materials:

several rocks, at least 3 per hunter (more is certainly good)

gold spray paint

invitations (or phone calls)

bags to place candy in (party favor bags)

*optional prize for the winner of the hunt

*1 bag of candy from each child

directions:

1. Invite friends. Our hunters were asked to be between the ages of 3 and 11 and to bring a bag of candy per child to share.

2. Spray paint rocks in a variety of sizes to create the “gold.”

3. Hide rocks around your yard. Our hosts last year put the little kids in the front yard (8 and under); while the older kids searched the back yard.

4. Have the hunt: This takes about 20 minutes start to finish. (Excluding the playtime while parents chatted.)

5. Collect the candy as kids arrive and then divide it into bags while they are occupied with the hunt for the children to take home. If you have older hunters, you may want to distribute based on the number of rocks collected.

5. After it seems all of the gold has been found, ask the children to count their rocks; then bring them to a “collector” to trade for candy. You may want to add a good story about restoring it to a leprechaun to add drama. : D

6. If desired, award a prize to the person who collects the most “gold.”

The families in our neighborhood take turns hosting each year, but this could certainly be a family activity too. The rocks are saved for use the next year. Have fun and happy hunting!

It seems like every twelve hours I find my self saying What? How can it possibly be 11:00 already??? Which inevitably leads to the sick stomach feeling of Well, now it’s 12:00. Great. Now I am in bed late (or for the am:) Now the morning is over and what did I accomplish? Oh well. I will keep on hating 11:00 until I am either asleep or have actually accomplished something at that time. So, for the next 20 years or so.

Enough complaining. Allow me to share a bit of what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. Amanda is growing REALLY quickly. I don’t remember this going quite so fast with Meg or Emily. She wants to sit up and watch the action. (Which she thinks is all directed at her. With reason, I admit we are all quick to try and entertain her.) I love that she will light up and smile and squeal at me when I am talking on the phone or to one of the other girls. This usually leads to me finishing the conversation in a syrupy baby voice. My apologies if this has happened while I’m talking to you.

After a massive (and painful) cleanup effort, Michael got out his old Star Wars toys. The girls have played Star Wars nonstop. It cracks us both up to listen to the excellent dialogue. Just imagine if George Lucas had also been an avid Fancy Nancy fan. They wanted me to assemble the Death Star yesterday. I told them that I didn’t know how it went together. (This is my first time playing with them too.) Emily looked at me and said in her little exasperated tone “Mom, you’ve seen the movie.” Ha! She also insists that Han be called Captain Solo. At least she knows who the real man in Star Wars is.

We are all smitten with this cute little puddin’.

Here we are after the birth…so happy to finally have her here!

stats: 7lbs. 7oz. and 21 inches long

Megan can’t get enough of her. I love how sweet and attentive she is.

Emily is happy with her (sigh of relief) but not super interested.

If you know Emily, she kind of tends to do her own thing in general.

The other thing that got an exclamation point at her check up was how many infants their office has sent to the hospital with pneumonia. He said that cold and flu turn into it very easily for little ones. So, we are loving having healthy visitors, but asking that your cute kids stay away for a few more weeks. I am looking forward to joining the living soon (although probably not too soon, based on my paranoia of taking her into crowds); as well as possibly keeping my house clean for more than 30 minutes. Okay, I guess that was just wishful thinking before she was born too…we’ll see. Someday maybe.

This year Halloween was for the birds. (Yes, I know that was bad.) Both of the girls ended up being birdies and Michael and I enjoyed a little less princess in our lives for a minute. Okay, I guess it isn’t exactly out of the the realm of princess, but at least they weren’t both Disney characters this year. Megan absolutely reveled in the attention she got with her fancy flamingo costume and Emily was so excited when Grandma Banana brought over this peacock dress. We had a great time trick or treating and eating chili with Grandma Lu and the cousins on Saturday evening.

It was also Michael’s birthday this week. We took the girls bowling for the first time. Megan loved it, I think Emily is still a little young. It didn’t take too long before she was ready to move on to something else. We also celebrated with some really excellent steaks and pumpkin pie. Mmmmm. Happy Birthday, honey!

I call them my gossip birds.