the sidlingers

The first one is a hanging bat, carved by David.  The two middle ones were carved by me, the first is a group of ghouls and the second is a haunted castle.  The last one is Daniel’s design, drawn on by him and carved by me.  We had a lot of fun with our pumpkins this year!

But I know what you’re all waiting for…the costume!  So here you go…

The Flash, the fastest man alive.  We went through several other options before this was determined to be "the" costume.  I guess he wanted to stick with his superhero theme from the past couple of years.

We went out trick-or-treating and made it around one large block before his treat bucket was full and he was tired (in all fairness, all of the houses here have large porches with lots of steps), so we called it a night.  We waited around our house for some more trick-or-treaters, but ended up only having two for the whole night….we have a lot of candy corn left over now.  We did have a wonderful night though and hope everyone else did too!  I hope there were no spooky surprises for anyone!

Here’s an album of more pictures (including Friday’s Halloween party at school, with Daniel).

2001, his first Halloween.  He was a dragon or maybe it was a dinosaur? He was green and he had spikes and lots and lots of adorable baby fat! 

2002, Daniel the Lion.  So cute with his mane and whiskers.  This was the first year that he was skilled in walking and talking and made trick-or-treating alot more interesting.

2003, the first year of picking out his own costume.  He was Spiderman.  He refused to wear the mask, so really he was more like a revealed Spiderman.  This was also really the first year he ‘got’ the trick-or-treating thing.  It was fun.

2004, Superman.  Isn’t he so handsome?

Check back on Halloween for pictures of this year’s costume and our jack-o-laterns(which aren’t all done yet and that’s why I haven’t posted pictures yet…so far I’ve broken two little saws and cut two of my fingers carving them).

Also, as a warning to all those "involved"……

He’s watching.

Alot of fun was had today by Daniel and his classmates.  They got to go trick-or-treating in the church offices and got plenty of treats even after that.  Daniel’s teacher had unexpected surgery yesterday to have some kidney stones removed, so I ended up staying all day to help out with his class.  It was quite an experience.

Here’s some pictures of his class in their costumes, trick-or-treating (I’ve blacked out Daniel since it’s not yet Halloween and we can’t reveal his costume…check back on Monday):

Since I stayed the whole day, I got some other pictures that I can show Daniel in:

A quick technical note before I go…the service we use to update this site is going to have some maintenance happening tomorrow (Saturday) night from around 9pm-midnight, so you might not be able to reach the site.  Check back on Sunday morning…we’ll have jack-o-lantern pictures then!

There will be an update soon, I promise…and pictures too!

Tomorrow starts off Halloween with a party at school and then this weekend we’ll be carving pumpkins, making caramel apples and having hot dogs and hayrides with the neighbors.

I’ll post some pictures of tomorrow’s party in the afternoon.

This morning was the Walk to D’Feet ALS Walk, thank you to everyone who helped me reach my goal!  We got up early and got down to the park for the walk.  Daniel was not too thrilled about having to get up on a Saturday morning, but the fact that all of the local mascots were there (and a few Titans cheerleaders) helped make up for it.  Here’s a couple of pictures from that (click to make larger).

Right after the walk was Daniel’s second karate belt graduation.  He is now a gold belt!  We are so proud of him for working so hard!  We did take video of the graduation this time and if everyone bugs David (david.sidlinger@gmail.com) maybe you can get him to post some of it here.

Click here to see more pictures from the graduation.

He yells at the TV out of frustration because Dora is not figuring out where to go fast enough, "Grrr…you’ve got a map and I’ve told you where three times already!"

I’m sitting here paying my bills.  90% of them I pay online, but there is the other 10% that for some reason or another I have to actually write out checks and mail them in.

Without even thinking about it, I just wrote my email address for the return address on one of the envelopes.

You might be getting a call sometime in the next week from a young boy who is trying to sell you cookie dough.  Since we all know that that young boy is easily distracted and might take the conversation elsewhere, I will fill you in on all the details here.

Daniel is selling cookie dough to raise money for his preschool for educational materials and play equipment.  The cookie dough is from the same company he sold for last year, Little Lambs.  If you purchased the dough last year, you know that it really is pretty good (not that cookies can ever really be bad).

The flavor offerings are:

Chocolate Chuck, Peanut Butter Crunch, Oatmeal Raisin, Simply Sugar Cookie, White Chunk Macadamia Nut, Chocolate Chip, Triple Chocolate Chewy, Cookie w/ M&M Candies, Snickerdoodle, Heath Toffee Crunch, Wedding Fiesta Cookie, Coconut Macaroon, Little Lamb’s Ultimate Cookie, Chocolate Chunk Pecan, White Chunk Almond, Chocolate Chip Mint and Play-N-Bake 4 Pack.

Each 3 pound box contains 48 pre-formed chunks of cookie dough that go directly from the freezer to the oven.  They will keep in the freezer for one year or in the refrigerator for 4 weeks and the dough can be refrozen.  Each box of 48 is $14.

Not that I would ever think about anything less than preparing and serving my own from scratch cookies, I have heard (um, from "other people") that having a box of these cookies in the freezer around the holidays is a really good idea.  If you have guest pop in unexpectedly, you can discretly pull some cookies from the freezer, put them in the oven and totally take credit for having fresh baked cookies for your guests (not that I’ve ever done that, never…not me, nope).

However, I can and will admit with no shame, that if you like to eat cookie dough, these are great for that too.  You can grab one (or two) cookies from the freezer and have a nice treat!

We will be taking orders until October 24th, send us an email if you are interested!

Thanks!

This morning when Daniel woke up, he was anxious to tell me all about his dream.  Here is a portion of his telling:

"In my dream I was watching Blue’s Clues, and they were playing Star Wars.  Blue was Anakin Skywalker and Steve was Count Dooku. They made lightsabers out of paper towel rolls and found Blue’s clues which were spaceships, lightsabers, and another lightsaber."

Sounds like the perfect Daniel dream.