Halloween

It was going to be the year of no theme.  It has to end eventually right?  At some point they will be big enough that I can't physically shove them into my costume of choice.  Just kidding, I haven't done that.  Yet.

The funny thing is the one that really was knocking the theme for us was Asher.  I couldn't get the kid to agree on anything.  So I scrapped it.  Pick whatever you want from the costume bin.  Who needs an adorable, family filled theme?  Not us!

And then the idea started percolating.  And then I talked Asher into wearing his potential costume.  And before I knew it, I was spending the day of the school trunk or treat furiously sewing and throwing our theme together.

But the true Halloween miracle came with our trunk decorations.  If we were going to have  family theme, we needed a trunk to match.  But there just wasn't enough time.  Duh duh duh DAH!  Scarlet the creative to the rescue!  Give that girl a pile of construction paper and a roll of tape and there is nothing she can't create.   I would send her off to do a project and it would come back looking better than my highest expectations.

And here we are.   

This is where this post ended when I started it four months ago.  The plan was to hop onto Jon's work computer and get the pictures we had taken with our nice camera.  But, they just weren't there.  I kept hoping that in the back of my mind they would just be found someday and magically I would start blogging again and get all caught up and life would be daffodils and roses.

It's now March.  No Halloween pictures.  So I am going to call it.  The cell phone pics are all I have to offer.  But now I will move on and all will be well.

And here we are.

We have Dorothy


The Scarecrow


The reluctant Tin Man


The Cowardly candy fiend Lion


The Wicked Witch of the West


And the Wizard of Oz

And our land of Oz


I ended up having to go to Costco post getting all Halloween ready.  I got a lot of stares.

In October

I am so bummed that I did not blog sooner about October.  We had such a good October and I am going to do an extremely poor job of retelling it.  I also do not have nearly enough pictures.  The Nielsen crew is not great at documenting our good moments.  And since I constantly rely on others to capture my memories... I am blaming them.

Instead of doing a summer or holiday get together with the Nielsens, we got together in the middle of October.  It was random and all kinds of fun.  The kids skipped school and we took off for the Marriott in Newport Beach for a week.  The crowd included Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen, the Marshalls, Swen, and my crew.  Missed the Moores and the Drivers.

We were all in one condo so things were very friendly :)  I have nothing to complain about, Jude scored us the big room.  The facility is a lot of fun.  Great playgrounds for kids and great pools.  Our biggest challenge of the trip was keeping track of where kids had taken off to.  Asher has a great little cousin buddy in Barrett.  They are all kinds of adorable trouble.  Barrett got his first training wheel-less bike on the trip and instantly took off cruising.  And every time we turned around, Barrett and Asher were heading out the door on their own adventure.  Luckily they both survived somehow.

We got to see the Campbells while we were down there, which was a lot of fun.  We also ate a lot of good food.  Nielsens always eat well.

And we got to end a great trip with some more great people.  The Stouts joined us at Lego Land for a fun day.