Puff and Pumpkins!

"Puff the Magic Draaaaaaaaaagon'
lived by the sea,

An audit in the Autumn mint

in a land called Hon-on -Sea"

It would appear there may well be another accountant in the offing here!!!! This is LMB's version of that childhood song that her daddy would be proud of!!

And here are my offerings for today, no words (well, bar these few) just photos from an exhibition we went on last night by the riverside. Enjoy!

Halloween capers

I think the Bangles got it right with their song, Manic Monday. Only in the Beehive it should be renamed Manic Week.



It is Halloween tonight, my favourite night of the year. Do you know why? Because tomorrow it WON'T be Halloween. All the planning and talking about Halloween that has been going on between the mini beehives since August ladies and gentlemen will be over! I can breathe a sigh of relief. The marshmallow ghosts I was icing this morning at 6.15am, in my pyjamas, will be gone and a semblance of calm will resume. I won't be required to don a Vamptessa costume with full goop, teeth and regalia or think about inventive ways to limit candy damage without surpressing childhood fun!
Duck! Here comes a flying pig!

Don't you think that Little Miss Beehive looks rather like a bored Mrs Slocombe in her Sunday best?

Still, calm may resume for a short while.

Mr Beehive has been away again this week, so I have once more been a single mom. It has been relatively uneventful. Most children have been in bed most nights at a decent hour and remaining there most of the night. I have managed to plan a presentation, wrap birthday and Christmas presents, do the grocery shop, carve a pumpkin, communicate with the outside world, make contact with an old friend from University AND go to the gym twice AND I haven't touched a drop of wine yet! Pretty good eh?

Little Miss Beehive started ballet and tap this week. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Sooooo cute! We are having a couple of issues with reinforcing the fact that ballet happens IN the room and not on my lap outside the door, but other than that we are off to a flying start and every lunchtime when I pick her up from school I get this very dramatic spin with arms in the air and the question in her 'soft pwincess voice' "are me going to Ballaaaay today mammy?"

Yesterday I went to Master Beehive the younger's classroom to observe his work. he was so excited and had the whole three quarters of an hour planned out for me. Unfortunately he forgot to include the time he wanted to lie on my knee and have cuddles, so he didn't quite get through all of it, but it was a wonderful, wonderful insight into his time in the classroom. We have been working on tools for communicating with others when they step into his personal space and he doesn't like it, up to now, he has been telling them that he will put them in jail or, worse still......shoot them! (yes, I did want the ground to open up when I heard about that!). You can imagine my horror then when on Monday night he sneaked downstairs when I was watching the television. The couple on the screen were in a passionate clinch and one thing lead to another (BTW, this was a 12 film chick flic before you all jump to conclusions about the kind of sordid, sad, desperate housewifey style life I lead when Mr Beehive isn't around!!). When I eventually discovered him and the fact he had been watching from around the corner, he said, with a grin on his face, (you know what's coming.......)



"That was sooooooo rude mummy!"



Remember how it felt the first time your parents caught you snogging your latest crush??? It felt a little like that really!



"I know, but it was a film for adults and you should be in bed!"



"They were eating their food with their mouths open and showing it to each other! Yuk! Disgusting and rude!"



This was true, not 10 seconds previously, they had been doing exactly that. I nearly fell over laughing.



Just goes to show!

Abracapeedra

Halloween is coming!

This has been the height of excitement since the beginning of September in the Beehive. We have had discussions of which costumes are best, practised skits, made up jokes, made gory recipes and now to top it all Master Beehive the elder has made "a potion"!

Yesterday evening after bath, Master Beehive the elder asked me if I had a jar I didn't need that he could use for his potion. Not wanting to surpress his creativity (stupid me!) I found him a clean, empty pasta jar. An hour later I went up to turn off his light to find him stooped over his jar that now contained a cloudy liquid with a pale yellow colour and dubious odour! I am sure I don't need to spell out what he felt his spell required, short of a bodily fluid amongst other things.........yeuch........oh, and he is missing a chunk of hair from the side of his head too!! I despair!

A calm drone resumes.......

in the beehive. Vent and anger have henceforth been banished to the doghouse (well he doesn't use it,) and aformentioned FIL's will find himself there smoted should my ying and yang be discombobulated during the visitation!

Anyway, to minor things and back in the mode of this blog - rambling!
Today my inner peace has been restored, I have managed to find a great organic veggie cafe to make some party food for Izzy's birthday. I have decided to do away with prancing ponies and fearsome clowns that will probably just reduce them all to tears and instead invest in some class A food rather than the usual contraband that they try to pass off in the supermarket as birthday fodder! I haven't got the time to make much myself this year due to himself being away for some time, and the innies arriving, not to mention my usual week of craziness before hand, so I have passed the buck.......and what a great buck too! I have managed to get a wonderful selection all with change in the bank too! yay! So now, all I need to do is the cake. But as this is always the same, much scoffed cake, year after year, I have no worries about this. All this will be washed down with a yummy berry smoothie, which I. pinched from me this morning and drank the lot !!

However, I think I may also try a new recipe which I will add on to the blog later once I have tried out the proportions this afternoon.

My application to join a children's literature writing course has been accepted, however, my feelings are not sure about this. Not for actually DOING the course, but more for how subjective and selective the process actually was, or is this one of these usual vying for business processes rather than judging on merit. They claim to do the latter, but I thnk before I part with any tuition fees, I will need to research them a little more thoroughly. They claim that you will have a manuscript fit to send to a publisher by the end of the diploma.......watch this space!


We experienced true Trick or Treatin' American style for the first time on Tuesday evening. OMG! We went with some friends dressed up (or rather NOT Marla!!) in our costumes. Every house was decorated to the nines, it was like Christmas, only halloween style, all houses were opened to the merriment with one house putting on a film on the side of their house and another had set up a full blown pizzeria/buffet in his drive.....it seriously had to be seen to be believed. The candy stash was enough to feed several small countries!!! W. bless his heart, was carrying around a UNICEF box trying to collect pennies too. It was sweet to see his little Mr Incredible figure standing as the lone child in a doorway after all the candy seekers had gone, asking for a few pennies for the poor children!! T. on the otherhand asked if the poor could wait until tomorrow, until after he had collected his candy......hmmmm??? I suppose at least one out of three ain't bad so far!

I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!

I am sitting here, chuckling to myself. What a mad and crazy day! The boys are currently in our jacuzzi tub pretending that they are "accidently" pressing the on button!
The day started calmly enough, I lunched - yay, that word IS in my vocabulary occasionally! with some friends today minus our sprogs. The intention was to find time to talk without having to race around after our 23 month olds! We met at a Venezuelan beach cafe! Yet another great little find. After totally whetting my appetite with a freshly juiced carrot and pineapple, I then went on to have black bean pancakes, with eggs, corn, goat cheese and avocado. Another fab gem to add to my list of good little back street cafes!!

On returning home the kids were out on their bikes, I obviously was totally overwhelmed by this "me time" and took Izzy to buy some Halloween decorations. Much to R's complete surprise and totally out of character for me - I have harped on for years about this being a weird celebration for kids and how I took umbridge at celebrating spooks and zombies.......I returned with a polystyrene zombie and huge cobweb that is now adorning our front entrance under the oak tree! Seriously.....I think I am having a lapse in old age!! I. decided to call him Superman and took great delight in sitting next to him on the way home in the car yelling intermittently "me love Superman!" So now "Superman" is haunting the neighbours, hopefully eerily lit up by our solar powered lights too and I have my frontal lobotomy booked!

I's birthday is another dawning for me. As you may know, the Americans go big time for birthday parties, hiring entertainers, musicians, real life fairies, singing ponies, pop bands, half of Tenessee and the cast of Pirates of the Carribean. We, being mere mortals, and me having already done my "off the cuff" thing with "Superman" out front, are not really into this for a 2year old! But, the alternative is a house full of small demanding I's all throwing food and intermittent tantrums......hmmm the choice. TBH I think she would be happy with an obliging guitar man(.....Dan my man, where are you???) playing some songs for her to dance too. Problem is, because it is "the in thing" to provide the world each birthday, prices are ridiculous and way more than my pride, sense or pocket will pay. Not only that, the food they provide is pants - not nutritious and I won't be able to eat half of it anyway due to the lactose..........So, I think I will invite a bunch of her pals, put on some of Dan and laurie and get my dancing kit on!

Finally to round off the day, when we are getting ready for bath and W manages to evoke conversation about why his penis gets stiff as he was kindly demonstrating.........Thus this leads into T decided tonight was the night to tell me all about when his penis gets stiff and and the pair of them playing a "my willy gets harder than yours" card! Okay - I think I have finally had enough for the night! This has to be daddy's jurisdiction surely???

Confessions and Jack O' Lanterns

Confession 1:

I am 34 and yesterday i went on my first ever Hay Ride!! We have visitors and decided to treat them to the delights of activities in New England in the fall and a few free bruises to boot. So we piled onto a tractor full of hay and went to "pick" -that is the use of the word pick in the sense of just select, not actually pick off the plant! their pumpkins from a field full of them. Rules of selection were: Pick whichever one you want, as long as you can carry it!! Huh! Some adults are such a pushover. We now have three pumpkins that are at least twice the size of a head and weigh probably 4 times as much!! Today's task is to carve them. There is going to be a LOT of pumpkin pie, so forthcoming visitors, be warned!

Last night we went into the city to the India Arie concert. It was a great concert by her, however, her support act left a LOT to be desired. I cannot abide artists that are confused and don't emit a strong sense of who they are and what they believe. This poor bloke didn't know if he was Ricky Martin, New Order, Gloria Gaynor or a Thanksgiving Turkey! We were treated to half an hour (so that's half an hour too long!) of falsetto, groin thrusting, "woo!" and knee skidding whilst R and I couldn't contain ourselves laughing. Sadly he appeared to have a pretty strong fan base within the audience - and I even later spotted two young girls carrying around prized signed photos. Perhaps it is a sign of old age??!! India herself was fabulous. Such a performer! The sound wasn't great, probably just where we were, but these old theatres were never designed for modern day acoustics so she was occasionally lost by the reverberation of the band.

Confession 2:

My second first was a ride in a yellow NYC cab. I know, I know, tis sad, but I have never hailed or ridden a yellow cab. Okay, so that's it, there is nothing more to say, it was no more or less an experience that taking a cab anywhere else in the world, but I just thought I would confess to having done that!

Today I need to go and prepare my carving arm! We have three pumpkins and to, obviously complete our guests' experience, we are going to make these lanterns. That link tells you all about our bizarre choice to name these pumpkin carvings for children after a stingy thieving folklorist. Hence I won't type anymore for today (RSI and all that!!) It is amazing though these days how much things have changed from my childhood (all together = aaaahhhh!) but gone are the days of pleasure in simple faces dug lovingly out of sugar beet (Dad! I'm soooo sorry, pumpkins are a doddle in the face of solid beet!!) these days children are only content with the best