Touch Rugby (featuring Cameron!)

It was a pleasure to watch Cameron participate in touch rugby on his school team.  The league contains all school-sponsored teams, and Cam played in the division for 9- & 10-year old boys and girls.  Cameron has never played rugby before, but he caught on quickly and truly enjoyed himself.  His team was inexperienced and only got one win, but they improved so much over the short season.  Cameron kept saying every week how much he loved it, so that's what matters, right?

Rachel's soccer jersey and Cameron's touch rugby jersey must have come from the same place.  Cameron still played hard, despite his very roomy top with a (much too) deep V:

My goodness.  That's a LOT of bare chest goin' on.

We've heard one girl's name come up several times this year when Cameron has talked about his "friends" at school… Jasmine.  Did Cameron sign up for touch rugby after learning that Jasmine would be playing?  Perhaps.  :)  

We had fun going to the park as a family to support Cameron.  The park was enormous, and it honestly felt like every person in Palmy had a kid playing touch rugby.  Despite the crowds, the matches were quick (30 minutes) and were played back-to-back each week, so the season actually passed quite rapidly.

We will definitely play touch rugby for years to come.  It's fast paced, simple to learn, and just plain fun.  We really enjoyed watching Cameron play.  He always pushed hard, stayed focused, and tried his best...despite the score.  Great job, Cam!

Guy Fawkes Day

From Wikipedia:  Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Fawkes was born and raised in York, England.  His father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic.  Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Year's War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers.  He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful.  He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England.  Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne.  The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there.  

Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early morning hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives.  Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually broke.  Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.

Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in England (and elsewhere) since 5 November 1605.  His effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by an elaborate firework display.

Or, as my kiwi friend put it:  "We are basically celebrating the failed efforts of a terrorist."

There's no wrong reason to celebrate with fireworks, I say.

We waited to buy our fireworks until the last minute, and they were half price.  Sweet!  We had a "blast" (he he) enjoying our explosive treasures:

Luke and Landon were a little hesitant about the whole firework display, and enjoyed the show from the safety of the house. :)

Steve took the older kids across the street to the river walkway, hoping to get a good view of the city fireworks, while I stayed back with the younger kids.  I hoped we'd get a little glimpse of the fireworks as well…which is why I was completely stunned when the show started and I could not imagine a better view than what I witnessed from our front porch!

Breathtaking!  Thanks for failing, Mr. Fawkes.

Happy Halloween, Kiwi Style!

I have to start out with a confession:  I have become a bit of a Halloween "Scrooge" over the past several years.  It's happened gradually, but I have grown from really liking Halloween, to merely tolerating it, to now almost dreading the day.  I know there are probably some of you Halloween-lovers out there who may not want to even finish reading this post…but stick with me!  My tune has changed, and I will try to explain.

Looking back, I absolutely LOVED Halloween as a kid…I mean, what kid doesn't love Halloween?  School parties, costumes, and tons of candy = pure heaven.  I think Halloween started to lose its magic in my late teens.  When you are too old to trick-or-treat, you don't party, and you don't feel like joining the hordes of women who think that Halloween gives them a free pass to squeeze into some naughty, revealing "costume", you feel somewhat displaced.

Beyond that, I disliked how truly scary and macabre and sinister Halloween had gotten.  I remember going into one of those seasonal Halloween super-stores, and was honestly horrified by the level of grossness and scariness I beheld (not to mention the trashiness).  I couldn't believe what was being sold at a store that did not have an age restriction for entrance!  :)   

Despite my negative feelings, after becoming a mom I decided that I would try really hard to love Halloween, for my kids' sake.  We've always made sure the kids had cute costumes (although usually store-bought and not very creative).  We've put up a few decorations every year.  We've carved pumpkins, and, of course, we've NEVER skipped the trick-or-treating.

Even so, it's still been pretty dreadful for me.  I haven't dressed up in years, beyond wearing black and orange (and if I'm feeling particularly festive, I might throw on a witch's hat).  I have come to view Halloween as the somewhat bothersome stepping stone on the path to two of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

When October commenced here in New Zealand, we knew right away that there wouldn't be as much of an emphasis on Halloween as you see in the States.  Case in point:  This pic is of the entire Halloween section at our grocery store:

At another store, they also carried a few decorations and had big bags of candy for sale.  I had to double-take when I saw this Reese's display:

I guess that Reese's are still somewhat of a novelty here, but the price just shocked me!  A 50-piece bag at home would be…what… four or five dollars?  When I went to Utah for the funeral, I snapped a quick pic of just a portion of the Halloween candy and supplies on display at Walmart (not that I'm endorsing this type of excess…it's a little nuts):

Anyway, when we realized that Halloween wasn't very widely celebrated in New Zealand, I was actually a bit relieved.  Maybe this was my chance to get a break from it all!  Hooray!

I should have known better.

When you have older kids (namely Julia) who love every holiday, they can't imagine the thought of eliminating something as monumental as Halloween (the horror!).  So, in the weeks leading up to October 31st, when she recognized that Halloween wasn't getting the commercial attention she is accustomed to (and when she noticed my lackluster attitude about it all), Julia took matters into her own hands.

Pretty soon, we discovered homemade decorations popping up all over the house, like jack-o-lanterns and bats made from construction paper (which were taped to the windows), and these festive candle holders made from empty milk cartons:

Even though they don't sell the traditional big orange pumpkins, I bought a few small pumpkins, which were eagerly transformed into mini jack-o-lanterns:

Before long, the twins were asking me to make "pumpkins" out of everything!

When we came home from our Spring Break trip, we were delighted to discover that we had received a package from home!!  Aunt Danielle and Grandma Marylin had sent a goody box with lots of fun Fall/Halloween treasures.  It was so thoughtful of them, and we all squealed with delight at the contents of the package.  I must have mentioned to them that I would miss making pumpkin pies this season.  I never imagined that I would be so happy to see canned pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice, too!  There will be pies, people.

Have you ever witnessed children crying literal tears of joy over a bag of candy corn?  I have.

A few days later, as a means of entertaining the twins, someone did a youtube search for "toddler halloween" videos.  Little did we know that a true obsession was being born.  We have watched dozens and dozens of video clips & halloween jingles.  Even now, a few weeks after Halloween, my twins are still asking every day to see "pumpkins on com-poo-ter!" 

All things Halloween gradually began to saturate our lives.  That being understood, this exchange is not surprising:

Me:  (to Luke)  It's so exciting that in just a few weeks, you and Landon are going to be SUNBEAMS at church.

Landon:  (running in from the other room, terror-stricken)  No, Mom!  That's too scary!  I can't… be… a ZOMBIE!!

I'm not even joking when I say that I could probably recite "Five Little Pumpkins" backwards by now.  Our trips to the library have yielded stacks of Halloween-related storybooks.  We bought the "Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" movie for our Apple TV, and the twins have watched it at least eleventy times.  Here's Landon reciting his favorite part of the show:

Good grief!  I suppose it's what I deserve for trying to stifle the Halloween spirit around here.  Luke and Landon are way more interested in Halloween than any of the other kids were at their age!   

We had talked about buying costumes for the kids, but decided against it since they were expensive and we didn't love anything that was available.  We already had super-hero outfits for the twins, so we thought we'd just come up with something else for the others.  As it turned out, I was in Utah the whole last week before Halloween, and actually returned on Halloween day, in the early afternoon.  I was so very, very exhausted, and just wanted to go to my bed and sleep through it all, but I put on my happy-face mask (that was my costume this year) and went along with the celebrations.

We weren't sure if we would get any trick-or-treaters, or if anyone around here would even serve candy, but we decided to give it a go.  Luke put on his Incredible Hulk costume (he didn't want to wear the mask because he thought it made him look "too scary"):

He's using his winter beanie for a candy-collection bag (yep, we're ghetto like that).

Landon refused to wear his Spiderman costume, but instead insisted on wearing the "Great Pumpkin" shirt I had brought for him from Utah.

Since Emily has a complete aversion to traditional costumes -- she has serious issues with scratchy or restricting fabrics -- she was perfectly content to wear her jack-o-lantern shirt:

I have no idea what Cameron is going for here, but when you leave a kid to his own costume-designing devices, you never know what he'll come up with!

Rachel and Julia put on the only things they could think of that might slightly resemble costumes:

I'm stunned that anyone would give candy to this rag-tag bunch of misfits… but a few people actually did!

(I'm sensing a little reluctancy from this lady):

It's a tradition that we trick-or-treat at our house last:

We probably got fifteen trick-or-treaters total (not including our bunch).  Here's the grand total of candy collected by my kids.

Once it got darkish, we turned off our porch light, and the party REALLY started. :) We moved to the back patio, and took turns bobbing for apples…

… followed by the ol' "donut on a string" challenge:

After putting the littles to bed, the rest of us stayed up to watch a movie called "The Prestige"…well, they watched it.  I fell asleep about 36 seconds after sitting down on the couch.

Since we are a day ahead of our loved ones and friends in the States, I spent the next day coming out of my travel coma while thoroughly enjoying all of the fun Halloween posts on social media.  As I acknowledged my joyful feelings whilst scrolling through photos of minions and ninjas and carved pumpkins and Duck Dynasty characters, I realized that I was experiencing a true Halloween miracle!  Even though we had had a really fun night as a family, I recognized how much I truly missed our traditional Halloween celebrations from home.

I have resolved to focus on the super fun aspects of Halloween in the future…the joy of the kids, the pumpkins, the decorations, the trick-or-treating, the creative costumes…instead of being irritated by the dark or less-wholesome aspects.  Heck, I think I might actually dress up next year, in an honest-to-goodness costume.  Steve has even agreed to do a couples costume with me (I have no idea what that will be yet, but if you know Steve, that's true love right there…and I can confirm that it definitely WON'T be doctor and naughty nurse, ha ha).  

Now, if you'll excuse me -- I've just been informed that those Five Little Pumpkins are up on that gate again, and they ain't gonna roll out of sight by themselves.