Now We Are Six

Guess whose birthday it was in November?


Okay, here's a nicer picture. :) For Katie's birthday, we invited a couple friends over for a playdate-with-cake (not a party). :) We had cupcake cones. Best. Idea. Ever.

Katie decorated her cake for the family party after dinner. Polly Pockets, princesses, and ponies. Yep, she's a six-year-old girl!



One of her not-so-girly wish list items was...

...a remote-controlled car. She LOVES this thing. We decided to invest in rechargeable batteries to save ourselves a fortune.


She also REALLY wanted a bike. It was time -- her long legs were getting really crammed in her tricycle.

Mr. Pickles is SO classy. He even puts little girlie bikes together in a shirt & tie.

It took a couple days for Katie to finally be able to ride her bike, since we were having problems with defective inner tubes in one tire. But FINALLY...

First bike riding lesson! I have memories of my own dad doing exactly this. Except I didn't have training wheels, so he had to run alongside me until I fell over into the ivy in our yard.

So now the kids can all ride together!



Joseph is riding Miriam's first scooter. He is very secure in his manhood.

I can't believe Katie is 6 already. She's such a good big sister. She coaxes the best giggles out of Daniel. She loves hamming it up for him to make him laugh. Her imagination is still tremendous, and the stories she makes when playing or drawing are awesome. I wish I could spend more time just playing with her and listening to her -- she loves sharing her world with us. I have a feeling she is the one most likely to have inherited the family's creative writing gene.

The Day After

So for school Friday we did lots of natural science. :)


It's been cold enough that most of the snow has stayed.

What is snow for?

Eating, of course! (the goober wouldn't let me take a picture of his little pink face)

"I have 'tick! I hit 'now!"


Snow the day after is great for packing into snowballs, and, of course, snowmen.


Little baby snowman!

Mr. Pickles took the kids out sledding on Mt. Terror yesterday (also known as "The Back Hill") while I was out madly finishing up my Christmas shopping. There were dripping wet snow things everywhere when I came home, and everyone was very sore this morning. Signs of a good time!

Statshot

A look at the numbers that shape our family life

Where Our Money Went:


I guess groceries and education fit under "Miscellaneous."

(The post explaining this pie chart is forthcoming.) :)

Why, yes, it has been cold here.

So cold, in fact, that I think perhaps it's time to change my seasonal decor.


We got about 1-2 inches of snow yesterday. Not enough to shut the city down, thankfully, (I still haven't recovered from the trauma of last winter!) but certainly enough to sled on. And shovel!

Ahh, nothing like free slave labor. :) (why else would you have kids?)

We went out shopping in the morning as the snow began falling, to make sure we had all the necessary frolicking accessories. There were a lot of people with out-of-state license plates driving about 15 mph. The first snowfall always freaks the new transplants.

Getting them ready is like dressing a knight for battle. I feel like their squire.


Frolic! Frolic!


Get me outta here! I wanna go play outside too!


Yay! All bundled up!

It's pretty cold -- current conditions at 10:45 am say it's 29 outside -- so the kids can't stay out long. But it's enough to get cold and wet and want to come inside to warm up. Note to self: buy more marshmallows.

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas!

A few years ago we decided to celebrate St. Nicholas' feast day, primarily by hanging stockings on the eve of his feast.

Waiting in anticipation!

I'm so glad we decided to do this -- it connects Santa with the REAL St. Nicholas for the kids, and it gets me jump-started on my Christmas shopping! :)


He came! He came! And his donkey ate the timothy hay we left for him! (He can't exactly drive a sleigh when there's no snow, can he?)

After opening our stockings this morning we went to Mass in honor of the feast, and then had a treat which included hot chocolate and marshmallows, and read the story of how St. Nicholas saved 3 little boys from an evil innkeeper who because of a famine had butchered them and cut them up and was preserving their meat in a barrel of salt. When St. Nicholas blessed the barrel, they popped out, healed and whole! (I think the story might be apocryphal, but it sure makes great bedtime reading, don't you think?) This supposedly is why St. Nicholas is one of the patron saints of children.

God our Father, we pray that through the intercession of St. Nicholas, you will protect our children. Keep them safe from harm and help them grow and become worthy in Your sight. Give them strength to keep their Faith in You; and keep alive their joy in your creation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Way More Candy Than Should Be Legal to Consume

...Which is what you get when you trick-or-treat with 3 kids.

For Halloween this year, the kids all wore two-for-one costumes -- the costume they chose had to work for both trick-or-treating AND the All Saints party. (Why did I not insist on this in previous years??) The girls drew pictures of the elaborate costumes they had in mind. Then I showed them the patterns we had and explained exactly how many (or rather, few) hours I had to sew. So we compromised. Everyone was fairly pleased with the results, considering the liberal use of safety pins as I ran out of time. :)

Presenting Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.

Saint Barbara, minus the gold-edged purple toga (Katie balked at that at the last minute).


Saint Michael the Archangel! He was very excited about his wings, surprisingly.

Daniel was, ironically, a lion. :)

The tail kills me.


No matter how many times you've done it over the years, removing pumpkin brains is still gross. (note implements of costume-making in the background)

Princesses seems to be a theme around here. (note the eyelashes)

Mmm! I like pumpkins! ...I think...


The pumpkins in their spooky glory...

For our home school group's All Saints party that afternoon, we once again manned (or moused?) the "St. Martin's Mice" game, in which you must sweep the mice out of the monastery.

Behold a mouse.

Behold St. Martin.

The boys in particular really got into this game.

Finally, time for trick-or-treating!

We all went together again, leaving a bowl on the steps for other trick-or-treaters so they wouldn't egg our house. Joseph got lots of compliments on his costume. (He really wanted to keep the wings -- no ordinary hum-drum knight costume for him!)

He REALLY got into the spirit this year -- he gladly chorused "Trick-or-Treat!" with the girls, and even remembered to say thank you unprompted. However, he also quickly figured out that lifting up big blue Bambi eyes and saying "One more?" usually met with positive results. At one house we had to drag him kicking and screaming from the door while the neighbors laughed, because we wouldn't let him ask for fourths.


The Haul. We had to stop at home halfway through the evening to unload, because their pumpkins were too heavy. Neighbors were exceptionally generous this year -- I think as the evening wore on they were just trying to get rid of their candy. Even the kids were overwhelmed -- they had no problems sharing with each other and their friends!

Halloween is such a fun holiday for kids -- as a friend said, when else do you get to combine two great joys of childhood: dressing up and candy?


Roarr... lions EAT rainbow caterpillars for breakfast!

Katie's joke, inspired by Daniel's costume:

Q. Why are lions the king of animals?
A. Because they're ROAR-al!

Random October

I just realized how much family news I want to share with you all. Part of the problem of being a procrastinator is that you don't feel you can post ANYTHING until you're "caught up" on the big events, so the little everyday moments tend to get lost or forgotten. But here are a couple that we managed to catch.

Little Red Riding Hood... in flip flops.


Yep, just another normal, ordinary day in the Pickles household.


The Management assumes no responsibility for the way the baby was dressed. (not that he minds)

First Recital!

Miriam had her first piano recital back in October.



I started teaching her a little bit at home 2 years ago, but was never very regular with it. We had always decided to hire a REAL piano teacher when she was 8, so it was time. We're very proud of her. I'm especially impressed with her sense of rhythm -- she counts very well (you can barely hear her count "two" on the half notes). :) She loves her lessons and willingly practices every day. I know it will get harder as she advances, but right now she's off to a very good start! Her piano teacher is excellent -- impressive credentials and really good with kids. She also spends a lot of time on theory, which is awesome. She's been threatening to move back to Pittsburgh -- I hope not soon! I don't know what we'll do when she leaves!

Last Leg

Ooookayyyy, the last little bit of our road trip! The homeward journey. We took 3 days to come home, which was much more relaxed. While we packed up the van, the kids spent some quality time with our hosts, making Halloween decorations in their pajamas.

Joseph really bonded with their beautiful dog -- here he is reading the dog a story.

The first day of driving we didn't go very far -- just a couple hours to some friends' south of the Twin Cities (known simply as "The Cities" locally). The wife heroically allowed us to stay with them, even though she was recovering from a cold. They have 5 kids -- their oldest was a toddler at our wedding, and the rest of them are the same ages as ours, so everyone had a buddy.

These dads take their baby-holding very seriously.


We had a blast with them -- nothing like a house full of kids!

The next day was a long day of driving -- from Minnesota to Indiana.

Joseph found a moth sitting on his window, and he caught it! He was very proud of it and kept it on the bottom of his water bottle (see the gray speck) for a good part of the trip.

The longest part of the drive that day was trying to get off the tollroad in South Bend because it was the end of the day, everyone was tired, the baby was crying, we were ALMOST there, and THE STUPID UNATTENDED TOLL BOOTH ONLY TOOK CHANGE. Finally a real live person came over and helped us pay our toll so we could collapse happily at cousin Paul's.


Aunt Brenda was on retreat, and the two middles were visiting their Grandma's, so Uncle Paul just had his bookends. We arrived too late that first night for the cousins to see each other, but the next morning they got to play. The two big girls bonded while the grownups were rushing around repacking and getting ready for Mass.


We got to go to Mass on campus at Notre Dame. Way cool!


Paul & Brenda's newest baby is such a little sweetie. What a privilege it was to hold her!

We had a nice little visit, and wished we could have stayed longer. But that day we drove to Steubenville to spend the night at my godparents'. They graciously allowed us to stay in their house even though they were away -- we just promised not to use any water or electricity while we were there. :)

We got to spend a little time with Aunt Tatie which was really nice, considering she was in the throes of midterms. But she graciously spared us quite a bit of her time in between study sessions. :)


And finally, we were off on our way home! Because of timing, we realized that we were arriving in DC right in the midst of rush hour, so we pulled off the highway in Maryland to stop for dinner.

"The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland." (or maybe orange-walled?) --from Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier

We found a sub shop that was close to a park, which made creative use of old tires. Wish I'd taken a picture of the cool sea serpent made entirely out of truck tires. We were so glad we stopped, rather than push through the traffic -- this way, we breezed over the Beltway, and everyone was fed and refreshed for the last 45 minutes, instead of cranky and/or hysterical.

We were home! We made it! The house was still standing, and the only thing left to do was unpack...

Ahhhh yes. The Aftermath.

What a great trip. We were so grateful to everyone who graciously opened their homes to us and fed us. It was so wonderful reconnecting with the Midwest relatives again. Now that we know we can make this drive, and even have fun doing it, we're not totally dependent upon the whims of the airline industry to be able to spend time with the people we love.

Quote of the Week

Jo-jo: "No I want pizza. I want BEER. It so good for me."