stinky skunks

I have the coolest friends. They do the coolest of things and knowing that they are on this island is what gives me sanity. They started "Garden Day" (which is probably what you think it is and more) and for about a year I was able to attend on Tuesdays, but my work schedule no longer accommodates that which is a huge bummer. BUT, they still have weekend celebrations of sorts a few times/month, and holidays are no exception. So we were looking forward to our Halloween this year. I've been reading Fern 5 different Halloween books (thanks to sister-in-law Jenn) for the past few weeks to build her up about the festivities. I partially made our costumes and had good intentions to make them entirely but just didn't have the time to make three of them.

Back to how cool our friends are...they tell the story of the switch witch who comes in the night to switch out your bag of candy for a toy. (I had also been building Fern up for this!) Fern collected about 8 pounds of candy so thank goodness for the switch witch! (And Fern walked the whole entire way by herself, even through the spooky jungle) She walked up to every single person and opened her bag wide saying 'trick or treat! give me something good to eat!' I'm pretty sure I had just as much fun watching this night as I did when I was a kid, if not more.
So, this morning, I woke Fern up and told her that the switch witch had come and left her a surprise. She was sooo excited to go downstairs and was happy to find one piece of candy and a play stove!

I just didn't have time to get any really good photos but here are a few so you can get an idea of our costumes. (I also posted some of those cool friends of ours...)

I made pizza decorated with spiders and jack-o-lanterns!

medley by Fern

The girl can't stop singing!

medley by Fern from Ginger Haddock on Vimeo.

dancing on Saturdays

This video is old, but thought I'd share anyway. One of our Saturday morning rituals. Nice droopy drawers Ginger! Time to buy some new clothes I suppose!

Untitled from Ginger Haddock on Vimeo.

closing down the park

from seed

I got this idea from a magazine article to make Fern some of her very own flower boxes that will someday be veggies if I can muster up enough sunlight somehow. (How is it that I live on Guam and yet have a hard time finding the sun I need to grow some things?) Anyway, Fern loves flowers, so she picked out some zinnia and phlox seeds at the store (almost a disaster...she wanted to open them and then eat them) and she planted them with dad's help. We've been checking them out every day, waiting for buds to form. Okay, I've been anxiously waiting for the buds to form-Fern doesn't yet know what a bud is. The first zinnia bloom made it's appearance the other day. The phlox is still tiny and I wonder if it will ever flower.

first bloom

several blooms later

Before the flower box, Fern planted some boonie pepper seeds and they are just now forming peppers. She gets it, I think. She talks about how the seeds turned into plants, I think. I love growing things from seed, especially seeds I collected from the forest. how very resourceful. :)

I ran across this lovely poem several weeks ago. I'm usually not one for poetry, but really loved this one, so I thought I'd share:

All things by immortal power,

Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.

-Francis Thompson

boonie pepper seeds

flowering boonie pepper

Oh, and let's not forget the okra. We manage to get enough okra from two plants to have it with a meal every week. barely. Fern usually eats half of my portion and some of dad's. She looooves okra...so much that she's named several of her human and animal babies 'Oka'. She is definitely her mother's girl!

okra guardian

my girl

You would not believe how many things she lugged to the park with us that day...funny girl makes me smile. :)

Talofofo Caves

I needed a hike with Fern several weeks ago so Alisha and X were good sports and decided to join me. This was Fern's first walking hike outside of the Ergo. I had to carry her through the steeper parts but she was more than willing to walk herself.

in awe of the giant hole that is the cave.

having a snack and a chat with her Auntie Alisha.

Alisha and Xavier

The big girl carried her own gear.

Rehydrating before the return hike. :)

And running down the trail as fast as she could! She ended up on her face here. Did she cry? nope. not Fern. She's one tough cookie.

mulberries. yum.

{She can never seem to collect enough to do anything with because they all go straight into her mouth. :) }

On turning two; we love her to pieces

(We took this video on her actual birthday...apparently she had some reaction to the sunscreen they put on her at daycare, which is why she looks so splotchy and ill! )

Fern turned two a couple of months ago already. It makes me kind of sad to see our baby growing out of toddlerhood and into childhood, but things are definitely getting more fun. Her vocabulary is exploding and she is putting sentences together. She says things like "I'll help you mama" and "I jump real high!!!!" She loves to sing songs from start to finish, especially her "a b c's", "apples and bananas", "twinkle, twinkle little star" and "go to sleep my baby", a lullaby that we played and sang for her day after day when she was a baby. She just switched from a crib to toddlerbed (yikes!), she still eats dirt, and she loves to dance. She asks to swim and/or swing every day now and she calls them both "swimming". She still uses a pacifier and drinks milk from a bottle at night, but she is the bravest girl I've ever known. She loves her stuffed animals as much as her babies now, swaddles them and feeds them. She still dislikes TV (yay?), she loves play food and tea, and has a hard time sitting through an entire book during the day. She loves gardening and talks about how the plants are "growing" and "drinking water." She is at her best when she is 'helping', she flitters about from thing to thing, and she has ALOT of energy. She gets frustrated when she can't do what she wants to do and can throw on heckuva tantrum. :) She is very independent. She loves "noonles" and avocados. We love her to pieces and can't wait to see what this year will bring.

We celebrated her birthday (twice!) when we were on our trip with the grandparents. When I was little, making ice cream was a tradition on birthdays. We intend to keep that tradition. Homemade ice cream is the best and Fern seems to agree:

Yummy salty ice.

Grandpa and Grandma make the best vanilla ice cream! Grandma makes the mix and Grandpa freezes it. {I have memories of the freezing process taking 'all day long', but in reality it takes less than an hour. It's crazy how time gets shorter as you get older}

Mas, por favor.

Another birthday tradition we started is breaking the piggy bank to see how much money Fern saved up over the year. We are trying to teach her (very early on) the importance of saving money, even the pennies. She has a piggy bank and Allen always drops his pocket change into her bank. Over the last year, Fern collected more than 50 bucks in change! We dumped it out (this one doesn't need to be broken) and Fern had much fun putting the coins into the little paper rolls. I actually took some photos of her doing just that, but they seem to have disappeared. :(

My mom had asked me to take a picture of Fern in a velvet red dress that I had when I was 2. So I did. Below is a picture of me in the dress, next to Fern in the dress, next to Al when he was 2. What do you think? Does she look more like Al or me? I think Al might win this one.

Happy Birthday sugar pop!

spending some time with Grandma

having a conversation

tickle the monkey

poke the monkey

kiss the monkey

Fern misses her Grandma and wishes that she would come to Guam for a visit. hint. hint. ;)

I think this is the last that I'll be posting from our trip.