Hi, it's me. Haley.

I haven't been on here for awhile. In my absence, I have discovered that Matt has taken over the blog and at least put some pictures up. He really is the best. Oh, and by the way, sorry for the bloody skinned deer photos...like I said, I haven't really been on here for awhile.

Life is great. In fact, we are so dang busy LIVING life, that I find I have hardly any motivation left to WRITE about it once all is said and done. But then I start thinking about how we are going to print this year off in a little while to keep in our collection of family blog journals, and I just keep picturing us ten years from now, looking at the months of September - November 2011 and saying, "Man. What losers we were!"

I can't let that happen.

However, I also can't physically go back and write about every little detail of every little thing that has happened during the months of September - November 2011. So starting now I vow to do better. And in a vain attempt to redeem myself just a little, I will write a thing or two about the last several weeks, as pictured below.

Halloween was probably the biggest thing that happened around here, as with every other American family. We spent a lot of time doing Fall and Halloweenie things, like baking, raking leaves, making jack-o-lanterns, and going to pumpkin patches.

We actually got to go to two pumpkin patches this year. One in Oklahoma with Griffin and Ashland and Zoey, and one in Marble Falls with Bekah and Nathan. Bennett and I drove out there to meet them one afternoon while Matt was doing his SASS shooting with Wayne. It was so fun! I posted about this same pumpkin patch last year while Matt was deployed, but this year we just took it at an easy pace and I enjoyed it so much. We ate lunch together near the petting zoo, and then watched Bennett go on a train ride all by himself. The ticket person wasn’t convinced he was going to be OK alone, but in all reality I think Bennett got a little bored. I mean, once you go tubing with Uncle Griffin and ride motorcycles with Daddy, a little tin train hooked to the back of a tractor just doesn’t cut it anymore. We also picked beautiful Fall bouquets, picked out pumpkins, and had a great time catching up with some of our favorite people. It was a very fun afternoon for all of us.

Clear back in September one of my good friends came to me and asked me if I wanted to co-host a Halloween party with her. I love Halloween. Not to the extent of my growing up years, as I have found it is much easier to be the child than the parent during major holiday events, but I love it still the same. So I of course said yes.

It was crazy.
crazy planning
crazy "acquiring" of items
crazy decorating
crazy prepping
crazy cooking

But so totally worth it. We got a lot of our decorative and menu ideas from Martha Stewart. I made some awesome (if I do say so myself) name tags for each food item, so we dined on dead man's fingers, witches brew, veggies and slime, etc. Matt made a half-sized coffin and we set up the kitchen like a morgue with all of the food in the coffin. Pretty cool. Matt and my friend's husband (also named Matt) even made a graveyard in the backyard complete with smoke and fog machines and bones, and we had a spooky spider web canopy over nearly the entire backyard. There were about ten families who came and every single person wore a super cool costume. Matt and I were hunters in our camo, and we made Bennett a little deer costume complete with antlers and a white tail. It was pretty cute. We all had a blast eating ghoulish food, playing games like "The Dead Mr. Smith," “Pin the Tail on the Black Cat,” and “Doughnuts on a String,” taking turns hitting an incredible homemade black widow piñata, and judging each others jack-o-lanterns. At the end of the night everybody went home with really cool witch's brooms goody bags. I think it was a huge success. A LOT of work, but a huge success.

Of course, that was on Friday, October 28th . The next day was Saturday October 29th , and the ward trunk-or-treat. Which the Primary was partially in charge of. Which meant more decorating, more food making, more game creating, more candy giving. (Oh, quick side note, I was in charge of the Primary Sacrament Program which took place on October 23rd . So for a whole month I was also busy writing the script, calling the parents, running practices, creating nametags and seating charts, making letters and teacher assignments, figuring out who was actually going to be there or not, etc. And it went off without a hitch. Needless to say though, I was SO DANG HAPPY when it was OVER!!!!) But anyway, Bennett had a blast at all of the Halloween parties we went to, including this one, but he somehow managed to lose his antlers on this night.

It was actually really weird. We were all done going from car to car and just standing at our own car giving out candy, when a big group of older kids walked by. When they left, they sort of filed out around Bennett, and after the crowd cleared, Bennett’s antlers were nowhere to be seen. I ran after the kids but nobody had them, we got a flashlight and looked in the parking lot, we checked the lost and found the next day. But no antlers. Poor Bennett was so upset over losing his “deer hat” I felt terrible for him. That’s why on actual Halloween night Bennett is wearing his hunting hat instead of his antlers. Which really threw people off. I’m pretty sure nobody knew what that kid with the brown smock and bright orange hat was supposed to be, but luckily we got a few good pictures in before Halloween night anyway.

Which brings us to October 31st, another day full of decorating and candy passing out. We met with a bunch of families on our street and had a good dinner at my friends home before heading out together in a group.

Every year we have spent Halloween here I have noticed something weird, but just couldn’t put my finger on it. This year I realized what it was…nobody trick-or-treats at night. From about 5:00 to 7:30 the streets are PACKED with people and little kids. Seriously, it’s like a New York City street full of witches and Power Rangers. But as soon as the sun sets, there’s not one person out and not one porch light is on. It’s sort of freaky. I however, actually like this aspect of our neighborhood, as Bennett was pretty much done by 7:30 anyway and then we didn’t have to worry about sitting by the door anymore. We spent Halloween night pillaging Bennett’s candy bucket (this kid made a haul!) and then watching Bennett tear through the rest of his candy (literally, with his teeth) as much as he wanted. We are excellent parents.

So that was Halloween, and let me tell you, it was great. But it was super busy and I was really ready to flip my calendar to November.

So far, all that we have done in November that is really noteworthy is go to the Waco Zoo. Which was awesome and way more enjoyable in the cool 75 degree weather we are having now versus the 110 degree weather we had the first time we visited. It was perfect, but we took pictures of that day so I am sure Matt will post those and then I can write witty captions underneath. Like, “This is Matt at the zoo.” (Just kidding, I will be true to my vow and try to give a little more from now on. I promise.)

So until next time…
Happy Halloween!