Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Day started as rainy, gloomy, windy, and .... warm! By mid morning, the thermometer read 70 degrees! Welcome temps on any Halloween Day! Tyler and I woke nice and early and decided to get right to work turning our pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern.
While I cleaned this beauty of a pumpkin, Tyler worked on pictures of what the final project was to look like-- a face complete with ears, eyebrows, and arms and legs:

After I explained to him that it is better for everyone if I handle the knife as little as possible, he quickly resettled on a traditional carving with a scary smiley face (thank goodness)!

While Tyler prepared to get into his Captain Rex Clone Trooper costume, this masked man entered and took over the house:

Quickly put in his place, the masked man handed over the costume essentials and a new masked man was revealed:

Introducing Tyler "Captian Rex" Genovese, good guy and guardian of Anakin Skywalker, Jedi in training:

Captain Rex was quickly joined by Tinkerbell and The Wiggles, ready to search the neighborhood for yummy treats!

Thankfully the rain held off for the hour we were out and we were able to snag some goodies for the moms and dads, er.... kids to enjoy! But what goes up must come down and the kids quickly settled for jammies and Toy Story while the adults watched the Yankees.

Until next year.... Bring on Thanksgiving!

Halloween Crafts

After many years of time flying by, I was finally able to embark on the world of Halloween crafts, which I thought I would share here. In my free time, I love to decorate and recreate ideas I have seen online or in magazines.

My first mission was to recreate these ghosts from a Lowe's magazine. A friend at work brought it in to share with my and thought that I would like to copy them. Needless to say, she was right:These ghosts were very easy to make. The most difficult part was locating the tomato wire cages in September! I also tracked down Christmas lights (not difficult, especially since the beginning of school is synonymous with Christmas!) and old sheets. I used a Sharpie for the eyes and mouth. I wrapped the lights around the cages and fastened them with twist-ties and draped the sheet over the top. As a precaution against the elements, I also sewed the sheet to the cages to prevent fly away sheets!

At night, they glow in the yard and I have gotten many compliments from neighbors! They will be a great asset on Halloween to brighten the house up!

My next project were my spider web pumpkins. I also saw these in a magazine, but unfortunately don't recall which one! The magazine featured these made using real white pumpkins, but wanting to have them again for next year, I opted for fake pumpkins that I painted white. The spiders are rings with the backs cut off and a Sharpie marker made the webs nicely:

Very easy 'BOO' pumpkins. I was able to track down small while pumpkins to use and pulled out the Sharpie once again:

I saw a picture of a really neat Halloween wreath online one night. During one of my many trips to Michael's, I came across some small Halloween decorations and put them to good use. I stretched spider web material across the wreath, glued centipedes, mice, and spiders to the wreath and completed the look with 3 skeletons glued to the bottom:

My final project was something I made for a friend. She saw a picture of this pumpkin in a magazine and I told her I would be happy to attempt it for her. Warning: it was not easy and there were minimal directions included in the magazine description. Always up for a challenge and never daunted by a task, I kept at it until it was complete:

With Halloween almost over, I am now on to Fall/Thanksgiving crafts! Stay tuned!

A night with the Isles

We are a hockey family. There is no denying it. Frank grew up with it, his dad loves it, and now, gulp, my son is following in their footsteps. Right down to rooting for the New York Islanders. My only prayer for my son is that he does not become a goalie!



This year, I decided to crash "Boys Night Out". If your remember last year, Frank and his dad took Tyler to his first Islanders game. I decided that if I was going to be searching for and buying the tickets, I was buying four! I sure am glad I did. Granted I was kind of a third wheel, it was wonderful to watch the boys take in all the sights, sounds, and smells of Nassau Coliseum!


We headed to Champions in the Marriott to have dinner before the game. We were lucky enough to get seats on the "ice" and by the "boards". The middle part of the restaurant is set up like a rink, complete with the blue and red lines. Tyler was so excited after his dinner that he got up and played some quick pretend hockey. Everyone around us was amused by this creative kid!

We arrived to the game right before warm-ups. After some coaxing, we got Tyler down to the glass to claim his front row spot. Here are two generations of Genovese Islander hockey fans:

And three generations of Genovese Islander hockey fans:

I was welcomed at the game as long as I did not interrupt during any plays! For the Islanders on the ice was John Tavares, the top draft pick of the year and Tyler's favorite players, Kyle Okposo and Blake Comeau. For the Capitals, Kyle Ovechkin was the big draw and after seeing him up close, no wonder! He is a big guy!

The game ended in overtime and did not make my little guy happy. Seriously, didn't the Islanders know that Tyler was in the crowd? After the Capitals scored their winning goal in overtime, making the score 3-2, thus ending the game, Tyler burst into tears, only to be consoled by another guy who has seen more heart-wrenching losses than he cares to admit!

Let is be known though that less than a week later, the Islanders played the Capitals again, beating them 4-3 and Tyler was quick to ask us why they could not have done that the night he was there!

Floor Potatoes!

Each weekend comes and we are off and running. Hockey, work, soccer, parties, trips out of town. You get the picture, right? This past Sunday we have hockey in the morning and then the remainder of the day at home. Because it was raining out, our choices were limited. Tyler decided he wanted to rent a movie to watch and Frank wanted a fire in the fire place.

While Tyler and I headed out to Blockbuster, Frank started a roaring fire. Unfortunately, Frank also wanted to watch football and since the fireplace can't be moved, the issue was raised: How do we watch football, a movie, and sit by the warm fire? Tyler decided that we should make a cozy bed on the floor and watch "Land of the Lost" using the computer! What a great idea! We all got to enjoy the fire, listen to the rain, eat yummy popcorn, and watch our shows.

Really, it doesn't get any better than that!

Fun at Collins Creamery

This year we ventured to Collins Creamery in Enfield, Connecticut to "pick" our pumpkins and buy our mums. What a find! The mums were huge and colorful and the pumpkins were bright and orange. Collins Creamery is also opened during the summer and features the most delicious homemade ice cream! How do I know? We sampled some, of course!
Tyler was in Heaven, running in between the rows of pumpkins. Although Collins is not a true pumpkin patch, we still had fun "picking" our pumpkins.

Collins Creamery also featured a corn maze. Tyler had fun moving in and out of the corn stalks and commented on how tall they were. Being from Indiana, I never realized how tall they could get, either!

Under the Sea

Sometimes great ideas are just that-- great ideas. Nothing more, not meant to be carried out, and when they are, you find yourself exhausted and none the better than when you began!

When my friend Elaine proposed that we take the kids to the Mystic Aquarium Open House Night for educators, I thought it sounded like a great idea. And it was. It would have been a better idea if we realized that when you leave the house at 5P.M. to go through Hartford, Connecticut, that you will hit traffic, and despite the fact that Connecticut is a fairly small state, it still takes over an hour to get to the shore! The Open House was scheduled to run from 6 to 8P.M., with the last half hour as their presentation and Sea Lion show. We arrived at 6:45P.M.!

Despite the fact that we only had 45 minutes to race the kids around, they were able to hit up some of the better exhibits such as the Beluga Whales, Sharks, and tide pools. They were well behaved and they did not mind that they only had 45 minutes to spend wandering around. Thank goodness!


Tyler and Olivia at the tide pool exhibit. One of my favorite things when we lived in California was to go to Dana Point and visit the tide pools. Always very cool and this is the closest Tyler will get to that-- for now!

The three good natured kids! They had a great time and are now asking to go back. Definitely. In the Spring, in the daytime, on a weekend, and when we have all planned better!

Blogging, Bears, and Babies!

It's October!

After weeks and month of no blogging and living our crazy life, my goal for the week is to catch up on everything that I have missed-- the MONTH of August, the FIRST day of pre-school, my birthday, and Tyler's FIFTH birthday! I have given myself exactly one week to finish all the half started posts I started along the way.

Easy, right?

On another note...

Tonight at bedtime, Tyler called for us a few times. Being the super doting parents we are, we both responded to the demands of "I just have to tell you something"... The last time we were upstairs, Tyler got himself comfortable and I asked him which stuffed friend he wanted to cuddle with. Being the super decisive child he is, I suggested a few. He chose the third one, a Boyd's Bear, girl, pregnant. I said to him "Good choice, you are going to cuddle with the pregnant mommy bear, look at her belly, that's where the baby is!" To which Tyler responded "How did it get there, did she eat it?"

I love this kid!

Girls Gone Wild!

I must admit. The guilt as a mom at times is overwhelming. However, there are certain events that allow you to cleanse yourself of that guilt and start anew, refreshed. That certain event is a nice girls weekend. The conflict this year? Girl's weekend was scheduled for the weekend of October 2nd. The problem with October 2nd? It's my only baby's 5th birthday.

After waffling in indecision for a while, I finally decided to make the trek to Eagle Lake and hang with the girls for the weekend. And by Sunday, I was glad I had. Not simply because I proved to myself I was still holding my own in the "hanging" department (we stayed up until the 4-ish hour doing goodness knows what!), but I also could not wait to get home and see my baby! After all, absence makes the heart grow fonder!

On Friday night, the weather was very wet and rainy and a bonfire was out of the question. We chose instead to stay inside, play games, eat food, and talk. It was much needed! On Saturday? We slept until we woke up-- not anyone waking us up, ate, and lounged around. In the afternoon, we ran and got some dinner and then made our fire outside. It really could not have been a better day/weekend!
After numerous shots with the self timer, we finally got an acceptable shot! Some people just did not know when to keep their eyes ope/stop talking/look at the camera. Not everyone has years of practice taking sorority girl pictures! From left to right: myself, Cortney, Laurette, Angela.

The aftermath of out voracious appetites one night. Just goes to show that if you put the right food out, we will eat it! You would never guess, but this was a cheesy bread bowl dip. The only thing you see left are the crumbs! We even devoured the bowl!

Until next year, girls!

A Birthday Letter to my Baby

Dear Tyler,

Today you are five years old. In no way could I have imagined what five years would have been like. Sometimes, as a mommy, you wish you had enough time in the day to stop, record things with the camera, camcorder, or just by writing things on paper. However, you keep us going, and I have to enjoy every minute I am with you, good or bad!

This year was a big year for you. You played hockey, t-ball, and soccer. You started preschool at Green Valley. You travelled all over the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut and drove to Indiana for the third time in your short life. We watched daddy's hockey team make it to the Final Four in Division One hockey. You went to your first of many Islander hockey games. You are about ready to experience a World Series title by the Yankees and can point out Brett Favre in any uniform!

Your personality is what makes you who you are. You are smart, inquisitive, polite, independent, loving, happy, and a joy to have in my life every day. You say silly things and you say sweet things. Your teachers, Katie, Ellie, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and Mrs. Torkington all love to have you with them. You are a good friend to everyone and you love to help with the babies.

I can hardly wait to see what the next five years will bring. I really do not want them to fly by as fast as these first five have, though! You daddy and I both love you more than you will ever know. From the minute we found out that you were in my tummy to now, we have never stopped loving you. Happy birthday, big boy! But remember, you will always be my baby!

Love,
Mommy

The Big 5!

My baby is 5 today. Ye gads! Where in the world did the time go? I wish there was more time in the day just to soak up everything and make sure that I remember it all.... I guess that is why there are blogs, though!

After Tyler's big party the weekend before, his birthday was very mellow. Because I was scheduled to be out of town the night of his actual birthday, we decided to give him his gifts the night before.

I always remember being younger and taking my time when I opened my gifts-- you know, open them look at them, soak up each thing? Not Tyler! He ripped through each one, I caught a few shots, and this is what we were left with! I guess I should rest assure that he liked each one!

His "most favortist" gifts were the baseball set and the hockey set (big surprise!). He set them up on the living room floor and went right to each game-- Yankees versus Red Sox and the Islanders versus the Fermi's!

The next morning was his actual 5th birthday. I could not wait to get into his room and see how big he grew over night. After all, 5-year-olds are a lot bigger than four-year-olds, I was informed!

We greeted him with the best birthday breakfast Tyler could wish for! A birthday doughnut-- his favorite, double chocolate frosted from Dunkin Donuts!

Happy birthday, Handsome!

When we arrived at Green Valley that morning, the teach made a crown for him and he got to wear it all day long!