Mod Mischief

As Axel's birthday falls so close to Halloween, I was hoping to save a little sanity by working his Halloween costume into his party theme. He was really excited about his upcoming Rocket and Groot party, but, three-year-olds being the fickle creatures that they are, on the day of the party he insisted that he would be the Flash and nothing could convince him otherwise. Now that Axel is getting older he has strong opinions on things, like how his party should be, which can be a little challenging for me, but on the flip side he is able to help out with the preparations which is a lot of fun. This theme worked well for the skill levels of a preschooler since nebulas and starscapes don't need to be precise and actually look best a little messy. My little helper and I had a great time baking and decorating galaxy star sugar cookies and painting the photobooth backdrop. His pride in the projects was so heartwarming, I'm smiling just thinking of it.   We als

We had a lot of fun decorating our house for Halloween this year. Our enthusiasm apparently rubbed off on some of our neighbours and several other houses on our block joined in on the fun and handed out candy this year. We only had about a dozen kids come by, but that's up from the 3-5 we have gotten in years past. Axel had been asking to go trick-or-treating for weeks, so he was pretty excited when the big day finally arrived!

Just like I did with Axel , I've been taking a weekly photo of Lennox. I've kept it mostly the same, but swapped out the German safety goggles for some fun steampunk costume googles, so there is something to set his photos apart from Axel's.     Even though they were both born 5 weeks early, Lennox is way bigger than Axel was at the same age. He's growing so fast he's already too big for his newborn sized clothes. Axel at 6 weeks Lennox at 5 weeks Lennox at 6 weeks Axel at 4 weeks Besides their size, the other big difference is how much harder it is to photograph Lennox. Finding time to set up the picture and take the shots with a 3-year-old running around and "helping" is challenging!

Halloween is almost here! Last week Axel, Lennox and I went to a dress up party. There's no shortage of costumes around here, so when Axel decided to be Spiderman, I pulled out some superhero costumes for Lennox and me too. Yesterday we dressed up again for the Canada Games Centre's Spooktacular event. This time it was just Axel and I, and we went as Rocket Raccoon and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. I made the Rocket costume and Groot mask for Yukomicon. There's also a full Groot body suit for Chris but it's not finished yet. Hopefully it will be done in time for Halloween and Axel's Guardians of the Galaxy themed birthday party.

This week we got our first snowfall of the season. I'm glad we had already put up a bunch of our Halloween decorations, although it does hide many of the details, like the fresh mounds of dirt on the graves and the bones strewn around the yard. We're going for full-on, obnoxious-level, Halloween decor this year. Axel loves it, even if  he finds some of it scary. Hopefully it will help attract more trick-or-treaters to our house. I'll have to post more photos when it's all done - there's still lots to add! The snow has pretty much all melted away now, but winter is almost upon us.

Google's artificial intelligence is creepy good sometimes. Yesterday, Chris' Google Photos assistant made him a little video that pulls on the heart strings perfectly.