Atherton Family Notes

We continued our tradition of homemade Halloween costumes this year. Cece reprised her Ice Cream Truck from last year, but Sadie and Carissa got new costumes.

Carissa lobbied hard to go as a zombie cheerleader, but Sandi vetoed this idea. The next thought was to build a “ceiling fan” costume (that is, a fan of ceilings) also using the cheerleader idea, but they couldn’t work out the details.

At the end, Carissa decided to go as a rainbow, with the sun as her crown, clouds on her shoulders, the rainbow colors in her dress, and a pot of gold bucket to use to hold her candy. As it turned out, this was a pretty easy costume to put together using the resources of Nana’s sewing room.

Carissa’s rainbow costume, looking somewhat like a very colorful version of the Statue of Liberty.

Sadie’s costume turned out to be a little harder. Sandi and her friend Cynthia spent several hours putting it together on Friday night, and Sandi still had to work for several more hours on Saturday morning. Sadie had to spend a fair amount of time wearing the costume so that adjustments could be made, and she complained about it pretty much constantly. In the end, though, it turned out really well and Sadie got to wear a really cool hot air balloon costume.

We took the girls to the Lion’s Club Halloween party in Claremont. Sadie won first prize in her age group and got $15 to add to her stash.

Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful, balloooooooon!

The girls, Papaw Cotton and I gathered up a couple of their friends and we took everybody out to trick-or-treat last night. All the girls got a lot of compliments on their costumes, especially Sadie, which made her really happy. CeCe’s costume continued to impress everyone, but unfortunately, in it’s second year, it started to fall apart during the evening. When the shoulder strap broke, we had to abandon it at Cynthia’s house, and Sandi when over to recover it later.

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Crown Hill Cemetery has an annual event called “Music of the Night” which is a late night organ concert held just before Halloween in the chapel on the grounds of the cemetery. Sandi just heard about it recently and bought tickets for us to attend. Even though the cemetery is famous for having a wonderful view of downtown Indianapolis, we’ve never gone there with the kids. Sandi and I went once when we were dating, but never in the 20 or so years since then, so this seemed like a good time to go back.

The chapel where the concert is held is fairly small and there are only 4 shows, though, so we ended up having to go to the very last show — the only one with seats available — at 11PM on Saturday night. Of course, the advantage of this particular date is that the cemetery also hosts a tour (!!!) just after the concert ends.

So last Saturday night, we all bundled up and went to the cemetery in the dark of the night. Our girls were the only kids present, and we think many of the other attendees thought we were crazy for taking our kids out at that hour.

Regardless he concert was a lot of fun. The organist played a lot of good music arranged for organ, from Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor to Danse Macabre to a suite from Phantom of the Opera to Ghostbusters. He was joined by two vocalists on some pieces.

After the concert, we were served doughnuts and hot apple cider, then turned out into the cold dark night to tour the graveyard. It was just above freezing, but the air was completely still. So since we were dressed warmly, it was a comfortable walk at least… for being in a graveyard… In the middle of the night.

The tour guide told us interesting stories about a few of the people buried at Crown Hill. The most memorable was about a boiler explosion at the Indiana State Fair in 1869. This made a big impression on CeCe, who spent the rest of the evening asking questions about why people used boilers and how the explosions could kill people. This eventually led to a discussion about how boiler design and safety helped lead to the modern profession of engineering.

The tour culminated at the top of Crown Hill, where James Whitcomb Riley is buried, with a reading of his most famous poem, “Little Orphant Annie”.

It was after 2 in the morning when we got home.

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Carissa read “The Hobbit” for school this year and had to submit a project based on the events of the story. She chose to do a newscast about the disappearance (and reappearance) of Bilbo Baggins, along with commercials related to things the characters from the book would be interested in.

Carissa wrote the script and enlisted the whole family and a friend to help her make the video. Sandi and I helped her film the scenes in front of a green screen. I showed her how to composite the video and then we turned it over to her.

She had a good time making and editing her own video. She’s especially proud of the work on the “Spider Repellant” sequence.

We had fun helping her create what looks like a local evening newscast, complete with authentic-sounding music. It’s amazing how many resources there are out there for school kids to tap into in order to make projects like this. (Let’s hope the US congress doesn’t mess this up.)

Anyway, here is the video. I recommend watching in fullscreen mode and switching to 720p resolution if possible.

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Carissa had to write a letter at school and mail it to us. I think the point of the exercise was to be persuasive. So Carissa sent us her Christmas wish list, since Santa doesn’t seem to be a viable option anymore.

Here is what we got in the mail (click on it to see the larger version):

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Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

This is the army of the candy turkeys we made for our place settings this year, based on a recipe from Taste of Home.

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Whilst Carissa and CeCe are arguing over a presumed slight, our lovable scamp helps himself to the unwatched baked good.

Carissa and CeCe made this video using an iPhone App called Silent Movie Director.

They’ve been inspired by a couple of silent films we’ve watched recently, Phantom of the Opera (which we watched after going to see the Music of the Night concert), Metropolis (which is a great example of how people overacted in silent films to compensate for the lack of speech), and A Trip to The Moon.

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