We Dressed Up Too

It was store-bought, but creative nonetheless.

Actually, this couples costume made me laugh. Tee Hee. And Hehehehe.

We are a perfect fit. Okay, I could be a little taller.

Can't you just feel the electricity between us?

Sock-It to me, Baby.

Boo!

Halloween was a very low key event at our house this year. I did minimal decorating (okay, none), and frankly, none of us seemed to miss it. It felt like I was slacking as a Mom - no pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies, no window clings, no big trip to a pumpkin patch, and most of all, no elaborate costumes.


Cameron and Aaron seemed altogether ambivalent about the holiday. They wanted the candy - but they acted like going trick-or-treating was a chore. I fear that my lack of enthusiasm has rubbed off on them. That, and being on D track - they aren't in school for Halloween.



Troy couldn't be home in the evening, so he couldn't go door to door with them like he usually does. They went with some great neighbors (thank you!), but came home early and stripped off their costumes as fast as they could. They would barely pose for a picture.

And can we talk about the costumes? Cameron - the boy with comfort issues - chose this loose fitting robe thing out of the big bin of costume basics in the basement. Did he want scary teeth? How about some ghoulish make-up? No, just the robe.


"What are you going to be?" I asked, knowing that people would be asking me what my kids were dressing up as.

"I don't know -- just a guy in a robe."


He honestly could not have cared less.


Aaron's costume at least has a little bit of a story behind it. Have you seen High School Musical? You know Sharpay? The blond, not-so-nice girl? She has a brother named Ryan. Yeah, that's who Aaron is dressed up as. Aaron saw a hat at Old Navy like the ones that Ryan wears in the movie - and immediately latched onto the idea of being him for Halloween. In addition to his penchant for fashionable hats, Ryan also likes to wear "spring-colored" clothes (Aaron's words), so Aaron just grabbed his lime green polo. That was it - that was his costume. A hat and his shirt from last Easter.


I asked him if he wanted a name tag or something to tie him to the movie, but he was convinced that it was perfectly obvious. I made him practice saying that he was "Ryan Evans from High School Musical". I figured that he would be asked that. A lot.


Alright...he's pretty cute.


Troy was home for a few hours in the afternoon, and managed to help carve some pumpkins with the boys. He's done fancy stencil carvings in the past, but this year it was fast and simple.


Cameron did his pumpkin entirely by himself!




I think they turned out great. Classic jack-o-lanterns.



A little trampoline time before they headed out.





And now we are faced with this.

Do you sneak your kids' candy?

The Spiritual Side to the Dead Gerbil Story. Really.

When Cameron found the dead gerbil, he cried and accepted my hugs and condolences, and then he sort of shook off his emotions and went to help Troy with the cleaning of the cage and disposing of the chewed up little corpse. He caught the other two gerbs, put them in a little container, and started moving things out of the cage. He was all business. He wondered aloud if we ought to just buy a new cage. If anything was going to ease his pain, it would be spending money.


I wasn't sure if we should even tell Aaron. As I've written before, he has a lot of worries, and some of them are definitely related to the death of our dog, Jeffrey, last April. None of us are "over"it, and Aaron in particular has had a hard time dealing with his loss. Having the gerbil die would be nothing compared to losing Jeffrey - I was just wary of having all those old feelings freshened up.



Troy called Aaron up from the basement and told him the sad news. Aaron came running to me, his face contorted with tears and worry. I hugged him tight. He broke away from me and started pacing, wringing his hands and crying, and then coming back for another hug. This is the anxiety at work. Poor Aaron!


And then, he knew what he needed to do. Aaron has an amazing testimony of prayer, and this time was as good as any.


"We've gotta pray, Mom!" He was practically frantic.


I followed him into the front room.

"What do you want to pray for?"

"Just... like, comfort and stuff. So I can stop worrying."


We knelt down at the couch. Aaron looked over at Troy in front of the cage, spatula in hand, ready to start scraping. Cameron was watching in horrified fascination, trying to calculate if we had enough time to go shopping for a new cage before the party started.


"Guys! Come on! We're praying!" Aaron wanted the whole family in on this.


Troy looked at me like "Now?" and I shot back the look that said "Duh!"


If Aaron says we pray...by golly, we are praying!


We all knelt down and Aaron asked that I say it. Afterwards, he hugged me and said,

"That was a really good prayer. Thanks."



And then he was fine. Completely. He got his "comfort and stuff".

This kid is so close to the Spirit, I can hardly find the words to describe it. His testimony of the Holy Ghost and comfort and our Heavenly Father's love is so pure and profound. I am humbled by him. Whenever there is a feeling or a thought that isn't right, his first thought is to pray. His faith is enormous. I can sure learn from him.


What a blessing he is!

One Down,Two To Go

For Cam's 9th birthday (he'll be 11 in January), he got gerbils. A friend had recently gotten some for their kids and Cameron and Aaron had latched on to the idea that gerbils would be fantastic pets to have. My friend's supplier of the gerbils had some babies that were ready to leave their Mom, right in time for Cam's birthday, so we agreed that the gerbils and all the stuff that goes with them would be his present.

When your kid's birthday is 10 days past Christmas, it's easy to imagine that yes, gerbils would make an excellent present. Cam got Petsmart gift cards as other presents, which he promptly redeemed for a cage, wheel, food dish, water bottle, food, and stuff for the bottom of the cage. We went to go see the lady with the procreating gerbils.

With a lot of advice and a guarantee that she could tell the males from the females, we ended up taking home three (!) males. I did not want to be having any gerbil babies! The kids were thrilled. We got home, set things up in Cameron's room, and prepared to enjoy gerbil ownership. The boys named them Cookie, Lollipop, and Licorice.

For me though, it never happened - the enjoying part. I decided fairly quickly that the gerbils, or gerbs as we started calling them, were just one step up from the mice that we occasionally get in the house in the summer. They also turned out to be noisy - endless chewers - and we had to move them out of Cam's room so he could sleep. Now I had a big ol' cage of gerbils in the hallway.

After the initial few weeks of having the gerbils, even the kids pretty much ignored them. They were hard to hold, always wiggling and sometimes biting. Twice, a gerbil wiggled out of one of the boys' hands and the frantic chasing and cornering and finally catching that ensued was enough for me to declare that the gerbs stayed INSIDE the cage at all times.

Cameron would feed and water the gerbils, but only when I would remind him. He'd clean the cage every month or so, taking them out and putting them in a holding bin, while he dumped out the old and put in fresh newspaper. Then the chewing would really start. He took care of their basic needs, but there was no real enjoyment on his part either.

True to the gerbil lady's word, all three were males - we never had any babies, thank goodness. However, one of the gerbs was either confused as to the gender of the other two, or he decided that being straight just wasn't for him. Life inside that cage was like a bad prison movie. We could hear him attacking the other gerbils, their tiny little screams announcing the latest violation. The boys called this gerbil "the mean one", the "one that always climbs on the other's backs".

I kept reminding myself that gerbils usually only live about a year. I've been on the countdown since last January, waiting for them to expire. Last Saturday, one of them did.

We were cleaning up the house for a get-together with some of Troy's family, and I reminded Cameron that (a) he owned gerbils, and (b) he might want to clean out the cage before his cousins came over. He went to work.

Thirty seconds later, he came back into the kitchen, looking a little queasy.

"Mom, one of the gerbils is dead." He pressed his lips together to stop the quivering.

"Oh no, Baby. I'm sorry." I pulled him in for a hug and squeezed him tight. Just because you don't love something, doesn't mean you aren't sad when it dies.

"Better tell Dad." I said, soooooooo glad that it was a weekend and that Troy was home to deal with this. I went to find a box for the funeral.

Troy looked inside the cage and came over to talk to me quietly.

"There's not much to bury. It's pretty far gone. I think the others have been eating on it."

We asked Cameron when he'd last seen all three gerbils alive. Just a day or two. Which gerbil was the dead one? The "mean one".

Okay, that explains a lot. I think the other two finally stood up to him and took him down. Hard. Eating him was the final revenge.

Troy took care of disposing of the corpse. I was all ready to hold an elaborate send-off, but since he was stuck to the bottom of the cage and needed to be scraped off with a spatula, we decided to skip the formalities. Spatula went in the garbage too.

After the boys' tears were dried and Troy had scrubbed the cage, Cameron put some fresh newspapers, food and water inside for the remaining two gerbils. Total time of grief...maybe 5 minutes. We haven't even talked about it again. The "mean one" is not missed.

The two remaining gerbils continue to live peacefully, chewing and running about their cage, no worries to weigh them down. They took care of business. Don't mess with these gerbils.

I walk by their cage dozens of times a day. If I ever glance down and see them, all I can think is...cannibals.

Movie Quote Monday #5

Good Morning!!!



I was going to start off with something a little spooky, a Halloweenish sort of quote, but this caught my eye instead.



"I've been on a diet every day since I was nineteen, which basically means I've been hungry for a decade. I've had a series of not nice boyfriends, one of whom hit me. Ah, and every time I get my heart broken, the newspapers splash it about as though it's entertainment. And it's taken two rather painful operations to get me looking like this."

Go.