each petal, I had them come up with words to describe their moms or grandmothers.  We used brainstorming to come up with descriptors when kids got stuck and couldn't think of any.  For some kids who needed extra support, we flipped through the book "Quick as a Cricket," to see if any of the descriptors in that book would work for their moms.  After the card was finished, I had the students read or say the full sentence for each of their descriptors, such as, "My mom is...lovely.  My mom is...brave.  My mom is...determined." 

It was neat to see what words each student thought of first to describe their moms.  The most common descriptors were "nice" and "pretty."  I loved that some kids' moms were "silly," and "fun," as well.  I hope everyone enjoyed their cards. 




Happy Mothers' Day to all of you out there who mother!

My Life in Pictures: A Gaggle of Cousins

I love that in the South, you can say that anyone slightly related to you is your "cousin."  Here are some pics of Flannery hunting eggs and being silly with all of her wonderful "cousins."  We are so lucky to have such fun groups of family to spend time with.

cousin Molly with our sweet Annie dog

Flannery showing us how heavy her basket was

See?  Everyone in my family loves matching outfits.  It's genetic.

AAAAAND, they're off!

Do you call all of your 2nd and 3rd cousins "cousins," or just your first cousins?  I love a big extended family and even like for Flanna to call my BFFs "Aunt Kelley and Aunt Rachel," just to really confuse things.  :)

Dyeing Eggs

At first, I accidentally entitled this post "dying eggs."   Maybe I am just uber tired, but it really made me laugh.

The girlies dyed some eggs on Saturday, and were so amazed by how deep the colors could get if we left the eggs in the dye for a while. 

I also dyed eggs with my students last Friday, and then each student wrote about the experience.  One student wrote:  "I died two eggs, one blue and one green."   Poor little eggs.  :)

What silly thing made you laugh today?

April Fools Jokes for Kids

Frozen Bowls of Cereal (Note the blue milk in the cup, too!)

My daughter loves a good joke.  She's currently obsessed with the "interrupting cow" joke, which I really do find funny.  Here's how it goes:

Flanna:  Knock Knock.
Me:  Who's there?
Flanna:  Interrupting cow.
Me:  Interrupting cow--
Flanna:  MOO!

She can never get the timing just right on the first try, but it's still hilarious. 

Anyway, because one of my happiness commandments is to be silly and have fun, I've tried to play a (nice, not mean!) April Fools' Day prank on Flannery each year.  Last year, I gave her pretend food for breakfast, and then my husband gave her one of my dresses to put on for school.  This year, since we were on vacation with my mom, sister, and niece, we were able to pull several jokes together for April Fools'. 

Blue Milk (It looks scary gray in the cup!)

First, I froze two bowls of cereal and milk with the spoons in them the night before, and then when the girls woke up on April Fools' Day, I gave them the frozen bowls for breakfast.  They were so funny.  They poked at the bowls and looked, surprised, at one another for a second.  Then, my niece said, "These are frozen!" 

Early that morning, the girls and I planned a few other jokes to play on their grandmother.  We put blue food coloring in the milk.  So, when they asked their grandma for milk that morning, she pulled a gallon of surprise from the fridge.  They also drew little faces on the eggs so that when Grandma went to make scrambled eggs for breakfast, she would open an egg carton of fun!  The girls were so thrilled to be "in" on a joke, and it really made for a nice start to our day.


I hope that when they're grown up, my daughter and niece will look back on April Fools' Day with fond memories.  And I also hope I can keep coming up with fun ideas (and never mean spirited ones!) each year to keep them guessing!





What April Fools' Day pranks have you pulled, or been the "victim" of?

How to Bore a Child at Christmas

Step 1:  Set your camera to self-timer mode.  

Step 2:  Instruct your whole family to stand in front of your camera for 5 minutes straight while you find the perfect height and angle from which to take a group photo.  

Step 3:  Force the family to pose through at least 4 iterations of this process.  

Step 4:  Repeat steps 1-3 at every celebration you have, with every family/friend group you visit with children in tow.  

You may think I am kidding, but I assure you, I am not.  My poor sweet bored Flanna is extremely familiar with these 4 steps.  

The only saving grace for the poor children are the moments we remember to be silly and have fun... and those moments produce the best photos by far!

I'd love to hear about any silly family traditions that exist in your family!  How do you and your friends/family have fun when you're together?

Be Silly

This weekend was really just too much fun. We dressed up for Flanna's school Halloween party on Saturday, and then today, we dressed up again for the neighborhood party and trick or treating. Flannery went as Ariel. My husband was King Triton (Ariel's dad), and I went as Ursula the Sea Witch.

We had such fun being silly in our costumes, and it made us all really happy to be silly together. I'm hoping this will be a tradition we carry on for many years.








How can you be silly or light hearted more often with your family?

Reflect on Happy Memories

I love looking back at photos from years ago. There's something about a photo that just takes me back to that feeling I had in the moment. Thank goodness no one saved photos of me all melancholy as a teenager--I'd hate to relive those days! But reflecting on happy times really brings me joy.

My daughter loves to look back at her "baby book," too, and often asks me to "read" it at night as one of her books before bed. She loves the part where the doctor proclaims that's she's a strong baby because of her good strong cry when she was born.

I was looking back at our Halloween photos from the time Flannery was very small, and I just had to share some of the them. It has been such a blessing to get to share fun times with my family.










What photo brings you a happiness boost every time you see it?