Beautiful Weather

The weather outside today is delightful. After going to the library, W and I went to the park. He enjoyed running across the soccer fields and climbing on the benches. They have a scaled-down play structure that he enjoys climbing on. After about 45 minutes of playing, I said, "Hey W, let's go bye bye and go home for nap." He got off the play equipment and started walking away from it. No crying, no whining. It was great. On the way to the car he noticed his shadow. This isn't the first time he's noticed it, but it was the first time he's really been mesmerized by it. He started "moon walking" (walking backwards) so that he could watch his shadow. It was pretty cute.
We carved our pumpkins last night. I dug out all the guts before Mike got home. I had one of those "kits" that comes with the "saws" and patterns. I broke one of the "saws" while carving the small pumpkin (the skin was really tough!), and Mike broke the other "saw" while carving the big pumpkin that we got at Terhune. Our "bat" on the big pumpkin doesn't have any eyes. One of the neighborhood kids asked me "What kind of face is that?" and I said, "Well, it's not really a face... It's supposed to be a bat." He looked at me incredulously and shrugged his shoulders and walked off to play with his buddies. This is the kid who isn't allowed to go Trick-or-Treating. At his house they celebrate "Hallow-God". The family of five kids dress up like Biblical characters and swap candy with one another. Oh-kaaaay... As Mike says, fine if you don't want to Trick-or-Treat or ignore Halloween, but it's sort of weird to "celebrate" it but just call it something different. This kid, who's 5, is going to be an angel. He told me that his older brother, who's 10, is going to be Peter. Even though I knew who he meant, I asked him (bad me!) who Peter was. He said, "Um, he's from the Bible... He was friends with Jesus." Ah.
I also made the mistake today of mentioning that W was going to get a "bike" from Santa this year. Kid says to me, "Santa is dead." I'm sure that goes over like a ton of bricks on the playground. I said, "Excuse me?" He responds, "Yeah, Santa is dead. God hands out the presents. Santa died because he was old." Again, don't celebrate that aspect of Christmas (the "surprise" presents) if you don't want to, but don't just celebrate it under another name. It's sort of how we got those holidays to begin with... Started out as Pagan rituals, were commandeered by the Christians, who let the Pagans still have their holidays to keep 'em happy, but added a Christian theme to them to satisfy their own collective conscience.
I finished up several cross stitch projects a few nights ago. These are the items I'm sending to Japan. I have taken pictures of them but haven't uploaded them onto the computer yet. I'll try to get to that tonight.
But I digress.
Here is a picture of a piece I have finished stitching but have not done any finishing work on yet. The cat is part of a group of Halloween images that I'm going to use as part of a Halloween decoration for next year. I've started stitching seasonal ornaments. I've got kits for Halloween and Valentine's Day so far; I have to procure a seasonally-neutral "tree" or ornament display stand to put them on as seasonally appropriate. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.