Holiday countdown

Now that Halloween is over it's nearing time for our annual holiday marathon to the New Year! In the past the craziness of the holiday season has been a bone of contention for me, but in my old age I've come to accept it, and dare I say even enjoy it. Well, most of it anyway. Don't get me wrong, I still daydream of vacationing in Hawaii instead of rushing from house to house to house for Christmas, but with two little kids who love visiting their cousins and grandparents, for now it's better to just suck it up and play along.

But first a little rehash of Halloween! I was pretty excited for it this year. I even decorated the house right around the first of the month. Cadence was super excited too, and dressed up as Mal from Disney's Descendants. She's obsessed with those movies, which honestly is fine with me. At least it's a change from the nonstop stream of cartoons that we watch on repeat, and some of the musical numbers are enjoyable (my personal fave is "Did I Mention," it's just so catchy). Also I'm not gonna lie, I'm relieved to see her admire a female character for once. Not that I have a problem with her mostly being attached to male characters, only wanting to listen to male singers, and preferring boys in general, but I do have a problem with her overall disdain for girls. I'm not sure what brought that on, but it had been going on for months and finally seems to be fading a little. Now she's been telling me she's playing with the girls AND boys at school, likes purple and sometimes pink (before those were relegated to "ew" girl colors and therefore to be hated), and might even be willing to wear a dress from time to time. So anyway, she was Mal, we sprayed her hair purple, and she wore her costume to school two days in a row and was totally stoked.

Max was a puppy, because I figured this was probably my last year of getting choose his costume myself and I wanted him to be something snuggly. He was so cute! He loves dogs too so he was actually pretty happy in his costume. He of course refused to wear the hat/puppy face so I painted a nose and whisker spots on his face (which were mostly rubbed off in the first 30 minutes but whatever). He can't say "trick or treat" yet but he can go "woof woof!" when you ask him what sound a dog makes, so that was pretty adorable. And he caught on to the idea of trick or treating pretty fast and had a blast. We went out with the kids' cousins and a couple other families as usual, and it was exhausting as usual, but fun.

Now we get a little holiday break for a couple weeks, and in the meantime we have some more house projects to do. Nothing major, but we're getting a new screen door to replace the retractable one we've had for a while. I didn't realize when we bought it that the bottom would be loose enough for the cats to easily squeeze underneath and escape, so for the past few years we've had 2 very classy cinder blocks on our front porch to block them in when the door is open. And now the screen has torn so even the cinder blocks don't keep them contained anymore. (I'm just starting to realize how white trash my life must sound...) So hooray, soon I will have a nice screen door and NO CINDER BLOCKS to step over! That should probably take my trashy-meter down at least 10%. Also we're going to do a little hot-spot cleanup on the side yard finally. And I'm going to secretly get rid of like 30% of my kids' toys and clothes before Christmas. Shhh!