It's a Tie

Thanks to having a best friend with season tickets and a mom who lives in Brown County (and is willing to babysit), I was extremely lucky to be able to go to two Packer games this season.  We loaded up the car and headed to grandma's on Friday night, and despite a A LOT of whining and noise and general 3-5-year-oldness, we survived without having to pull over for the threatened spankings.  The only real tantrum was mine when the Wautoma McDonald's wouldn't give me a second free ice cream cone because I'd lost the orange coupon from the Happy Meal I'd bought ten minutes earlier.  "Be calm," The Man said.  "Deep breaths."

At Grandma's the kids had a blast playing Lego and banging on the piano and reading books and exploring all the old junk from their mother's childhood.  And Eva's new trash-picked Barbie house is "super duper awesome!"  The spinning class at the local Y made a slight dent in the calories consumer during a delicious prime rib and scalloped potatoes Thanksgiving meal, and after pumpkin pie and ice cream it only took 2 hours to get Eva to go to sleep Saturday night.  But Sunday TT was once again a rockstar mother and I got some time away with friends to drink bloody marys at Stadium View and walk along Holmgren Way to Lambeau and cheer for the green and gold a few sections away from Curly's Atrium.  Not sure what I was thinking bringing 3 Minnesotans with me.  Had I left them back in the Land of Lakes perhaps the Packers would have won instead of tying, but I cannot imagine having more fun in that kind of cold.  I think I'd invite them back again... if they'd agree to wear less purple.

How to Survive a Cold Rainy November Weekend

Step One

While waiting for breakfast, start making a collage for Santa to determine your Christmas wish list 

Step Two

While someone else is cleaning up the maple syrup and pancake crumbs, build a LEGO house and enact a complex debate between a mother and daughter using minifigs.

Step Three

A little artwork

Step Four

Bundle Up

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Step Five

Experiment with how both wind speed and wind direction affect the path of a football and a baseball and a wiffle ball

Step Six

Ride your bike in the driveway where the house blocks the wind.

Step Seven

Bubbles!

Step Eight

More Artwork

Step Nine

A game of Life

(Notice Sam chose a boy as his life partner "because girls like kissing and I don't want to have to kiss all the time.")

Madtown

After the kids had finally settled into sleep in a pile of pillows and blankets on their Dora and Sponge Bob fold-out couches on the floor of Kelly's master bedroom, she and I whispered in her living room about the way things have changed over the last few years.  We talked about the irony that I was getting divorced when her babies were as little as mine are now and how over 3 years ago I had found out I was pregnant the same week that she got the news that her life was about to change dramatically too.  In the 25 years since we were roommates in Madison, our lives have rarely been in the same place, and as I struggle to find balance and time for me, she's becoming an empty-nester who actually has time to read books.

Years ago while I was traveling around the country and taking art and psychology and creative writing classes, she was sitting on the sidelines in the rain watching soccer tournaments and reading Harry Potter to her boys before bedtime, and I always told her that when I grew up I wanted to be just like her.  Such an amazing mother whose boys now tower over her when they visit on Sunday to do laundry before heading back to campus to study for Econ 101 or Organic Chemistry.  Sam and Eva were in awe of the big DeGrave boys, and I am in awe of their mother, the woman who showed me so much about what it means to be a good parent, even when it's hard.

Thanks for an awesome weekend, Kelly.  

Reasons to Plant Native Prairie Plants

Bones and A Witch

Admittedly during the fifteen minutes of histrionics before we left the house, I wondered if it would really be worth it, if all the on and off of various costume pieces followed by the inevitable whining about the tag rubbing someone's neck the wrong way and the way the inside of the mask of a costume smelled icky and the I-don't-want-to-wear-my-gloves and she's-touching-me and he's-teasing-me and her-bucket-is-bigger-than-mine and there's-something-in-my-shoe-there's-something-in-my-shoe-there's-something-in-my-shoe would ever end so that we could just enjoy a nice fall night out in our neighborhood. But within 30 seconds after the first house in which we found a black plastic scorpion in the driveway and Eva got to ring the doorbell and pose in her black tutu and witch's hat, it was already worth it.

During the long stretches where there weren't driveways to run up and lawns to traverse, I pulled the kids in the wagon, and there were, of course, occasion battles over who got to sit in which seat and who had the most candy and who got to ring the doorbell, but all in all it was another beautiful fall night in the Wisconsin countryside.  By the time we'd gotten candy from the first 3 houses, the kids asked if they could run from house to house, and as it got darker I worried over how far away from me I should let them get. Only once did the delayed dinner time take its effect on Eva's disposition and she dramatically laid down face first in the road screaming that she wanted to pull the wagon, but I took a few breaths and soldiered onward to the sound of more laughter and more running and more insistence that we go to the next house, quick, Mommy.

As the night sky got darker the wind died down, and the air was warmer than last year and the kids got to run and run and run while I stopped to chat with neighbors we see just once a year.  Sam was a trooper and did not whine once about the unbelievable amount of candy that people hand out with peanuts in them that he can't eat.  He would just graciously say thank you and remind me at the end of the driveway that I told him he could trade it for safe stuff when he got home.  Every year Halloween gets easier and easier for our little family of 3 as we navigate the peanut allergy and I try really hard not to say something out loud to all the people who drive their children around in cars, but it's hard to imagine next year could be any more delightful than this year was.

Photos from previous years:

Halloween 2012

Halloween 2011

Halloween 2010

Halloween 2009