Time Well Wasted: My Little Doctor

I realize that Halloween was a few days ago already. I just haven't had the time to post anything since. I've promised a few pictures of Emily dressed up as a doctor for Halloween.

She had a BLAST this year, going trick or treating. We went out for about an hour and a half and visited 3 neighbours in our subdivision, by the light of the fading sun and the benefit of our flashlights. After that we hopped in the truck and took the short drive to one of our neighbouring subdivisions for another 3 houses. People seemed delighted to see Emily (there are not a lot of young kids around here) and she was happy to yell "trick or treat" and say "thank you". I was very impressed when she started telling everyone (all by herself) "Happy Halloween and have a good night". :) It was a beautiful night, a little chilly by the time we called it quits, but the stars were twinkling brightly in the sky and I had an overjoyed child holding my hand while we walked in the dark... how does it get any better than that?

Emily woke up the next morning, where her first words out were asking to go out trick or treating again. This has been the first year she really got the fun of Halloween and it was a bit difficult for her to understand that it only happens for one night a year.

Not much else is new. We've gone to (and been a little disappointed in) our moms & tots group this past week. I'm having a tough time seeing the benefits when Emily doesn't want to participate in anything and many of the other kids are unruly and tantrum prone. Still a debate in my mind whether or not we'll continue to go...

Tomorrow, we have a bit of a busy day. We're supposed to be having a contractor out tomorrow morning to look at our house and give us an idea about the renos we want to get done. Adam and I are contemplating either minor renos (gut the bathroom, redo a bunch of flooring, and reface our fireplace in stone) or major renos (all those listed above plus moving our fireplace's location, as well as building a bedroom and a half bath in our current family room). After our hopefully quick meeting with our contractor in the morning, we have to drive 55 minutes away to Wetaskiwin, for family pictures.

Sunday brings Adam's birthday, so with Sunday school and church, the local Christmas craft fair that I hope to attend, baking a cake and making a special b-day dinner, I'm anticipating a rather busy day.

The only other excitement we've had lately was a porcupine that wandered onto our deck last night.

He seemed to get rather confused about how to get off, since he was too big to fit between the posts. I felt bad for him, because for over 10 minutes he just wandered back and forth, along the rails, trying to squeeze through all the openings. But this was no small porcupine. Finally, he realized that there was an actual deck there too that he could walk on, and as I cheered him on from inside the house, he meandered to the stairs and found his way out. I'm sure he was terribly frightened by it all. We seem to be attracting all sorts of animals lately. Even the deer have ventured back on the deck, recently, to nibble at the dead perennials that I hadn't yet trimmed back.