Fright Night

Princess Zelda (Paige)

A witch (Laura) with her fluffy familiar (Midnight)

Prom queen (Lauren) and witch (Laura)

A gypsy (Emma) reads Sunny's palm

The Grim Reaper (Daniel) 

A gypsy girl plays her fiddle

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Craig took the kids plus a friend to the mall to trick or treat while I brewed dinner in my cauldron. The kids came home with about 10 pounds of candy apiece. They had dinner and now they're out trick or treating in the neighborhood. 

On the menu: a salad garnished with giant bugs, buckets of blood, eyeballs, a human brain

Five spiders ensnare a bug in their web

Yum! 

Delectable blood and guts

Halloween

Craig is taking the kids and a friend trick or treating at the mall, while I prepare a ghoulish concoction (heh, heh) of human brain, guts, blood, bug-riddled salad, and eyeballs.

Princess Zelda (Paige), a witch (Laura), The Grim Reaper (Daniel), a pumpkin (Sun-Bun), and a gypsy (Emma)

Sunny Bunny is going as a Jack-O-Lantern.

Halloween Events

Last year, the kids got gypped out of their Halloween events by bad weather. This year, they're having much better luck. They've already had a pumpkin patch and fall festival trip. I took Emma to a Halloween party on Wednesday night, Craig took them all to The Haunted Mines on Thursday night, and I took Laura and Emma to a pumpkin patch this morning. 

Emma and Laura with an alpaca 

Laura and Emma on a hay ride

On Tuesday, I took the kids to a talk at East Library by a CalTech professor who studies snowflake formation. The pictures of snowflakes were SO beautiful! 

Busy Tuesday

Craig is at a conference in Las Vegas. He took Daniel along. Daniel is mostly staying in the hotel and doing schoolwork on a laptop. Neither one is particularly impressed with the neon lights of Vegas. We're looking forward to all being together again tomorrow night. The girls had a busy day today. They started with a three-hour film acting class, after which we went to lunch.

Lunch at Boston Market

Then we did some art projects to go with Laura's and Emma's unit on Native American art.

Emma cuts out a clay form to make a Yup'ik finger mask

Laura decorates a Yup'ik serving bowl

Paige joins in by making a clay fish

We'll paint and decorate the clay models tomorrow. Yesterday was busy too -- two medical appointments, Laura had a make-up acting class, and Paige had a harp lesson. Tomorrow we have NOTHING scheduled, so it should be a peaceful day, and we might even get some homeschooling done. Speaking of peaceful, I loved this beautiful, gentle sculpture that we saw at a sculpture exhibition the other day:

Emma admires a pair of turtledoves

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science

The girls and I went up to the nature and science museum, mostly to see the Amazon exhibit. We learned about all the nasty beasties -- piranha, caiman, anaconda, sting rays, electric eels, giant and parasitic catfish, etc. -- in the river:-O Um, yeah, I think I'll go swim there.

In front of the piranha tank

Laura wrestles an anaconda

Emma studies fishes of the Amazon

Paige looking at a jaguar skull, tapir, and capybara

Then we watched a 3D movie, Under the Sea, in the IMAX theater. The scenery was amazingly realistic. It almost felt as though we were scuba diving!

Emma in 3D glasses

Pumpkins

The kids are outgrowing pumpkin patches and fall festivals, but we went to one of each last weekend.

We saw a doe-eyed camel ...

... and some llamas.

The 100 foot slide was SO not cool ...

... but everyone got a pumpkin (btw, that's a "stealth health" chocolate cake containing two cups of pureed beets ... heh heh ... )

Friday Pizza and Movie Night

Thursdays are Strings Days

On Thursday afternoon, our wonderful Jennifer comes to the house to teach Daniel the cello, Laura the viola, and Emma the violin. It's a happy time.

Gonzalez on the cello

Worzel on viola

M & M on violin

Paige on the harp and flute

Paige playing her harp and flute. 

Exuberant Emma

Q: Emma, are you a child or a jumping bean?
A: I'm a hybrid.

Craig's Office

Craig shares his office with:

Guinea Pigs

Mice

Trains

and Daniel (who has his "classroom" set up with a desk and computer in a dormer window. He has to climb under train tracks to get there.)