Goodbye October

There are a few loose ends I need to tie up from October.

We had a tri-ward trunk or treat on the 30th that was lots of fun. With all the other Halloween preparations I was doing, I was burned out on creativity and didn't come up with themed costumes for us. Mike threw on his hard hat and tool belt and everyone thought he was Bob the Builder or Handy Manny (?). I didn't dress up. I LOVE Halloween and always dress up, but oh well.

I spent the night before the trunk or treat making a rail road crossing sign that really blinked to decorate our trunk. I think it turned out pretty well. It was fun having Ethan be Thomas and having all the Thomas stuff at our trunk because so many kids recognized and were excited to see Thomas.

(My camera ran out of batteries, so I only have phone pictures--so sad!)


Ethan helped us hand out candy and then held both of our hands while we took him from car to car. He was happy to walk around and get candy, but I was impatient standing in line at every car, so we didn't trunk or treat for long. Ethan was fine with that; he just pushed his Pooh Bear train all over the parking lot and around the outside of the church.





On Halloween I invited several friends over for a Halloween dinner. My friend Aika planned fun games like bobbing for apples. The kids could only get the apples by the stem, and watching them made me want to do it.

The only way to do it is to really go for it and dunk your head, so I did.

We gathered all the kids (minus two infants) for this picture. Pretty amazing they all fit and sat still! The adults opted out of the picture. (Excuse the jack-o-lantern; I'm not sure if I can post a picture of my friends' foster son.)

Everyone brought fun Halloween food, and these were my contributions. I was too busy to take pictures that night, but these are the test run products from the Friday before.

Snake stromboli (I think the ones for the party turned out better):

Witch finger bread sticks for the chili Aika made.

We're trying to do Friday family dates since we have memberships to three fun places and Mike has half days on Fridays. Here we are at the Enchanted Island Amusement Park.

Riding the train:

Loving the helicopter ride (most of them are helicopters; "chop chop chop!" as Ethan says):

Mike hanging out with Ethan. Now that I don't have to get up early every morning to exercise (thank you LA Fitness) or work as much during Ethan's naps, I've been a bad influence on our bed time, and Mike has been pretty tired.