Octoberness

Time is passing much too quickly. I feel like yesterday was Halloween and today my pumpkins have rotted.

Well, we had a rip-roaring month of October here in the McKean apartamento, and even though we are rapidly approaching December, I thought I'd clue you in on some of our Halloween/October festivities. Mostly because Grace is adorable and I have to post these pictures....

The orange balloon

Whilst shopping for Halloween party items (details forthcoming) one of the kind workers at Smith's (best Smith's EVER EVER EVER btdubs....Draper's where it's at) offered to give cute Grace face a banana. I said she's not really eating bananas yet. So he got her a balloon. And she about died. And so did we just watching her face and her reaction. And so will you because I'm about to post a bazillion pictures of her with this orange balloon:

Okay, so I limited myself to seven. Only.

 Our Halloween party

James and I decided to throw our own Halloween party because there are just so many great couples our age in our ward and I wanted an excuse to buy lots of decorations and lots of candy. (So much candy, in fact, that after trying to resist it yet caving EVERY DAY I threw it away yesterday. It only took me three weeks...)

We had great fun shopping for all of it and then I loved decorating and making food while James preoccupied himself with dry-ice pumpkins and a battery-operated ghost that slid back and forth across a rope in the living room. And thus we see, girls and guys care about different things.

Black bean dip, cauldron of candy, olives and carrots, jack-o-lantern rice krispy treat, pumpkin dip with apples and cinnamon graham crackers, double stuffed oreos (of course), and chocolate cupcakes. This does not include all the other deliciousness our guests brought.

Yes, there's dry ice in those punkins. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the booing ghost.

Anyway, despite our abysmal track record with inviting people to game nights/movie nights/etc and having few (if anyone show up) we had a GREAT turnout. We told people to RSVP and all 8 couples who said they could come made it!! We're cool! We totally should have taken a group pic.

Our party consisted of:
-Costume contest (the couple who won came as Bob Ross and the Happy Tree)
-Candy jar contest (guess how much candy in the jar...a school teacher won both of them)
-Best treat contest (a new couple in the ward who brought no-bake cookies won that, although there were also muddy buddies and rolo/pretzel creations that won me over)
-A Utah football game (can't remember which one, and yes, we're BYU fans but we also watch Utah games...cuz they're good...and some of our guests are Utah fans and we didn't want them to have an excuse to not come)
-A gripload of food, mostly named sugar. Or synonyms thereof.
-Everyone staring at Grace. She was the cutest lil bumble bee.

Speaking of costumes, I should mention (should I though?) that one hour before the party James and I hadn't made our costumes let alone FOUND the stuff we'd bought the night before to make the costumes. We were stressed and in a huff (mostly me) and I thought I was losing my mind because we'd bought the stuff literally like 22 hours ago and I hadn't even taken it out of the bag so WHERE WAS IT??

Moral of the story: make your bed. Our roll of yellow duct tape and my bee antennae and our black panty hose to make bee wings that would later bump into everyone at the party in our cramped apartment were just sitting on the floor underneath the pillows from our unkempt bed. Good grief.

So we transformed into Worker Bee and Queen Bee very quickly just in time for our guests to arrive...and for us to spend the next few hours suffocating and tucking our fat rolls back in between the yellow duct-taped stripes that we'd wrapped a little too tightly around each others' bodies.

I think this was 5 minutes after the party started. She woke up later though and partied hard.

Bat baby and Bee baby, same color costumes, same lack of cooperation with pictures

TAC shindig
There was an awesome little Halloween shindig at James' office. Trick or treating for Grace resulted in chapstick and soap for me. And I colored a picture of a pumpkin. And ate treats. And interacted with all the fantastic people James works with and took a few pictures.

Introducing costume numero dos: the sad owl

James and I really went all-out on our costumes for this party. Oops.

Koala baby and owl baby, both looking adorable and super ticked

Do you recognize this balloon......? It's a new one, actually.

Ward Trunk-or-Treat/Chili cook-off

Cold, lots of kids excited that we had Milk Duds in our cauldron of candy, tons and tons of chili (mine won no awards) and desserts (my apple crisp with vanilla ice cream was a crowd fav...at least with the two friends and husband sitting by me). Lots of cool costumes and and a backdrop for a bee family to take more pictures.

My friend Kelly and her husband her Sadness and Anger from Inside Out. Their costumes were perfect!

So good.

Grace as an owl
Grace was just so cute as a sad owl the day before Halloween that before boxing up her owl costume to never wear again, I thought I'd do another photo shoot. Pretty casual-like, as I'm not even remotely a photographer.

She didn't warm up to the idea right away. Still a sad owl...

Note my foot. Feet. Such a profesh photog.

 Almost done...

Haha. This pose.

Okay I'll stop.

The classics
Oh yes, and we spent minimal effort carving pumpkins for one FHE and watched The Sixth Sense for a date night because we thought that was a pretty mild Halloween movie. Turns out we gots no tolerance for scary.

First time trying a carving kit. We went with the professional $4 version. And did it the wrong way. And I gave up after one bat. We're hard core.

Halloween photo shoot
I bought this outfit so I could take pictures of her. So...

She loved the rocking chair idea.

Halloween evening stroll and Pirate O's
Halloween day was nothing too noteworthy, but the evening was lovely. We took a walk to a place nearby called The Wetlands. It was beautiful. And cold. Also, there's this amazing little place also nearby called Pirate O's that sells food and candy from all over the world. They just have a bunch of weird stuff there too, so we thought we'd stop by on our way home. I looked like a troll, so you won't spy me in any of the following:

Can you spy Grace in the shadows?

They always have different salsas and humus out for test-tasting. Or taste-testing. Whichever you prefer.

Who wants one?

International candieeees....

 

We finished Halloween night off with some diabetes in the form of chocolate chip double stuffed-Oreo pumpkin pancakes. Other than forgetting the three tablespoons of brown sugar until half the batter was cooked and then adding the full three tablespoons of brown sugar to the other half of the batter upon realizing it....they were pretty decent panqueques.

And that sums up October just in time for me to start decorating for Grace's first Christmas!!!!!!!!