Happy Holidays

Jingle Bell Run at school

Gingerbread houses (more icing on hands and in mouth than used on construction)

Lighting Hanukkah candles

 

Painting dreidels

Santa Baby

Hermione

Part 1 of the two-part finale of the enormously popular Harry Potter films opens in theaters today.

Léah as Hermione, the female protagonist in the series:

Iron Boy

Gabriel has never seen either of the “Iron Man” movies. But, the idea behind Iron Man is very appealing to a young boy - with enough smarts and resources, someone can build a technologically advanced suit of armour and become a superhero.

Earlier this year, Gabriel had stated that he wanted to be Iron Man for Halloween. I told him that we should build a suit rather than buy one and for the last few months, that has been our project together.

We used recycled plastic from milk and orange juice jugs for the panels of the armour, and the housing for the chest-mounted "uni-beam" was fabricated from a yogurt container. It took us weeks to collect enough materials for the suit.

We “sewed” the panels together using cable ties and used many coats of spray paint.

For the defining trait of Iron Man’s “uni-beam” light, we installed a camping headlamp in the chest piece running on rechargeable “AA” batteries. (This doubled as Gabriel’s flashlight for trick-or-treating.)

“Iron Gabriel” all suited-up and ready for some heroic candy gathering for Halloween:

Halloween Preparation

Last year, our kids weren’t able to fully celebrate Halloween in Costa Rica, so this year, they are making up for it by:

Decorating like crazy

Enjoying the Pumpkin Fests with activities like walking through fake graveyards.

We attended a Halloween party last weekend and the 3 kids wanted to dress up in scary costumes.

Scary…

Scary…

Very scary…

More cute than scary…

Scary, scary, and cute scary ready to go to the party.

The kids had a great time at the party. At one point in the night, the children wrapped each other up like mummies.

We are excited for Halloween this Sunday night!

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Grand Canyon National Park, a World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, is a top family travel destination and a must see, at least once.

We started our Grand Canyon adventure last Spring on Route 66. The kids were excited to drive on this historic route which was introduced to their generation in the Disney/Pixar movie “Cars”.

It gets pretty cold that time of year at the Grand Canyon. We weren’t equipped with warm enough clothes so we had to buy some cheap hats and gloves at a dollar store.

(My cheap hat was the “Smurfiest” of all of the hats.)

I just love Léah’s cheeks in this picture.

The canyon offers so many lookouts with views that cannot be matched.

Now we need to schedule the time to visit the other six natural wonders of the world!

Pumpkin Patch

This past weekend, we made a trip to a pumpkin patch so that the kids could pick their own pumpkins. They were allowed to pick any pumpkin that they liked as long as they could carry it out of the patch themselves.