Halloween 2010

Pumpkins before and after .... or actually after and before. Simi chose Jasmine for her pumpkin, and Taipan put an M & L on his for Mario and Luigi:

We had two families come trick or treat with us, so we made some Halloween food to have while they were here: two meatloaves - one a mummy head and the other a creepy gross hand:

And the costumes - Mario, Christmas Girl, a ghostbuster, pirate and baby pirate:

Princess Serena-Nina & Taipan's favorite videos

Taisim has been wearing one of her princess dresses quite a bit over the past week or so, and when she wears it she transforms into Princess Serena-Nina, and I am the queen. Princess Serena-Nina also has a daughter (Pink Princess Dinosaur), who wears a dress that Princess Serena-Nina crafted out of a blanket.

In these pics the princess is posing, showing us some cookies she and Allie made from a recipe in the princess cookbook, and then going off for a ride on Scootery.

And a quick note on Taipan, mostly so I remember some day. He's lately been very engrossed in walk-throughs of some of the Mario games - mostly Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. He specifically likes youtube videos that a guy named chuggaaconroy makes - he's great at game play, and his commentary is amusing. Taipan told me that he wants to be this guy's friend on facebook some day, so I found that he has a facebook page and I 'liked' it and now Taipan and I will look for updates through my facebook.

Labor Day Weekend - Parks

This weekend we had wonderful weather. We called some friends and met up with them at Brecksville Park on Friday and the North Royalton Park on Saturday.

Brecksville Park has a zip line and it's been maybe two years since we've been here, and the Taipan and Simi were in love with it all over again. They were both pleased that they were able to jump on and do it by themselves, though they also loved having someone give them a good push to go faster.

The North Royalton Park was great for climbing and running, and also sand.

Spider food

The spider's been in his web for at least 3 days, and we noticed a day or so ago that he had moved because his belly was facing us instead of his back.

Today we went to see if he was still there, and not only was he there, but he had caught something. It was pretty neat to see. He left soon after this. The camera kept auto-focusing on the bush behind the spider - gotta figure out how to change that still.

Last week of swimming

A lot of outdoor pools around here close when school starts. Luckily our neighborhood pool stays open a week or two longer and doesn't close until Labor Day. Which was nice this past week because we had weather into the 90s.

Simi & I went with Taiko one afternoon, and then returned a couple of days later with Taipan, Yuta and a friend.

Presents from Grammy

My mom sent a package with ZOOBMobile and the Puppy Pursuit Game. The pictures speak for themselves - a good time was had by all!!

Taiko & Superheroes with Upgrades

Taipan asked me to help him find some things he could put on - I think those were almost his exact words. After a short discussion I found out that he was going to be a superhero, and wanted to have 3 things he could put on as costume upgrades. The helmet, cape and flip flops are all upgrades to his original outfit. He also had different weapons, each one acquired after an upgrade. Simi decided to join in the fun too.

And Taiko was hanging out in the chair taking it all in.

Grasshopper

We had a visitor on our screen door. It's a grasshopper, but looks nothing like the grasshoppers we had in Orlando when I was a kid. Ours were much smaller an green. To me this guy is a huge grasshopper, though a friend of ours didn't think so, but he grew up in Ohio.

Spiderwebs

We noticed a lot of webs on a bush in front of our house one Saturday morning. I had only minutes before been reading about webworms, so I wondered if some of them might be from those. Yuta later saw spiders on them, so not webworms. There were three or four clusters of these, and they look thicker and fluffier in person:

Then I saw this web, which was pretty large, and had a spider in the middle of it waiting to catch something. It was there all day and night and didn't move at all from what we could tell (I'll do an update in a later post on this spider).

Space Station sighting

A friend of ours posted that her family was going to look for the International Space Station, so we decided to do the same. On the night that we looked for it, it was in the sky for 3-4 mins, and we were able to see it go right over head.

Click here to see NASA's sighting information page.

The space station is the bright white light in the sky. We also got a good view of Venus while we were out - it was very close to the horizon, and also very bright.

Amazone

After two weeks of canceling for various reasons, we finally made it to Amazone. It had been a long while (2 years? 3 years?) since we'd been here. School had already started, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

Lots of climbing and running, and Taipan & Marcus brought their DS's and did that for a little bit. There's also an arcade, which Simi enjoyed. We're all looking forward to going back again sometime soon.

Snap Circuits

I think I've said it before, but I love Snap Circuits, and Taipan thinks they're pretty cool too.

Taipan now does quite a bit on his own, following the booklet that came with the set. When we were playing with them he said "I want to tell whoever gave these to me 'Thank you so much - I love these'". So I passed that along to my sister.

He's also told us that he wants Snap Circuits Extreme and new "green" kit that they have.