Been an interesting week...

So let's see this time last week I was showing off my MH Guy shirts and only briefly mentioned Hurricane Sandy.  Believe it or not at that point I wasn't sure how it would affect us, if at all.  By Sunday were were bracing for the worst. School had been cancelled by Sunday afternoon. By Monday afternoon I had 2 days worth of water stashed for us as well as both bath tubs filled in case we lost power and therefore lost out water pump and my hubby had been let off work early to come home.  By Monday evening we were all kind of tentatively watching the weather get worse and worse. School for Tuesday was cancelled as well as Donnie's work. We ended up losing power about 4 times Monday evening, but each time only lasted about 30 minutes then the power was back up, and well then about half an hour later it would go out again.  The wind howled something fierce and the rain came down in stunning deluges.  By about 11pm though things had started to calm down. By Tuesday morning all was 'clear', although actually it was cold, grey and over cast.  There was a light misty rain falling, that I am pretty sure had it been a few degrees colder would have been snow! 

My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by Sandy. We were blessed to have gotten off with very little relative damage. 

 The kids were back in school on Wednesday, so I took the chance and headed out to the nearest town to run some errands.  I stopped at the overlook above West Point and the Hudson River to survey my 'world' from a different angle.

This is our little portion of the Hudson River...see that line that cuts it in 'half', well that's a road/train track.  The area on the 'back' part of it is normally bone dry!!!

This is the area to the right of the above picture.  This is West Point Military Academy and the post surrounding it.  Again you can see that road/train track and the over flow of water!  I cannot even begin to image that much additional water.  On the plus side the developers many years ago obviously knew it was a flood plain as that area has no houses or business built on it!

I turned around to get back in my truck and notices this stand of trees that was, well not standing any more!  It's my understanding that this is caused when the ground gets saturated too quickly and trees with shallow roots get hit with high winds...they just kind of pop out of the ground.  It's kind of sad to think that this tree will eventually die because no one will be out to settle it back into the ground. :-(

As I headed further into town I saw the evidence of lots of downed trees, but crews had already been through and did an amazing job of clearing and cleaning the roads.  I was impressed to see a majority of homes and businesses had had their power restored already (On Tuesday upwards of 50,000 customers were without power in our area!)  However I was surprised to see that our local Kmart was closed due to lack of power even though several of the shops in the same plaza had power...although they were smaller ones, so maybe they had generators.

I headed off to Walmart to pick up things for the boys costumes...yes I am well aware that Wednesday WAS Halloween and I REALLY waited until the last minute.  What can I say, Sandy kind of threw me for a loop!  For the most part my experience at Walmart was like any other trip...although there was some kind of scuffle at the checkouts, that I think involved someone trying to shoplift something.  But the weird thing for me was to see every single refrigerator and freezer case completely EMPTY!  I mean good on them for chucking everything that was in them, but that was an odd, odd sight!

 Of course when I got home and got ready to throw together the boys costumes, my oldest son told me that Trick or treating had been pushed back until Thursday!  Sweet I had an extra day!  So I spent Wednesday evening creating my boys costumes.

My 8yr old originally wanted to be a black ninja, but I nixed that as I wasn't comfortable with him being dressed all in black. O_O  So we compromised and went with red.  Turns out his favorite character for the Lego Ninjago cartoon and toy series is the red ninja Kai.  B asked if I could draw a symbol on his gi...so in searching for designs we found a decent picture of the one on Kai's gi. I hand painted it onto the front of the sweatshirt turned gi.  I also added a line drawing of the same image onto the back.  I used a pair of red fleece PJ pants for his bottoms.  The head scarf came from the remains of my middle son's costume.

My 11yr old is still Pokemon crazy, so he wanted to be a Pokemon Ranger.  He brought me a picture from his favorite DS game to use as the basis for his costume.  He already had the jeans (it is way too cold for shorts), the white long sleeved shirt and the light blue tshirt; so all he needed was the red vest, blue gloves and goggles. I picked up a cheap red tshirt from WM and cut off the sleeves and bottom portion. (which became B's ninja headscarf! =D)  Wednesday night I couldn't sleep, so I used felt and made the small pokeball patch for the front of the vest as well as a larger one for the back.  I gave them each a coat of glow in the dark paint. (although it ended up being too bright from all the street lights {good thing!} for them to really glow. C'est la vie!)

About 30 minutes before Trick or Treating was supposed to start I heard sirens coming up our street...and being curious I headed to the door in time to see the West Point Band, a fire truck, and Black Knights mascot and a bunch of Army soldiers parading through the neighborhood tossing out HUGE handfuls of candy for the kids.  The boys had a blast scooping it all up! =D  The orange bucket B is holding was 3/4 full before we even left the house!

Since my husband had to work late my oldest son opted to stay home and pass out candy while I took the boys around the neighborhood. We walked for 2 hours and hit all but maybe 3 or 4 streets.  The boys had a great time, and I say some truly creative costumes.  My favorites were the 3 sisters dressed as Barbie, Skipper and Kelly in BOXES!!!  Then there was the adorable little guy in a wheelchair, his parents had decorated his chair to look like a front end loader!  It was fantastic!  Oh and then there was the boy who had his head in a jar in front of his chest!  Very creative!

By the time we got home the boys were cold and tired, so I made them some nice hot chocolate and they each got to pick 3 pieces of candy after I went through it. 

This is our loot with my oldest son's hand for scale. This basket weighs a ton!  I think we are set on candy for quite a while!

I honestly don't think we've ever gotten this much candy before. I was very impressed by most of the kids out as there were a lot of houses that had simply left a bowl with a sign saying "Take One" or in some cases 2.  And for the most part most of the kids we saw did just that.  There were a couple we saw that were grabbing handfuls and the parent just kind of laughed it off saying there were planning to put most of the candy into care packages to send to Afghanistan. While I commend them for that, the fact that she allowed her child to grab some times 2 or 3 handfuls bothered me.  Oh well...what are you going to do. :-(  My boys were awesome and used their manners to the point of impressing several people when they skipped crossing through someone's yard to use the sidewalk instead!  We got plenty of stunned thank yous.

I've got a couple other things to how you but I think I've rambled long enough so I will save my latest Monster High doll and barbie outfit until tomorrow! Take care!