Columbus Day

Christopher Columbus. It is a good phrase. One you could say in surprise at something. "I just saw a unicorn." "Christopher Columbus!" Like "goodness gracious" or "great day in the morning." This has nothing to do with anything, it is just something I was thinking about this weekend, as we celebrated good ole Chris. To be honest, I don't even know what we are celebrating when we have Columbus Day. His birthday? His death? His discovery of the Bahamas? What happened in October 400 some years ago that we need to celebrate now?

Out west, they don't celebrate Columbus Day. I think the post office is closed, but no one really pays attention to it. No one has the day off from school. No one even really knows why the post office is closed. I asked them about this and was met with blank stares. Very curious. An Eastern conspiracy.

A good Eastern conspiracy. Because even if it turns out that Columbus was a bit of a pain in the neck and wasn't the first to discover America, we modern Americans know how to throw a good sale in his honor. Maybe we are celebrating the European's brilliance at bargaining-- the whole of Manhattan for a few strings of beads. And hey, Columbus just declared the Bahamas and various other parts of the Americas for Spain. That is free-ish. Makes my JoAnn fabrics haul look a lot less impressive. (Another tangent, but interesting--what would Manhattan be worth today? Full retail price. Is there even enough money in the world to buy all of Manhattan? Isn't there only 4 trillion dollars worth of gold in circulation throughout the whole world? I doubt that would buy Manhattan.)

Still, I love Columbus Day sales.

We went down to Clover and Evan's this weekend. It turned out to be a toned down weekend. Clover and I had been planning on whipping up tons of meals for the coming weeks, but then Justin and Evan had to work Saturday morning. So then we planned on going to the Farmer's market, which we did do. And then people started getting a stomach bug. Justin and I still went out Saturday evening for a few hours of just us and Elsie. I felt pretty bad. Clover wasn't actively sick, but she wasn't 100% and we pranced away, leaving her to deal with 7 children alone, since Evan was out of commission. We were supposed to be going out to eat, but instead, we went to Carousel Mall and shopped sales. And then went to McDonalds. I don't think Clover is ever going to let us live that one down. It isn't that we didn't want to eat at a nice place, it is just that I spent 2 and a half hours shopping and that seemed like all the time we could, in good conscience, presume upon Clover's niceness. I mean I can make food at home. I can't shop the bajillion stores at the mall in my kitchen.

It was a good weekend. Except the stomach bug thing.

It is times like this that we wish the Oregon Vaughans shouldn't live so far away. If only we could shrink the USA so Oregon was next to NY. Who  really needs Ohio, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, or Idaho? We need our sweet little Vaughan cousins! 

There was a walkway along one of the brick buildings, so we did cousins pictures.

It is really hard to choose which ones to put up here. 

 

Gymboree--I saw these skirts at $32 each and wondered how I could justify them. And now they are $8. Yeah. 

H&M--all mark downs were an additional 50% off. I got everything here, plus a headband for Elsie, a shirt for Gilbert, and two little meeting bags for the girls for $48. 

Darling little shoe-boots and baby converse high tops. $2.50 each. So I got some for now and some for later. 

And then because we are prompt parents, we had an Easter Egg hunt. I forget what happened, but we were supposed to be down there around Easter and the kids were going to do this then. But we couldn't make it. So here we are doing it in October. Since October doesn't involve enough candy already...

Eggs hidden around the family room

My husband has a potty sense of humor

All ready to hunt up some eggs 

Orianna wrote this for Cheyenne I believe. Love.

Their booty

Leaves

And then it was home again. To a cold house, cookies (we had to warm the house up!), popcorn, snuggly jammies, a mousie (!?!?) dentist appointments yesterday morning, a lazy afternoon, Northern Lights last night.... 

and this morning, frost. 

So we broke out the slippers.

And planned on a day in warm clothes.