Haley's Tea Party

If you've spent a lot of time with Haley, you'll know that one of her favorite things in life is a good tea party.  She's fond of tea parties at the beach, with plastic cups, salt water or lakewater for tea, and sand for sugar; tea parties in her treehouse in the backyard with only Kimball for a guest; tea parties in the bath with bubbles for sugar; and fancy teaparties with china tea cups and real tea and sugar cubes.  The only crucial ingredients are cups, a tea pot, something wet and something sugar-like in consistency.

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For months Haley has been asking to have some of her friends from school over for a tea party.  Finally, we decided we really needed to do this for her, and sent out invites to some of her little girlfriends.  It was so priceless to see how ridiculously excited she was on the tea party day itself.  She could hardly contain herself all morning, and was SOOOO serious while frosting, sprinkling, and decorating the cupcakes with tiny fairies.  Finally all the treats were ready and we set up the table and then... we still had an hour to wait.  Haley sat at her spot at the table with her hat and tutu on and waited... not so patiently.  "How many more minutes til my friends come, mama?"  When the first ones arrived, she ran out on the porch and SHOUTED at them to "COME INSIDE TO MY TEAPARTY!!!"

All her friends were dressed up in fancy dresses and frilly bows too, and they all dove into the tea party with abandon.  Or at least the treats.  Turns out no one much liked the fruit herbal tea, at least without a ton of sugar in it.  But the cupcakes, petis fours, cookies and other treats that her friends brought were all gobbled up.  After about 20 minutes, they all got up and migrated to Haley's room to play with her dress up box and all of her toys, while we got to know the parents of Haley's friends better.   Aiden was lucky to have an older sibling of one of Haley's friends show up so they could escape the girly-ness out in the backhyard. I have to say the tea party was a total success, and I hope we can do something like it again soon.

The next morning, Andy was washing all the tea party cups and saucers, and we had to laugh because a lot of the cups were full of solid sugar, and everything was stuck to everything else with a glue-paste of copious sugar melted in a bit of hot tea!

Late Fall Vermont Trip

A late fall family trip to Vermont included a list of chores to help get everything ready for winter, but also we (the kids especially) found lots of time to have fun.  Aiden and I took a King Arthur Flour cooking class on our way up north, "Tapas to Go"... we weren't sure what types of tapas we'd be making, and as it turns out they included lots of things like curry and anise, so Aiden wasn't too thrilled to eat them.  He loved making them, just not eating them.  He did like the almond shortbread pictured above though, which he thought was especially fun to make because it included both butter and lard.  It was tasty.

In the Sauna

The girls were in pure "bff" mode all weekend- most of the time they were inseparable and gushing over one another, and then every so often one or both of them would erupt into tears over not sharing or not playing the right way or "she said i was a ______"...  They are sometimes a challenge but for the most part it's pretty awesome to watch them already making silly memories together.  They went back into the woods to play in their "fairy fort" created over the summer, and Aiden chased them around, first as a big black bear and then as a knight.  Fisher thinks they're all crazy, I'm pretty sure.  The other thing the girls loved doing was putting on bathing suits over their tights (ala 80's aerobicize, just missing the legwarmers) and having a dance party.  Too cute.

Dance party in your bathing suits!

The fairy fort

On Sunday all the chores were done, so we headed into B-town to the ECHO center.  We hadn't been there since Aiden was about 2 and Haley was non-existent, so it was fun to explore and see how things have changed over the years.  By far the biggest hit of the day was the watershed table.  I know, that sounds so totally, boring... watershed table.  But this thing was awesome!  It was basically a giant tray full of "moon sand" coated with something so it feels really satisfying and won't stick to your hands.  You can mold any kind of topography into the landscape, and 3D cameras above sense the changes and add coloration and topo lines constantly as you change the landscape.  Then, you can make it rain, and watch the rain run down the hills and mountains and valleys you made into the lowest reservoirs of your landscape.  Even the adults could not be torn away from this exhibit.  Turtles and frogs had to take a back seat.  After our visit, we had a great lunch at American Flatbread, where Aiden created his own pizza with sausage, onions and salsa.  When it came, he declared it was delicious, and then left it to the rest of us to eat while he wolfed down plain cheese pizza with the rest of the kids ;)

The watershed model

Besties (or worsties, depending on the moment)

photobomb!

Sometimes Haley does not want to go to school in the morning

Boo to You

For Halloween this year, Aiden wanted to be a zombie football player.  He saw it in a catalog somewhere and thought it was perfect.  We ended up making our own zombie football player costume, but it turned out even better than the packaged one, and he was really good at rolling his eyes back in his head and doing that dragging-foot walk that you see zombies on TV doing.  I actually don't like to look at the photo we took of him too long- that's my little boy?!?!  Oh well.

Thankfully Haley wanted to be a cute little puppy dog.  Awww.  We went to a Halloween party on Saturday with the kids in their costumes, me as a squid, and Andy as Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad.  I don't watch the show, but apparently he was a dead ringer.  Hmm....

Halloween itself was a warm but rainy day- we met a group of other kids and parents for pizza after school and then headed out into the crazy din that is New London on Halloween night.  We lucked out with a one-hour break in the rain, and were able to hit most of the houses along Main Street before it started pelting big drops of cold rain on us.  By the time we made it home, we were all soaked, but the kids had nice big caches of candy to show for the effort.

In other news. we've been subtly preparing for winter- raking leaves, putting the garden to bed, tagging a christmas tree, preparing for the return of the chickens from Vermont.  We also scored some second hand ski and snowboard equipment at a winter sports sale, upgrading to the kids' current sizes.  I found both Andy and Aiden snowboards and boots for very little money... Aiden's board may be too large for him this year, but at least now Andy can get out there and learn to board with Aiden without having to rent equipment too.  Haley is beyond excited for her first "pizza... french fries... pizza" experience of the season.  The kids are doing snow dances, while Andy and I try to cancel them out with secret anti-snow chants under our breath.  Thanks to our collective efforts, we'll probably get an ice storm!

Climbing the Elephant Rock at Elephant Rock Tree Farm

Here's our tree