lost in books

emily asked me yesterday as we were driving home from our camp fire meeting... "what's your favorite color?" gray, "favorite animal?" elephant, "favorite food" pizza, "favorite store...oh i KNOW!!! book store!" and yep, i realized i have a major book addiction, even my daughter is on to me. MAJOR! i dream books, read whenever i get 1 minute, 2 minutes... a 10 minute break, score! i have a book in the john, a book in my purse, something to read in just about every nook possible. a maxed out credit card? fancy clothes, exotic trips, expensive dinners you say? no, books. plain and simple. love them.

so of course i was a sucker for this (having my own 98 year old grandfather living alone)... i think i am going to buy a dozen of these for christmas gifts. this book left me breathless (as so few books do... this and this and this and maybe this have left me speechless, gasping for breath. i am probably the only person on the planet who has a physical reaction to reading)

so now i am thinking, maybe i can reproduce my own version of this book using photos about my own grandpa? his house is just bursting with potential. just thinking.

this book and my preliminary version...

Halloween Costumes

What's a mummy to do?

the costume request

my two hour sewing attempt to make a bodysuit of some kind to wrap strips of sheet around...the result?

bodysuit = scrapped! a quick trip to target for some white leggings and a long sleeved t shirt... this kid will be wrapped on the spot and i hope she doesn't need to go to the bathroom! pictures of her all wrapped up coming soon...

Pumpkin Carving Fall Birthday Bash

Our first ever pumpkin carving camp fire meeting, a new tradition for sure. i think i have found a new addiction. having neglected this activity for so many years, just too busy? not sure why, but i will be filling my front yard with jack-o-lanterns pronto!

celebrating the fall birthdays

jack-o-lantern display

Pumpkin Patch'd

growing up, i dont remember going to pumpkin patches. must be a so cal thing, we just got ours at the local grocery store. we did, however, carve a dozen of them every year, that i do remember. with our kids, we have been hit or miss on the pumpkin carving. this year though, i am going to make an effort. we worked on costumes today and went to our local pumpkin patch for a little afternoon outing (funny, i ran into a mom i saw this morning when i walked to a neighborhood corner to cheer on the marathoners running by... small world!)

our camp fire meeting tomorrow will be halloween themed, and even though this weather is wacky hot and humid, i am going to TRY to get into the halloween mode. this year is a big one, my birthday is on halloween (which i highly recommend if you are ever lucky enough to plan a baby's birth on this day) and i turn the big FOUR O! egad!

my kind of pumpkin

a side note: pa's pumpkin patch is on a small piece of wetlands... part of what we are trying to save for the birds. interesting?

Italian memories

Gosh, what started all this?

Emily in Boboli gardens, Florence Italy

Pisa

one of several pictures that just captured this trip. we stayed a week in tuscany, renting a house with my parents (the cheapest way to stay in europe). the house was amazing and we really felt at home, spending hours and hours driving up into the surrounding hills dreaming of having our own tuscan farmhouse.

cinque terre, i highly recommend. you can walk between the five towns or take the train. we did both and saw all five in one incredibly long day. i would love to come here and actually stay a few days in each tiny town.

the mc donalds in italy had grilled cheese sandwiches, which i admit i lived on as we drove from town to town during our week in tuscany. emily's first words ever were "french fries!" which she said here in italy after spotting the arches while driving by.

another funny story was how crazy the driving directions were to get to our villa in tuscany. my mom read them as we left the airport in pisa, things like "turn left at the red house", "go right at the 2nd stop sign" or "turn at the first tree, quick right at the block wall, go past the picket fence, stop at the shop, pass the church".... totally ridiculous directions which took us hours and hours of retracing, rereading over and over to finally get to the villa (which had some strange name, no numerical address, no street signs to be found anywhere, no local phone number was given either, the number we called went to milan!)

when we pulled up after 3 or 4 hours of driving in circles (a lot of arguing and yelling between us all) emily quietly said, "thank god" with her hands together in a praying motion. one of us had shouted, "THANK GOD!!!!" and she repeated it just as she did at her daycare before eating each meal, a quiet "thank god" was her daily grace at lunch. it was surreal!

at the end of our cinque terre day, my dad (always the prankster) tried to lure us to "el gigante!" he said, "its a must see, come on! el gigante!" no one believed him, he was always pulling our legs so we sat at a small park trying to recover from the long walk. of course he lured emily away finally and she came back yelling to come see. we went and sure enough there was this amazing statue/arch thing with a plaque saying, "el gigante" the giant. my dad had the last laugh on that one!

walking the wall around lucca, this wall is wide enough for a car to drive on. we loved lucca so much, we came back several times to walk the town. my mom tells the story of how a group of older men, sitting at a table on the wall playing cards, were mesmerized by emily when she went up to them to show them a cut she had on her hand. they stopped playing and all patted her head and kissed her finger with great flourishes. wonderful moment.

venice, coming back from a day trip to one of the islands (murano i think). emily is eating a chocolate someone gave her. i cant tell you how fun taking a small child (or any aged kid i am sure) to italy is. italian people LOVE kids. we got special treatment everywhere we went. so many people wanted to touch emilys hair and pat her head, they spoke to her and said "bella, bella!" over and over. she loved it and we really got away with some horrible 15 month old tantrums, people just shrugged and smiled, never a glare or a negative comment was made. emilys favorite thing was to make loud yelps in quiet churches to hear the echo. it became a game for her and eventually we couldnt take her into churches at all, she loved this game so much.

florence again, just wondering about this outfit????

yikes! this combo is interesting! this was boboli gardens again, the grotto was fantastic.

in venice we stayed in an apartment that used to be a palace of some kind. we had a key that allowed us to walk the grounds and we found this "garage" with a door to the canals. a boat would pull up into this space, then shut the doors behind, just like parking a car in a garage. it had gorgeous light fixtures and sculptures everywhere, truly extraordinary.

thanks for the walk down memory lane, time to make some new italian memories!

Italy on my mind

i started "under the tuscan sun" exactly 10 years ago, at the time it felt slow and hard to follow. well, 10 years later i am hooked and savored every page of it. i am halfway through her second memoir "bella tuscany" and bought the coffee table photo book to go with both. the wheels are turning and i am dreaming of my own fixer upper in tuscany... or france or wherever a cool village is waiting for me. dreaming of something new and foreign (feeling this post to my core, wish i could express myself so wonderfully). so there you have it.

Science patch

this year i decided to approach our meetings from a different angle (last year i just hoped to make it to the meeting on time with at least half the supplies). while sitting at the back-to-school night meeting a couple weeks ago listening to emily's teacher, i took mental notes on some of what she said. basically that with math and reading being pushed so hard in second grade (all grades, really) there isnt much time for science, art (of course) and things like maps and geography. so like i probably mentioned regarding the map lesson, i am focusing on some of the missing subjects. not enough time for science? well, let's do it!

we had a guest "lecturer" at this meeting, one of the moms, christine: