Halloween and a trip to Seattle

While we were in Seattle for Sammy's 4th birthday party, my friend Jennifer came up and spent Saturday morning with me and the boys.  We walked around Greenlake and Einar rode around the whole thing on his bike!  Here she is with the horse and elephant.

Minus a really cool turban for Prince Ali Ababwa, this is us all dressed up as the Bellingham royal family.  Soren is Abu the elephant and I'm Cinderella with Einar as my pet horse.  I'm having fun with my sewing machine and was excited to get some use out of my old Marine Corps Ball dress that I bedazzled with some sleeves, peplums and silver trimming. 

Einar asked me last week what a troll was so I had to take him by the Fremont Troll while we were in town.  There was no way Einar was going to get out of the car to take a picture with the troll and I don't think it was because it was raining outside. 

Jared spearheaded the pumpkin carving this year with great success.  The one on the right-hand side was "radioactive" and had a red bike light inside to light it up.  Einar was his enthusiastic carving sidekick.  However there were kids playing outside while they were carving at the kitchen table and Einar kept taking "play breaks" and running outside without a sweatshirt.

I appointed myself in charge of window decorations and painted these pumpkins.  Through the front door you can see our Delta Clay colored wall that looks oddly seasonal.  Now that the pumpkins are down, I need to seriously consider proper window treatments.  Einar helped me paint the little one on the far left.  Perhaps we'll do a little turkey finger painting for November...

On Halloween night I dressed as a magic carpet (Cinderella wouldn't be dressed warm enough for trick-or-treating) and took the boys out for a traipse through our new neighborhood.  Einar's appraisal of the evening was "That was so much fun!  Halloween is much more fun than time-out!"  He also made out like a bandit as you can see in the following photo:

Now that the excitement of Halloween is over and the costumes are at least out of site (I haven't found a proper place yet for all of them) we have things like H1N1 to deal with on the home front.

The boys  got sick on Monday night with fevers and sore throats and we're still in isolation.  All three of us did get the vaccination last Wednesday, but didn't have time to build up the antibodies fully.  At least they seem to have mild cases and  are mostly on the mend.  We've been watching a bit more tv than usual.  Lots of Dinosaur train and Sesame Street.  Tomorrow I am going to have to get them out of the house for a car or stroller ride just for a change of pace.  Tensions were running a bit high while I was making dinner tonight and I had to shake things up  a bit and take Einar on a laundry folding mission and teach him how to sort the clean clothes and fold socks in order to avoid more trouble.