NJ2LA

Hey, it's been a couple of weeks, right?

Sorry about that.

Would some cute fall pictures of the kids make you feel better?

Here's sweet baby Oscar, at four months old, in a church pumpkin patch in Westchester. That's slightly upstate New York, for those of you not in the know.

Here's Oscar B, about a year and a half year old, at a pumpkin patch at a different church in New Jersey. When this picture was taken, we had been in NJ for a couple months.

Jebus. How much would I love to dress my children in pumpkin hats and cow sweaters again?

Well, I guess there's always grandkids.

Halloween 2006. Willard and Ben. I will never make a better Halloween costume.

2007. Gleek and Thomas the Tank Engine's Engineer.

I can't stop posting pictures of them as yummy babies.

While going through my "sentimental clothes I'm saving for the grandkids" box, I found everyone's first Halloween costume.

It was a hand me down from cousin Hayden. Both Oscar and Arlo wore it. We've lost the hat, sadly.

Moving on! More from The Goose's preschool boards:

A life guard AND a police officer! That's my girl, pulling in those public pensions. Smart chickie.

On the other hand, she doesn't really have brown hair, She has dishwater blonde hair that has stayed light solely due to our living in CA.

Off to The Goose's friend Ty's birthday party!

Remember when I offended all of the out-of-work actors in New Jersey by saying that birthday party entertainers are better in CA?

Ty's mom was at that party too. She hired the same folks to cosplay How to Train Your Dragon for Ty's birthday.

Here's The Goose and her pal Stella listening intently to Hiccup and Astrid.

Ty's mom was kind enough to include Arlo, who loves Ty, Ty's back yard, and Ty's turtles.

Happy birthday, Ty! Enjoy all that attention from your mama while you can -- and when your baby brother arrives on the scene, Arlo and I will take you out on a hike.

We decided to have a garage sale on Burbank's Garage Sale Weekend -- the weekend you don't need a permit. This means that we cleaned out our garage full of stuff we wouldn't have packed and brought to CA if we had packed it instead of movers. More about that in a bit.

We found some mantle type stuff too. This is the main thing you see when you walk into our tiny living room: Evan's family glass-door bookcase.

A Tibetan shadow puppet I got for Evan in Grand Central Station. A picture of the kiddos. A brass shadow box from Cabo. A fan Arlo painted in school last year.

In the middle: Evan's horse. It was a gift from his mom to his grandma, and he inherited it. An exotic Moroccan clock (that I bought at Target for $19.99 a couple years back -- in the move the clockworks got fried by battery acid and I replaced them with a 5 buck set from my local craft store).

A wooden document box that my grandma painted and adorned with gold-dust-encrusted ferns.

A hardwood tray from my friend's first honeymoon in Morocco. I love the tray, but I love even more that she got the second marriage right.

On the other end: a family portrait from Cabo. The R. Crumb Schoolgirl statue. My favorite vase filled with baby pumpkins.

It's all too much. Do you have any ideas on how to edit?

The Goose had fun at the playground with her friend Rose.

I wore my Obama 2012 tee shirt and flew my silver fox flag to support our vice-president, Joe Biden.

One of my favorite buildings in town.

Garage sale weekend! I put the kids to work painting signs.

We made a good chunk of change (enough to cover our power/water/trash bill for this month -- not an unsignificant sum), and met a bunch of our neighbors. The kids sold brownies and lemonade and made 45 bucks. It was enough for me to take Oscar and The Goose to Frankenweenie and buy them candy, and for Evan to bring Arlo to Chuck E. Cheese for a bit. All of it paid for in sweaty, smelly one-dollar bills.

My poor Goose. Stuck in the back of the car. Sometimes I give her my phone and she shoots what she sees.

The kids each got their own care packages from Sampi and Grandma Betsy's trip to Alaska. Here's the great thing about my folks: they probably could have saved a couple bucks by putting everything in one package and mailing it off. Instead they carefully boxed up four care packages (for each of the kids and Evan and I) and sent them off. They also sent each kid a postcard every day from their vacation, as they have since their retirement -- every vacation, we get postcards from every venue for every kid. We have a big box full of postcards.

The kids were utterly delighted with their packages. Highlights books, Alaska puzzles, and stuffed sled dogs.

Boy do they love those dogs.

Puppies are a lot of work.

It's 110 degrees out. Time for a long sleeved Hello Kitty dress.

It's the middle of October and all my friends on the East Coast are talking about sweaters and leaf changes and apple picking. Screw that, we're going swimming.

Sometimes I just need to take pictures of them while they are sleeping.

Late night homework.

October 21st, 2012. Our 12th wedding anniversary. We procure our kids' favorite babysitter, Jared, and make our way to Hollywood.

Gyros and kebobs at the Farmer's Market.

Mmm.

My sweetie in front of his favorite record store.

The Dome.

We saw Argo -- what a fantastic film.

Came home and Evan worked on organizing the garage and I dyed fabric for Halloween costumes. This cotton velveteen will be the leafs that make up The Goose's Periwinkle costume.

I've been spending a lot of time in the boys' school lately. A dear friend works at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and I took these pictures of kids' pictures of the Endeavor flying overhead.

Here's something I've realized about sending your kids to public school in California: your involvement will be a full-time job. In New Jersey, we could send our kids to school, have little to no classroom involvement, and figure that they would be okay. In California, volunteer moms check and correct all homework and tests so that the teacher can deal with the 32 kids in her class.