Halloween and Candy

 

Halloween is here! Happy Halloween everyone! Last night our family had a small Halloween party and decorated sugar cookies and then posted them on Facebook to be voted on. Our son-in-law won the contest with a nicely decorated ghost with a blue tie. We also had a chili dinner with a family chili cook off competition. My wife won with her Turkey Chili. We all had a great time and made a huge mess with our cookie decorating!

Now, it is Halloween and we have our candy bowl ready to go. We never know how many trick or treaters we will get. Some years we have a lot, some not so much. After our kids had grown up and were out of high school we did a few Halloween nights of turning the lights off and spending that evening at the movie theater. 

Some people go all out for Halloween and fill their yard with decorations and blow up figures. We have a few pumpkins in the yard for a Fall display and a few pumpkins on the porch. We have a few small Halloween decorations inside the house. Do you go all out for Halloween? Or, do you have few decorations or none at all? Do you host a big Halloween party? I think I have only been to two Halloween costume parties. I was a robot at one and Fred Flintstone at the other. 

How about candy for the treaters? This year we have a large bowl of mini chocolates and a bowl of miscellaneous suckers, Smarties, etc. Of course, with the chocolate my favorites will be the last to be given out just in case there are leftovers that I'll need to dispose of in the coming days! I've always heard that there is a house or two that give full size candy bars. I never found that house as a kid! I always found the houses with the old lady who would give you one piece of candy at a time. The worst was getting that cheap peanut butter candy like the picture below!

Fingerprints On The Glass

 

My wife and I keep our three granddaughters through the week. The oldest is three and a half and I'll call her V in this post. Her twin sisters are about ten months old. I probably don't have to say this, but......they keep us busy! I have a study that has a large desk with a glass top and two sets of Ikea bookshelves with glass doors. The study also has a fifteen pane glass door from the front entrance into the study. Our coffee table in our living room has four large glass panes as the top of the table. 

Our oldest granddaughter, V,  likes to sit in a chair at the coffee table to eat her breakfast and her afternoon snack using the glass pane table top as her dining table. By the time she leaves for the day, the glass is covered in crumbs and sticky substances and smudges. Clear evidence that a toddler sat there enjoying her snacks!

I remember when my kids were young and we had fingerprints and smudges on every glass surface they could get their little hands on. My daughter's favorite thing to do was to rub her fingers all over the window glass in the car where she sat high in her car seat. That window always looked a mess. She would draw pictures in any fog condensation on the window or would wet her fingers in her mouth and draw on the window. I don't know how many times I cleaned her car window over a few years time!

Her daughter, V,  is now doing the same thing in our car whenever she gets the chance. Not as bad as her mom, but she still has the same talent. When I'm at my desk checking email, blogging, etc. on my laptop, V likes to come over and ask me to hold her. I grab her up and set her on one knee to spend some time with her. Her latest thing to do at my desk is to draw robots and robot dogs on a pad of paper that I jot my to do list on. While sitting there, she will also have a few TicTacs from a side drawer in the desk. By the time she leaves she has done a number on the glass top. After she leaves for the day, I will glance into the study and see the fingerprints and smudges all over the edge of the glass top on the desk and then I head to the kitchen to get the glass cleaner. 

It dawned on me today that those daily fingerprints and smudges will only be around for a short time as V and her sisters get older. I envision that sometime in the future V will no longer want to sit on Pawpaw's knee or hang out with me like she does today. I know that I need to savor every moment I have with these three angels and enjoy the fingerprints and smudges. Those things are evidence that she was here and that she left her mark. V has left her mark on the bottom edges of the TV as she began to stand up and walk in her earlier years. She has left her mark on the bottom portion of windows as she was learning to pull up and stand up so she could look out the window or pat her little hand on it.

V's twin sisters are now beginning to leave their little prints and smudges as they crawl and pull up to those same windows and sit with me at my desk. I enjoy these times and know they will pass quickly. I figure that my wife and I have a short window of a few years with them in which we are a large part of their world.

These little angels are also leaving their fingerprints on my heart in the form of sweet memories and I hope that my wife, Nana, and I are leaving fingerprints on them that will help form and shape them into awesome people. 

So, I will continue to clean the glass daily or weekly with a smile on my face, knowing that three little angels have passed through this space! The twins just woke up from their nap and they have taken their turns helping me finish this post. Both have left new tiny fingerprints on the edge of my desk top. 

Do you have grandchildren or great grandchildren that leave their mark in your home and on your heart? What are the prime years that grandchildren think their grandparents are awesome? Do you feel that your time spent with them has helped guide and shape their lives?

Cruising Ducks

 

On our last cruise I found a duck with a tag attached to it. My granddaughter had found one on a cruise about a year earlier. That was the first time I knew of such a thing as a "cruising duck". The tag says "Oh what luck, you found a duck! Keep or hide, you decide". The tag also asks you to post a picture to Cruising Ducks Original Facebook page and has the name of the person or family that hid it. I posted a photo of me and my duck from our last cruise and then joined the Facebook group. I never knew that cruising ducks were such a big deal. I was very excited to find this duck and looked for another the rest of the cruise. The Facebook group has postings of the duck collections that people are taking on their next cruise. Some take 20, some take 100 or more. It's crazy! 

Some recent posts show people that have bought 3D printers to print ducks. Some are bedazzling their ducks with small jewels. Some are knitting ducks or making duck jewelry. The cruising duck scene has a life of it's own. The posts that show people who have found ducks are heartwarming. You can see the joy on their face as they display the duck they have found. Some have found one duck after searching for them for many cruises. Some have found numerous ducks on one cruise. It is all great fun!

We have a cruise coming up in a few weeks. I decided we would hide a few ducks to get in on the fun. This will be our first cruise to hide ducks and I'm excited to make someone's day. I've already gotten carried away with buying a wide variety of ducks. I have stopped buying and will take about 45 on our trip. Some are small and came 4 to a package. Some are a little bigger and are different colors. The last 5 I bought were blue and had snowflakes on them. I figured these were perfect for a November cruise.

If I'm successful at hiding them and find a few myself, I can see this turning into a fun thing to do on all future cruises. Has anyone out there found a duck on a cruise? I don't think the trend is very old and just got started the last couple of years. It is a fun thing for all cruisers regardless of age. Have you heard about this "cruising duck" craze? 

Have you heard of or experienced any other similar trend in your travels? I recently saw a news show about Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island where a local glass blower hides glass orbs every year along a walking path. The story showed proud owners of the orbs and talked of people who have hunted for the orbs for years without finding them. Have you heard of any other "treasure" hunts like this that are ongoing? All of this sounds fun and I would love to find one of the glass orbs some day. For local retirees, this would be an awesome walking activity while looking for orbs!

Say A Nice Thing!

Another short post to as a follow up on the last post. Last post I challenged you and me to do something nice and report back in the comment section. This time I challenge you and me to say something nice to someone. Make an effort to go out of you way to look for something to compliment someone about. Compliment someone on their appearance, their lawn, their attitude, etc. and then report back in the comment section.