Clarity and Corn Mazes

I love fall because this is when I know I get to gear up for the holidays and our yearly family vacation. Jeremy and I are pretty blatant about the fact we vacation on the off season because our goal is to get away from people. Can you blame us? Both of us have jobs that frequently involve humans who smell like blood and regurgitated alcohol, who scream at us. We are going to pull our sweet cherub out of school to sneak away while the majority of the populous is otherwise occupied with jobs and school. You would think this would keep the blood and alcohol thing to a minimum. Go figure, but it's job security for both of us.

So what has been going on? Well, first and foremost, Natalia has got glasses. Not those sneaky non-prescription "attitude" glasses that show up in school pictures unbeknownst to the parenthood until the photos are sent home and we can't pick our kid out of the student lineup. Nope, the real thing. Natalia asked "Mom, do you notice how every pair I try on looks good on my face?" Yes, baby. I know. She posed this as a questions, but I think she was saying more as a statement. How does Natalia explain the marvel of her new clarity? "Mom! I can see the makeup on their faces.  Can you see the makeup on their faces?" This is her observation of the actors on TV from the table viewing area during dinner. Aw, poor thing. It is sad not to be able to see all the great makeup options during "Once Upon a Time". The princesses are so pretty. I do like how she thinks her vision is not only improved, but now must be better than Jeremy or mine. We just go with it because she is an 8 year old girl and there are plenty of battles during the day to be waged. It's about the war people, not every battle is won.

Other than that, family outings have included hiking in the foothills (which was her pick and she complained about the exertion the entire time) and the corn maze hosted by Jeremy's work. We were kind of disappointed this year because there were some budget cuts and we missed out on our annual bag of donuts. We did however indulge in the roasted corn. Um, two ears of corn that we swap back and forth between the three of us. I don't know which ear started where, but we all end up happy with junk stuck in our teeth. This year they had tether balls set up. What started out as a cute "just hitting it back and forth" to play with Natalia, got all competitive in a take-your-jacket-off and throw it down kind of way. It was a bit of a spectacle, but Jeremy and I get a little carried away, much to Natalia's annoyance. What can I say? You meet someone in high school and you just stick with that same playful competitive mentality - even into middle age. Or maybe that is just us.

I actually hate the corn maze part. It is five miles boring to me. You walk around, it is five degrees cooler, I'm waiting for Satan and Malachi from Children of the Corn to come out, and it is really just a time waster because I have no sense of direction and can't read that map. Here is what I have learned to do as a solution - put Natalia in the lead and follow her. You would think we would get totally lost, but this child has her father's sense of direction. She leads us here and there, but after ten minutes always finds her way back to the original path and out of the maze from the same place we started EVERY TIME. Now her sense of direction isn't so great as for her to know that we are right back where we started and she feels this tremendous sense of accomplishment and Jeremy and I tell her how amazing she is. See. Everyone wins.

This year we actually bought pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. I'm a girl who loves options, so there was a patch side for baby pumpkins, regular pumpkins, and designer pumpkins. Now we didn't know about the afore mentions budget cuts ahead of time and didn't bring a lot of cash with us, so we headed over to the baby side. Now that I think of it, those pumpkins are still in the bottom of my purse and cost us a whopping $.35. That's right. Big ballers. 

So here I am hanging out, just me and the dog because Natalia has ditched me once again for her friends. She is sleeping over at Kayla's because Kayla wouldn't be down with my Halloween decorations. Natalia is very proud of them and isn't bothered by my "stab man" sillhouette. Halloween is more fun now that she is older and I can make the decorations more scary, but the payoff is that her costumes for the next few years will always be mostly pretty. I am kind of tired of explaining Draculora to my friends and where she falls on the Disney Princess to Bratz doll skank scale. Oh well. I remember wanting to dress like Madonna and singing "Like a Virgin" and "Papa don't Preach". It could be worse. 

Speaking of Disney, our vacation is only five weeks away. Finally Jeremy and I will have Natalia all to ourselves for a week without the option of her ditching us for her friends. It will be Thanksgiving, Disney, then right on into Christmas. After that there is nothing to do but snowboard the winter away.