Zoo Boo and Zombie Sam

Interesting weekend. Bought Sam his Hallowe'en costume: A zombie. Really only had to buy a little makeup and a sickle--the rest we made by tearing up and painting a shirt and some old jeans, an activity Sam was delighted to participate in.

Sunday we went to Zoo Boo, where kids get to wander around the zoo and collect goodies. Sam went with his friend Ian and had a great time. It was in the mid 60s, unusually nice for the end of October.

Sunday night some friends from Japan visited: Yasuki, an old student of Susan's from her ESL days, and his wife Yoko and twin daughters Akino and Marino.

Despite the lack of shared language, they got along great with Sam. He took them on a tour of his toys and the house, which culminated in their wildly chasing one another around and around, wielding Sam's sickle. Kids are kids the world over.

And now a special Hallowe'en bonus (unrelated to Sam): A video of big deadly cats playing with pumpkins!

Haunted House

Sam drew this:




















Here's what he told me about it:

















(Click on the image to enlarge it. It's worth it.)
Sam really likes Hallowe'en!

A quote for Friday, part 2

Sam: What's Gabriel Hull's full name?
Susan: I don't know his middle name; maybe Edward, since that's his dad's name, Ed Hull.
Sam: What's Mr. Hull's last name?
Susan: That would be Hull.
Sam: Huh. I bet that's Gabriel's last name too.
Susan: Yup, it sure is.
Sam: Maybe we'd better just call him Gabriel.

A quote for Friday

(Sam, singing)

"...St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go, I sold my soul to the BAKERY store."

The Spider Web Holiday

This weekend we got ready for a California trip for Tim and a week of single parenting for Susan.

Which meant enjoying the sunshine a doing some house cleaning.

Part of the cleaning meant re-arranging Sam's room, and putting up a hallowe'en decoration, shown here. Sam's gotten caught in it, but having never seen the giant-spider-in-a-cave episode of Gilligan's Island, he isn't at all nervous.

Minnesota!

Following SD we drove to Minneapolis and stayed with our good friends of many years, Dean and Jodi--and got to see their wonderful kids, Kip and Johanna.

It is hard to overstate how much more relaxing a trip is where there are smart, friends kids Sam's age for him to spend all day playing with! Sam got on with them like a house a'fire--alternately sitting and doing crafts with Johanna, then discussing superheroes at length with Kip. K&J could not have been friendlier.

Nor could Dean and Jodi. Jodi was often ferrying Susan around from one media blitz to another while Dean and I shepherded the kids. We spent one afternoon at a local apple farm, where the kids got to mess around in a bin filled with corn kernels, got to feed goats and marvel at calves and cows (where Dean and I learned to our dismay that cows can stick their tongues up their own nostils--ew!), pet kitties and chicks (the latter being of no interest to Sam for some reason), climb on tractors, pop in and out of old tires, and generally enjoy all the fun a tourist farm has to offer.

Dean and Jodi have great house which, in winter, has a nice view of one of the lakes on the West side of Minneapolis--the same lake which is home to the owner of Target, and various other rich and famous residents. In their back yard Dean has built a two-storey playhouse with slide and swings, also shown here.

What else? What else is necessary? It was good just to catch up, and so much fun to watch the kids play together. :-)

The cities trip had, for Susan, two very successful book signings, plus a professional events involving local book sellers and librarians with the engaging name "The Movable Feast". And we got to visit Xochitl and Joel. Sam knows their names well from our prayers, so it was particularly good for him to put faces to those names.

At long last, South Dakota

Two weeks ago we went on the 2010 SfS Prairie Book Tour. Susan started it early, and Sam and I joined her a couple of days later, after she'd had some very successful events at the South Dakota Festival of Books.

Sam has logged enough hours flying with us that I expect soon he'll get a free ticket. And he's seasoned--it couldn't be easier.

The same could be said of the first leg of the trip, and the longest, in Mitchell, SD. We stayed with Ruth and Paul and cousins Jon and Katie and had a whale of a time. The high point might have been when Sam announced to Katie that he loved her. :-) Both Jon and Katie were great with Sam, and took time out of their busy school schedules to hang out with him, which was so much fun to see. Katie continued the tradition of teaching him different high-five sequences. Last time the most sophisticated was "in the middle/cut the pickle". This time various other body parts got involved, with a non-deceptively simplistic rhyming scheme which I am pretty sure was original. "Up high/down low/in the shmarm pit/in the arm pit" was a probably everyone's favorite.

Aunt Ruth taught Sam a fun game. It is for the purpose of deceiving passersby, and goes like this:
Aunt Ruth: Guess what I am thinking of ?
Sam: A train?
A.R.: That's right! How did you guess?
Sam: Guess what I am thinking of!
A.R.: The sky?
Sam: Yes! Amazing!
...

Of course, they just agree with what the other says. Amazingly, it fools people for up to several minutes. :-)

While in Mitchell, birthplace of Susan, we took a trip to the nearby Alexandria, where Susan spent the first seven (?) years of her life, a tiny town with many good memories for her. This time we got to see Lake Hanson, an oblong lake outside of town with a little beach where Susan took swimming lessons. It being almost October, the beach was closed, but given the beautiful warm weather it was pleasant to visit. We also made the annual trip to the Corn Palace. In the off season it's really the Corn Gymnasium With Unusually Large Husk Wall Art, which turned out to be good--Sam was delighted to have a huge space in which to roam for a while.

And no trip is complete without a new Dinosaur pillow case from Aunt Ruth. Thanks, Aunt Ruth!

Following Mitchell we went to Brookings and stayed with Grandpa Gene overnight before heading to Minneapolis. While in Mitchell Gene took Susan and Sam to the new South Dakota Children's Museum. While it is somewhat smaller than the Strong Museum of Play, it is of the same high quality, and has some amazing exhibits, including huge animatronic dinosaurs, a giant Light Bright, an training machine for young milkers, a watery ball tracker, and many other amazing things.

It was great to see the SD family. Hopefully it won't be so long before the next visit!