The Way I See It: October 2012

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!

Finally Halloween is here and Colin can trick or treat! He has been super excited for this night ever since we put up the Halloween decorations weeks ago. Our house...

The way it works here at Lajes on Halloween is at 5:30 PM they lock all the drive through gates to the housing area. Then from 6-7 PM it is trick or treat time for the Americans with US ID cards, the gates are all locked to come in unless you have ID. During this time we took Colin around the neighborhood and he was on a mission this year. Last year he understood the process, but he still wanted to eat a lot of the candy right when he got it. This year he had more of a sense of urgency and realized if he saved the candy to eat later, then he could get to the next house faster, and end up with more candy in the end. So we were able to cover almost our whole neighborhood in the hour Americans had to trick or treat.

A house in the neighborhood decorated up...

Colin and the girls next door, Anna Sophia & Emma, AKA Captain America and Cat Woman.

Once his pumpkin was filled and it was almost 7 PM we headed back to the house to prepare for the stampede. Here is Colin showing off his loot...

If you have never lived at Lajes you cannot possibly begin to imagine the insanity known as Halloween at this base. As a show of hospitality to the local nationals we invite them to come trick or treat from 7-8:30, after the American kids are done. If you invite them, they will come. Every single person on the island that is. I had been warned, and I was a little scared. This is the entrance to our housing area prior to the gates opening to the Portuguese...

I had a laundry basket full of candy ready to go and as I was getting it ready it occurred to me how insane this was. I weighed my candy out of curiosity...28 pounds! We had 28 pounds of candy to give out! Colin was READY and very excited to hand out candy. The first few kids that came by were American stragglers heading home, he was so cute and polite telling them "Happy Halloween!" and "You're welcome!"

Then the masses descended and it was crazy! It was a mob scene in no time! I could barely keep up dropping ONE candy into every bag fast enough. I didn't dare give away more than one per person because everyone had a bag for candy, kids, adults, babies...everyone! This was taken in our yard during the craziness, I am somewhere in the mob passing out candy!

In the end, our 28 pounds lasted about 45 minutes! We finished up before 8, Colin had a blast, and the Lorax costume was a hit. I am ready to pack up the Halloween now and move on to Thanksgiving!

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Finally all caught up!

I have been sooooo behind the last two weeks. Not just behind on blogging, behind in life in general. It's been the "just keep your head above water" kind of weeks around here. My current class, Early Literacy Development, has been more demanding than usual recently, so I've had school work to do. Then I just totally over committed myself in other areas. There were a bunch of fun kid oriented things to do on base I didn't want Colin to miss out on. I volunteered to help out with a few things. There were birthday parties and other social events. Shelby went TDY to Germany again for a few days for more treatment on his back. I signed up for a table at the base flea market and had to get stuff organized for that. I had to shop for a dress for a formal event coming up before all the good dresses were gone. I had Halloween costumes to finish making. Appointments. Sports. Awana....you get the idea.

To make matters worse we've been working with one car. Shelby's Jeep decided to break down in the middle of a traffic circle one afternoon. How's this for irony? Thursday we wire money to the bank to pay off the Jeep loan and FOUR days later on Monday the stupid Jeep dies. Talk about luck! Word is the transmission is shot. Jury is still out on that one, we had it towed to a mechanic we don't normally use because the guy we go to is closed on Mondays. We plan to have it towed from its current location to our usual guy and let him check it over, but I'm thinking he isn't going to have any better news. Looks like we'll be buying another island bomb to use for a couple months while we figure out the repairs on the Jeep and get the work done. Fantastic!

Then there was the head cold/flu thing that decided to sneak up on me this week. I don't know what it was but it was miserable. Thankfully it was short lived and out of my life in about 4 days. I was fairly sure my head was going to explode at any moment, it hurt to open my eyes and my mouth. Lucky for me I had a lot of school work to knock out this week so I was able to just lay in bed with my computer and try to stay alive. So far the boys don't have it, fingers crossed they missed it!

Another reason we had so many appointments crammed into the last two weeks is because things are starting to come together with our plans to adopt. Shelby and I have always talked about adopting in addition to having biological children, even before we got married and learned of my fertility problems. Colin would love a brother or sister (he asks for one all the time!) and we want that for him and for ourselves. We are in a place where the time and situation is right and so we are ready to pursue adding to our family. This is probably news to many as we've kept it pretty quiet until now. I've gone back and forth about blogging and going public with the adoption plans many times. I know several friends who have adopted and during certain parts of the adoption they have had to make their blogs private to protect themselves and the progress of their adoptions. Like infertility and IVF, adoption is very uncertain. It's a stressful process with no guarantees. I worry that something will fall through, we won't be approved, there won't be a child who fits our family, and many other things. We had to share our plans with some family and friends since we need recommendation letters to complete our application package. We have obtained numerous legal documents, all the letters and filled out pages of paperwork that should be ready to submit next week. Once the paperwork has been submitted and accepted by the adoption team as a complete package, they have up to six months from that day to complete the home study.

So there you have it, all the latest random tales of my uneventful life. And the pile of blog posts below that I finally got around to posting. :)

Pumpkin Carving

We carved our pumpkins today.

Colin had fun and did much better than last year. He was still overly excited and giddy to get to do pumpkins, same as last year. This year, however, he was not as apprehensive about digging out the pumpkin guts. He also took our word for it that they tasted gross this year. I remember last year we told him guts would taste nasty but of course he had to see for himself.

He worked hard to clean out the inside and then I helped him carve his face on it. He cracked us up when we were discussing what kind of face to carve. He said he wanted scary eyes, like this, then wiggled his eyebrows and tried to make his eyes look mean. Then he told me an angry nose, and showed me his angry nose. Finally he said his pumpkin needed a scary mouth and he tried desperately to make a scary mouthed look, but he could tell by our laughter it had come out all wrong. Poor kid. LOL The end results turned out pretty good. I made a one eyed monster, Colin got his angry/scary pumpkin, and Shelby is trying to signal Batman with his.

Halloween Party

The community center on base had a kids Halloween party today with games, candy and a costume contest. It was the first time Colin got to wear his whole costume all completed. Weeks ago when I started thinking about Halloween costumes (because shipping to this island takes forever and a day) I asked Colin what he wanted to be. Right away he said "The Lorax!" It wasn't a surprise to me because he is slightly obsessed with the movie right now. He loves watching it and sings the songs from the movie ALL. THE. TIME. This song in particular sticks in your head for days on end and drives you to the brink of madness. You're welcome! :)

Anyway, so Colin wants to be The Lorax. I google and scour the internet looking for a costume and can you believe that there are none out there to buy? ZIP. ZILCH. NADA! I broke the bad news to Colin that there weren't any Lorax costumes out there and showed him all kinds of other choices like Iron Man, Hulk, pirates, aliens, you name it. He wasn't biting. He's no dummy and he told me we could make a Lorax costume. I said yes that was possible, but Mommy can't sew to save her life and he better call Grandma and beg if he thought we could make one. Grandma did come to the rescue and found perfect orange fabric and the pattern I thought would work and quickly pulled it together. I ordered a bunch of things online to complete the ensemble and we had a Lorax!

Shelby thought if Colin was going as The Lorax that he could dress up as The Once Ler and I was able to order all the pieces and parts for that costume with new sewing required. I did have to give a haircut to a rock star wig in order to make it all work out for him, that was fun! The boys got all dressed up and ready and off we went to the party. Colin got shy when he got there and a bit moody. I am not sure if it was his costume, seeing the other kids in costume, or the lack of a nap, but he wasn't nearly as interested in being there once we actually arrived.

He played each of the games and was ready to leave, so we indulged him and came back home. It was kind of warm in the community center and his costume is pretty warm too, so he had to be hot under there. Shel & I were amazed how many people did not know who he and Colin were supposed to be. I thought The Lorax was a pretty popular movie! He was so stinkin cute though!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Smart Start Soccer Finale

Soccer seemed to fly by! Colin had his final practice and party tonight. I'm not sure exactly how much he really learned about the game, but he surely had fun. The team got together and did a mini game type thing where parents helped them pass the ball to their teammates to try to work it down the field and try to make a goal. It was total chaos and utterly hilarious. After about 15 minutes of that the kids were ready to get the pizza party started. Once they were sufficiently full of pizza and sugar it was time to pass out trophies and pictures. Colin was super excited to get a trophy, he didn't care what it was for or why he got it, he was just thrilled to have one. The next Smart Start sport offered here is flag football, which we opted to skip since the season starts mid November and runs up to just before Christmas. We'd only get to make it to two practices or so before heading back to the US for vacation, so we figured it was better to just wait until next time.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Random Fun

Here are some of the random fun things we've done recently that I failed to post here in a timely manner. Better late than never!

Colin has been doing jiu-jitsu classes when invited. We are hoping to get a regular children's class started soon.

We went to an open house at the base fire station during Fire Safety Week. 13 Oct 2012

We took a trip to Mount Brazil park with the MOPS group. The park is probably the nicest I have seen here on the island and Colin had a blast with his friends. He was fearless and determined to get to the top of this contraption. 18 Oct 2012

Colin and his friends climbed to the top of this huge, steep hill (the picture does not do it justice) and then slid back down on their butts. They decided that was so fun they couldn't get back to the top fast enough for another go. This time they decided to roll down it sideways! I'm betting a few got more than they bargained for on that trip down!