Halloween Turkey Cookies

I've been horrible about pictures this year. I don't take them. If I manage to take the pictures, then I forgot to upload them. If I upload, I don't download (or maybe I have that backwards?) and then I just don't share them.

My family in places exotic and far think that I'm not giving them pictures because I don't like them. This is a horrible representation of my feelings for my family. I am happy to share pictures of my super cute kids no matter how much I don't like you. Just ask _____. Ahem.

Well, so here's a few things that have happened in our world in the last few weeks:

HALLOWEEN!

Somehow I got off super easy this year with the costume department. Moira wanted to be....prepare yourself for ingenuity....a black cat. I know! So she dressed in black clothes (that's my baby) and I found (ok, Kristi Tiller found) a tail/ears combo at Target for $7! Add the face crayons for a dollar and I seriously paid $8 for her costume. Now, it wasn't anything impressive. But last year's costume is sitting in the dress-up chest, collecting dust and reminding me that I could have bought a few movies or cups of coffee or bottles of Philosophy's finest with that chunk o'change. Anyways, she loved it and was totally excited.

Sabra Rain was really REALLY excited about choosing her costume. She picked (this is not a joke) a cupcake, a shark, a hamburger, a ghost, a pink cat, a witch, a ball, a puppy, a table, a pirate, and a bunch of grapes. These are the things she mentioned MORE THAN THREE TIMES. So instead I told her she could choose anything from the dress-up chest...whatever made her happiest the day of October 31st. She chose Tinkerbell, which is just so fitting for her anyways. She wanted some facepaint, thus the oddly clownlike ring around her mouth.

On the day of Halloween, I felt slightly better than warm gelatinous poo. Sorry for the ugly words, but I really felt like a hollowed out log full of fungus. I had spent the evening wondering why my spirit didn't recognize that my body had stopped functioning. It was in this happy manner that I reminded Austin we had signed up to be a 'trunk' for our church Trunk Or Treat. Yippe! At least I could stay in my car, right? Well, weather being as lovely as it is this time o'year, we had a torrential downpour expected and thus the Trunks became Tables. (No rain fell this night, incidentally)

We had to come up with a theme to decorate our Trunk turned Table. I wanted to use all the lovely Harry Potter signs and such that we used for our party this summer. Austin felt not so comfortable doing so, because churches are filled with people who cannot disagree without damning your soul to the pit of everlasting torment. So, we opted for Noah's Ark (because all the church naysayers would TOTALLY have supported Noah back in the day when he played with gopher wood). We put the unexplainable amount of stuffed animals the kids own into the car, added a Noah's Ark blanket for clarification purposes, and decided that the Trunk turned Table would be just fine, thank you very much, we were SO not looking to win a prize.

Austin then decided he should dress with the theme. He planned on dressing all in brown and going as a dog. The idea was fine, except that dressing all in brown would only make him look like a large chunk of...well. I told him he needed to be something we could actually pull together at the last minute. And for some reason, in my sleep-deprived state, I suggested ladybug. I was thinking of the manbug ladybug from A Bug's Life. To my surprise, Aus thought it was funny and...well...

I'm not saying that it was a fantastic costume. You can't see the spots we had pasted on...they are on the back...BUT....is this costume that hard to figure out? With antennae and all?! I cannot even begin to tell you how many people seriously asked if he was the devil. I don't remember the devil wearing floppy silver balls and black spots. Although, maybe that is why he is so angry.

So here's our Trunk turned Table. Yes, I know...it wasn't A for effort. But we showed up, and that was more than most of you can say. (Feel guilt?)

Next issue of the night: despite that ALL the tables were decorated with things like pumpkins or footballs or fairies or what have you....EVERYONE thought we were giving away stuffed animals. Nobody else had this problem with their table! It was understood that the tables were thematic except for our blasted table, which must have had a large giant silver claw suspended o'er top, saying 'PLAY ME! PUT A QUARTER IN AND GET A PRIZE!'

Whatever. I promised to come dressed as a cranky pregnant lady. I really was. That isn't a smile. It was me telling Austin to take the blasted picture before anyone saw me and thought I was being vain or worse....cutesy pregnant mother. I promised several friends across the country that I would take at least one picture of my hideous puffed self before Isla gets evicted. Here it is, don't say I didn't follow through on my promise. Well! After the kids went trick-or-treating with Godparents and Company and we continued to yell at children for trying to take our stuffed animals, it was time to go home. So we got in the car, the kids chose a piece of candy, and off we went in the direction of Home Sweet Smyrna. And then Moira screamed hysterically.

She had happily been enjoying a popcorn ball (which I didn't know they made after 1953) when her mouth filled with blood and her tooth drooped dramatically in a direction it had heretofore been unfamiliar with. Her first loose tooth was now her first barely-hanging-by-a-thread tooth. She was not amused and brought all the drama to the situation that I could have expected of my lovely firstborn child. We took a detour and stopped here:

Daniel and Codi Noga...love them. They were dressed up, handing out candy to their neighborhood, had lovely bowls of chocolate pretzels and a large steaming silver kettle of spiced cider. Codi lives in Pottery Barn Land. I'm pretty sure she has those laundry baskets that have embroidered things like 'Delicates' 'Whites' 'Darks' and such. Anyways, what kid could keep crying about a tooth when Mr. Daniel was dressed like a giant fart balloon?

And of COURSE, Codi was dressed like a sweet/sexy little black kitty. Because every pregnant girl wants to show up and have to sit next to Codi. Awesome. But Moira thought it was super cool, and told Codi without shame that her tail was far superior to Codi's.Sabra, meanwhile, ate every chocolate covered pretzel in the house. And then she really could fly. (Note red spots in background...they now make my teeth mushy and look as though they belong in that fungus filled log)

Moira, makeup askew due to tooth-induced tears, getting back into the spirit of things.

So that was about it for Halloween! Moira let Austin take the tooth out the next day, and...I don't have pictures on my camera. I took it on my phone. I know, what a terrible thing to do. But with all the technological advances, I'm pretty sure I can 'create' a picture of her first lost tooth should the need arise in the future. I'll just add that to the things that need to go in the baby book. #1 is find the baby book.

Next up on our tour of Things I Do To Make Myself Feel Like A Better Mom: Cookies!

I'm not a crafty-ish person. I recently (very painfully and literally) superglued my own fingers together while helping Moira with a turkey project. And then, while trying to remedy the situation, superglued a plastic daisy to my other hand. I don't have a picture.

But I do attempt to do things with the kids on the weekends so that when they visit their therapist later in life I can have this information as rebuttal. We DO make Christmas ornaments. We DO make Halloween pumpkin crafts that hang on our door. And, as of this year, we DO make Thanksgiving themed cookies.

I burn about 65% of all cookies. It really is true. I have found out that my oven is horribly off, by about 100 degrees, so that has helped my self-esteem just a wee bit. This was one of those days that if the cookies were less than perfection, I was going to drive myself to the asylum and lock my own arms in a large white jacket.

Luckily, the stars aligned:

Yes, I'm still shocked. Turkeys, leaves, acorns...NOT BURNED! And look at my happy little decorating table! I was wicked proud of myself and asked Austin to praise me for a good three days afterwards. There are still sprinkles in the dark little corners of the room...but they had a good time.

Austin even made one! He chose an acorn...painted it orange and brown, no sprinkles. We couldn't be more opposite. But he is pretty to look at, so here you go:

Sabra is not capable of taking a picture right now if she isn't smiling like this. And she really, really does smile like this even if there isn't a camera in her face. She's wearing a Minnie Mouse costume, because...why not?And here's one of the lovely finished products. I probably ate it. Because good moms make cheap Halloween costumes, perfect cookies, and never hurt their kids' feelings by turning down something they made special 'just for you'.