Not-So-Happy Halloween

Everywhere else in the world little kids are getting dressed up in their cute (or scary) costumes and gleefully getting ready to trick or treat around their neighborhoods and collect as much candy as possible. 

Everyone except for every kid in the state of New Jersey. 

Including my kids. 

Halloween has officially been "postponed" in the state due to the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. Which I can understand because we made it through the storm without flooding by about 15 feet...the skin of our teeth. 

But it's a drag. Halloween is here, and I love Halloween. They're saying that maybe kids can trick or treat on the 5th of November, on Monday. I'm pretty sure my kids will not wait a whole other week after countless days of me saying "soon" when Calen asks WHEN can we dress up and trick or treat and get candy. Monday to him is basically the equivalent of six years from now. 

Monday is not official. There are conflicting reports of possibly this Saturday, which is much more doable. 

We especially couldn't celebrate today because we had to spend the day packing up the car, driving back to our somehow-saved little town, unpack the car, and put everything back in it's place. 

That didn't stop us from doing a little bit of Halloweenie stuff today. My friend Kim and I carved pumpkins and I'm currently watching original Frankenstein. Happy Halloween. Until whenever fake Halloween is. 

Disclaimer: Not to sound totally ungrateful for coming home to a dry house! I am very thankful. I just feel bad for my kids. 

The pirate pumpkin I made for Calen

Cookie Monster pumpkin

      

Paid Vacation

Well, it's the day after the storm, and by some astounding miracle, it sounds like our house made it through nearly if not completely dry even though hurricane Sandy hit Cape May HEAD ON and a lot of the town was flooded. And Atlantic City only an hour away was completely devastated. Somehow, the Coast Guard base and housing stood strong.

That's the good news. 

The bad news is that we are going home tomorrow morning. I consider this bad because tomorrow is Halloween and the kids are tired of wondering when and more importantly where their Halloween party and trick or treating is going to be. We had it planned out to have the party in the hotel tomorrow and then trick or treat somewhere around here. Now it's all kind of up in the air. 

The plan is to get home early tomorrow, clean up the mess, unpack, and continue on with Halloween that evening. At least the party part. Who knows if trick or treating will happen. 

It's also bad because I never got to drink a Hurricane in a hurricane. We tried. The stores were out of Hurricane mix. DAMN them. 

So it sounds like for the second year in a row we had a paid vacation to Mt Laurel, including free lodging and food. Can't really beat that can you. Next time they can evacuate us to someplace tropical. 

Here's some pics from our stay. We spent most of the time in our hotel room with friends, making Halloween decorations (which we put all over the room), playing pirates and watching LOTS of Weather Channel. 

Now all that's left to do is eat an entire unopened box of Oreos double stuffed cakesters that I bought here and don't have room to take back with me. 

Darn. 

Aaargh! See here these pirates three plundering a chest of peanut butter and jelly.

making Halloween posters for the hotel room

Toy Story stops a trio of cabin fevered boys dead in their tracks

     

Sandy Is Here

The internet is down so Im posting through my phone and keeping it brief. Sandy is here. And she is a bitch. It's blowing like crazy here, we still have power so far but it is flickering. The news says gusts here are around 60, the eye of the storm is not here yet. Cape May is getting slammed but so far the base and housing is holding it's own, high tide is an hour away.

We spent the day with our friends decorating construction paper with Halloween stickers to decorate the room with. Tomorrow should another bad stormy day.

And that's the update for now. We are just getting started, but hopefully we will make it through dry.

Operation Evacuation

We are safe and cozy in a hotel in  Mt Laurel, NJ (close to Philadelphia). All six of us. 

Yes, six. Me, the kids, two dogs, and the cat. Brad is currently deployed on a strike team at Fort Dix quite a ways away from here. 
  
You know, when I moved to New Jersey I didn't really think about hurricanes and evacuating and that kind of stuff. Especially two times in 14 months. 

Deja Vu, anyone?

Irene was a little hurricane that barely caused more than a breezy day and some standing water on the beach. The evacuation was kind of silly but it's always better safe than sorry. We started out hoping that this was going to be the same kind of storm. 

But it's not. It's bad. The hurricane itself is 24 hours away and already Cape May's Beach Ave (street that runs directly on the beachline) is under water. As are a couple cross streets. And it's barely started raining. I think this time, we are not going to luck out. In deep, dark honesty, I think the house will flood. Hopefully only the first floor. We made sure to move everything upstairs. 

Yes, we do have flood insurance. 

In slightly better news, the hotel is decent. It happens to be the same hotel that we evacuated to last year. It has two bedrooms which the kids have commandeered, so instead of my lovely king sized bed with my own tv, I get the springy uncomfortable pull-out couch. But anything to keep a very unsettled Camden asleep. Calen was elated to have a huge queen bed to himself (and his own tv as well). 

The kids and I caravaned up with two Coast Guard families close to us. It was actually kind of fun. There were three cars, and the lead car and myself (pulling up the rear) had walkie talkies which we did use to plan lane changes and exits and stuff very efficiently, but most importantly so that we could comment to each other on bad drivers, high tide levels and Aston Martin dealers that we drove by. We are all in the same hotel building and are basically co-existing together, planning meals together, etc. I am thankful for my Coast Guard family always, but especially during times like these. 

After a major shopping trip to Target to get more provisions (power outages are imminent here) we called it a night. It's been a long day. I'm watching game 4 of the World Series (the first game I've actually had a chance to watch) and hoping when I wake up I hear that (so far) housing is mostly dry.

Today's picture is the chalkboard in my kitchen. I left Hurricane Sandy a little love note.

you bitch!

 

Going Offline...

Here we go folks, shit got real and we're loading up the truck to evacuate tomorrow first thing. Flooding here is a serious threat.

No "real" blog tonight. Please keep the people and property on the Eastern seaboard in your prayers. 

(Don't) Stay In Your Homes!

This is a quickfire blog tonight. No picture or happy stories. 

Hurricane Sandy is set to slam into Cape May Monday night/Tuesday morning around midnight. And since we live at a whopping 8 feet elevation a quarter mile from the ocean, flooding and wind damage is basically imminent. 

Word on the street is we are evacuating. I'm not sure when, there is an all hands meeting on base tomorrow morning and we will find out then. Rumor is Sunday. We already booked our hotel up in Mt Laurel NJ (close to Philly) for the next week to avoid the rush. We will be leaving either tomorrow or Sunday (depending on what the base tells us). 

Unlike last year during our Irene evacuation, Brad won't be joining us. He is deploying to Fort Dix to head a strike team for when the hurricane hits. So it will just be me, the kids and the dogs. However, close friends are evacuating to the same hotel, so I will have plenty of help. 

AND, bring on the hotel Halloween party! We are not sure if we will be back in time, so I am bringing the costumes, decorations, pumpkins, gear, treats etc etc with us. We might google map some suburb to invade and trick or treat in. I'm not letting this stupid storm ruin my kids' fun. 

So yeah. Lots of stress. Lots of caffeine. Time to finish packing up the truck and getting ready for Round 2 of Hurricane Evacuations.    

Boys Will Be Boys (And Mom Will Drink Wine)

Have you heard about the wine shortage? I actually didn't read about it or watch it or anything. All I heard was wine.gone.crisis. That pretty much is all you need to know about a wine shortage anyways, other than WHEN is it coming back?

Do you want to know a secret? I know where all the wine went. 

I consumed it. All of it. The entire nation's crop. In the last week. To keep me sane. 

Disclaimer: No, I really didn't. I wish I did though. I don't even like wine that much. Now if there was a shortage of RUM, you can turn your heads my way. 

Blah blah blah yes I know alcoholism is bad blah blah blah I hardly even drink so don't judge me blah blah blah you can sue me later. 

In reality, my kids have been serious humongous tough-to-swallow pills this week and I'm strongly considering booking a vacation for one somewhere tropical and remote. And never coming back until they promise to never be bad again.

Today took the cake (or the wine). 

Calen wakes up considerable earlier than the rest of the United States family. But (usually), he's really good about staying quiet in his room, "reading" his books, playing with cars, stalking people out the window or whatever it is he does in there until the rest of us ooze out of bed and we all go downstairs together. 

Until the last week or two, when apparently chilling in his room wasn't enough for Calen. And the next best thing aside from his room to hang out in (apparently) is the upstairs bathroom. 

It started with him completely emptying a brand new soap pump into the sink. And then when I refused to refill it (knowing what he would do), he took to using all my fancy Bath and Bodyworks lotion. All of it. Then another day he unraveled an entire half-roll of toilet paper into the toilet and yet another day he emptied an entire gallon jug of dog's flea bath into the sink. 

But today, today, he took it to a whole new level. I woke up, stumbled to the bathroom to find the children's cough and cold syrup bottle on the sink (where it was NOT the night before). And it was empty. 

I threw myself into Calen's room to find him sipping on a cup of something suspiciously purple, delicately like it was a martini or something. Apparently he had climbed the toilet, jumped onto the sink, reached up into the cabinet and somehow used his MAN HANDS to get the bottle open. I snatched it and attempted to get him to barf (which he wouldn't), so we immediately went downstairs and called Poison Control. 

This is my first time calling Poison Control. I really hope after this they don't start knowing me on a first-name basis. 

They said he didn't drink enough to go to the ER (shockingly), but that he was going to be groggy, loopy, extremely clumsy (like a drunk person) and very irritable. And they were right.

After a two hour zonk-fest where I had to check multiple times to see if he was still breathing, he finally came back downstairs to the land of the living but was a groggy cranky-pants the rest of the day. And then Brad came home and installed cabinet locks in the bathrooms.

And that's how the day went. 

Now can we fix this wine shortage?

This one has been my EASY child lately. And that's saying something.

       

   

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like..Halloween

Brad finally took down our tent canopy thing in the back yard (preparing for winter) today and Calen screams in a panic:

"Oh NO!!!! DADDY BROKE MY HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh noooooo, my house....."

Also today, we took our previously painted pumpkins and decorated them with foam stickers. The ones that we didn't put stickers on will be carved later (as will the mouth to the Cookie Monster pumpkin). 

And I finished decorating the front of our house (and finally staple-gunning the lights to the wood to fix my redneck duct tape job of it)

  

 

Fighting Crime

Calen uses a lot of soap and apparently ran out upstairs in the middle of the night.

Because he wasn't actually washing his hands, he was just screwing around with the soap in the sink.

And when left to his own devices, Calen creates his own solutions to issues like empty soap containers. 

So this morning I woke up to find that he had pulled out the FLEA BATH BOTTLE (with pump, like the soap bottle) and USED IT in the sink last night. A lot. Like an entire gallon of it. Gone. 

Thank the good Lord he didn't DRINK it. 

And that's how we started the day.

Also today, Camden and I used our special time together while Calen was at school by picking out fun costumes from Kmart that are on uber sale. I got him an adorable Batman costume thinking maybe it could fit next year. So we took it home and tried it on.

Not a chance in hell will it fit next year. And they didn't have a bigger size. So we are going to return it. But that doesn't mean we didn't have fun wearing it before it went back in the bag. 

Here is Camden I MEAN Bat-Cam fighting crime around the house and keeping us safe. 

Bat-Cam's weapon of choice is the mighty blankie

 

Fighting back dangerous smelly sock assaults

Cleansing the rooftops of apple juice filth.

 

Spiky Apple Pie Carmel Apples of Doom

Have you ever heard of Pinstrosity? It's a website dedicated to those people (like me) who see beautiful ideas, recipes, crafts etc on Pinterest and attempt to make them as beautiful as the pictures show. However, they are normal people like me, which generally means nothing ever turns out even remotely attractive as these Martha Stewart assholes that originally post them. And whatever turns into a bonafide disaster usually ends up on this "reality" website.

Here is my first entry. 

I found this original pin and gasped with joy.  

Aren't they beautiful?

Caramel apples that taste like baked apple pie? Sold. AND apparently they sell them at Disney. Which means I can make them here and NOT spend twenty-seven-or-however-much dollars on one when we go to Disney next year. Totally excited to do this. 

Apples ready to be attacked by delicious melted caramel

So Calen and I attempted to make these beauties today. I followed the recipe exactly how the pin told me to. First, I attempted to melt the caramels. I even Googled how to melt caramel chews. 

My caramels burned to a crisp. Even though I used butter. On low heat. While stirring constantly. 

LUCKILY, I had several little cups of that pre-melted caramel dip. So I emptied them all out into a bowl and dipped the apples in that. 

Screw you, burning caramel chews.

Here's how to NOT waste your time setting 800 little caramel chews on fire

Then, I was told to put them in the fridge to have the caramel set. So I did, and waited for it to harden. 

It never hardened. Why? Because it's NOT melted caramel chews. 

Calen (I mean Pirate Calen) helped me cover the apples in caramel. Also in the background, that thawing ground beef gave us food poisoning tonight. We're 0 for 2 today.

Then I melted the white chocolate chips in the microwave as recommended. And that worked fine. But as I attempted to spoon the melted chocolate over the NOT hardened caramel, it turned into a swirling cross-contaminated mess. 

And I totally couldn't get the nice smooth layer on it like whatever bitch did the ones in the original pin. 

Sprinkle on a (generous) dose of cinnamon/sugar, and let it harden. And this time it hardened. But once it was cool, it was not a beautiful, sexy, smooth apple pie carameled apple. It was a jagged, angry apple with sharp poky spikes. It's going to be like biting into a rolled up hedgehog. 

Spiky Carmel Apples of Doom

However, it smells like apple pie. And I believe it will be tasty. I hope. I pray. Update tomorrow when we test taste it.