If you celebrated Halloween this year, I hope you had a spooky night filled with sugar highs and grinning jack-o-lanterns. Did you spy any cackling witches riding their broomsticks in front of the full moon? Were your neighborhood streets overflowing with trick-or-treaters clutching bagfuls of chocolate bars and Skittles?
We had a fair amount of those, as well as a few tractor beds filled with trick-or-treaters. That was a first in our neighborhood. I thought it was really neat!
What wasn't neat, however, was that there was a group of PROTESTORS screaming their opinions about how evil Halloween is over their megaphones. Thank goodness - as in good for them - they never did disturb the peace on our street, although I could still hear them. It was difficult not to, since this is a gated community and there are only so many places around here for them to go.
I just cannot understand people like this, trying to ruin a fun little holiday and blowing it out of proportion to suit THEIR brainwashed/uneducated agendas. Halloween doesn't have to be all Chainsaw Massacre-ish, ya know. It can be just campy and fun. I can only imagine how confused they must feel when those Peanuts holiday cartoons air on television every year.
First, Linus sits in the sincerest of pumpkin patches, waiting for something as blasphemous as The Great Pumpkin.
Then once December rolls around he's standing on a stage, telling Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about. How could Linus Van Pelt be the #1 fan of a corrupt pumpkin that brings toys to all the children of the world, yet also speak of angels and shepherds and goodwill towards men?
But seriously, I just hope these people stay off our lawn if we have a blow up Santa Claus in our yard this year. I have a sneaky suspicion that they think Santa and his flying reindeer are just as blasphemous as decorating your front porch with grinning jack-o-lanterns and black cats while you sing along to Monster Mash. The bearded man says "Ho-Ho-Ho" and climbs down chimneys into people's homes at night while they're sleeping for cripe's sake. How twisted, how immoral, how diabolical!
And did you notice the Victorian postcard I posted at the beginning of this post? You see those four little children clasping hands around that grinning jack-o-lantern?
Pray for them, folks, as these little girls are shamelessly pleading for you to come to The Dark Side. Come to the Dark Side, because they have cookies!
Sugar cookies shaped like ghosts and little green Frankenstein's.
Well--- Halloween Party Poopers aside, it was a pretty nice evening. Exhausting, but nice. Our neighbors really kept us entertained. Penny was in a really good mood. First, as the night is winding down, she whistles at us from across the street. Mom answers, and this is their short conversation:
Mom: "Yeah?"
Penny: "Do y'all still have candy?"
Mom: "Yes."
Penny:(short pause, then in a sing-song voice) "Trick or Treeaaat!"
Apparently, she ran out of candy before we did. We always buy too much candy, because some Halloween's the trick-or-treaters that come by just don't stop coming around... but that's okay. Even when it's a slow night, the neighbor's are always more than happy to steal some sugar loot for themselves.
After a couple hours our next door neighbor, Eric, came back to our house with his family to take pictures of his little girl in front of our decorations. Afterwards, he carried our Halloween Treats bag nearer the garage light so that he could see inside to search for more Skittles.
Skittles, which our other neighbor's daughter devoured earlier, while she was chatting with Mom while I set up the last of the decorations.
And I lost count on how many times I heard these two sentences Halloween night:
- "Man, y'all always have the best candy!"
- (Staring in awe at our bubble fogger) "I need that!"
Quite a few parents had trouble getting their kids away from that bubble fogger to do more trick or treating. They LOVED it! Of course, the adults loved it just as much. I guess a lot of people have never seen one before. We ordered ours online, at Grandin Road I believe.
I almost forgot, but this was pretty funny too. When it comes to the neighbors across the street, Penny always makes jokes about how she never sees me. If you can think of a joke... any joke... that could be used here I'm sure she's said it.
So Halloween night, Mom says that when she went over there Penny was in a real good mood. She looked at Mom and said, "God! I just LOVE Halloween! I love it because every year it comes, and every year I get to see Kristin."
The photos this year aren't so great, and we never did get around to buying a tall bale of hay to place the pumpkins on. (Thanks to the delivery people showing up extremely late, finally delivering the wrong mattress, and then us having to cancel the entire order). Also, we added more to the table but it was already too dark to take any nice pics.
I have to say that the table has looked 100 times better before. We couldn't find our Halloween tablecloth, and last year we gave away a lot of good stuff. (To make room in the garage since we had our house on the market at the time. I really miss a lot of that stuff). Even worse, I couldn't find my best Halloween cd. (My best Christmas cd is even missing). Our neighbor's were playing it though, since we copied ours to give them last year. Thank goodness we can now just make a new copy for ourselves.
Oh! I almost forgot to say that Mom made the awesome ghost that you see in the pictures. She made it from cheese cloth.
Is it just me, or does he sort of look like Snape?
You can't tell in the video, but Dad was lying on the ground inside the fog.
After using this rat a few Halloween's ago, and not finding it last year at all, imagine my glee when I discovered it yesterday. When I said it needed a name, Mom suggested "Merlin" at first but then changed it to "Wart."
I LOVED it! It was so perfect because, as Mom reminded me, in the story Camelot the magician Merlin was always turning Arthur/Wart into wild animals; hawks, fish, etc.
So why not a rat?
And now for my confession......
The day after Halloween I put up our Christmas stuff. All left to do now is the village, which I've only just started setting up, and the tree. I'm not sure if I'm gonna place garland on the stairs or not.
However, I AM pretty sure that it's time to add snow to my blog. And why not? It isn't exactly chilly here (last I looked, it was 90 degrees), so at least I can experience winter through snowy animated graphics.
So far it's been a pain in the you-know-what. First, I was missing a Halloween box that was filled with the stuff I needed to decorate the table with. I never did find the Halloween tablecloth, so I had to use a blah-boring one.
Then the entire time I'm outside, setting everything up as quickly as I could, I can hear the girls inside barking. Together, they were reaching unknown decibels which have never been known to man's ears before.
So here are the really lousy photos I managed to snap earlier in a rush. It should look really nice come sunset though.
Don't feel too sorry for Izzy in the above pic. It was a miracle I got a photo of her in her witch hat. She's making up for the humiliation by barking at trick-or-treaters and at myself every single time I go outside. She really is cute for a reason.
I didn't even try getting Wendy Kitty to wear the hat. I know the risk involved, and Mama didn't raise no idiot.
First off, I'd like to say that my thoughts go to all the people on the East Coast affected by Hurricane Sandy. Living on the Gulf Coast, we've had our share of tropical storms and hurricanes and I know from experience that the mayhem is not over after the hurricane leaves town. Thank God, we've never lost a home due to a hurricane but they can do some damage and the aftermaths I find to be more traumatic than the storm itself.
The hurricane which taught me that was Hurricane Ike a few years back. We were in the last 15% to get their electricity back. It took 2 weeks. Well, 15 days to be exact. It was no picnic, and even our animals were having a hard time of it. (Hurricane aftermaths around here are miserable because it's so hot and humid. It wouldn't have been so bad if the temps were cool).
All this coverage on Hurricane Sandy has made me look back on our own storms, particularly of Ike. Hurricane Ike did horrible damage in the Galveston areas. We were really lucky compared to them, as the hurricane itself didn't do much damage at our house. When we were without electricity for those 2 weeks (almost had to cancel our Disney trip), we heard on the radio just how bad it was there but it wasn't until I saw THESE photos of the devastation that I understood. The craziest photos I saw were later, of an alligator on the road and then a Texas longhorn wandering a debris-littered stretch of beach. People so often forget about the animals during these hurricanes.
There are a lot of amazing videos of Ike on YouTube, but here are just a few. (It's no secret that I'm a weather nut, so showing only these videos was a little difficult to manage. I'm pathetic that way).
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I hope to not experience another one anytime soon. As I said, around here it's the aftermath - having no air conditioning for weeks on end - that isn't fun. I know this sounds dramatic, but it really did feel like the world had forgotten us and that it would be several months before the electricity was turned back on. The information you hear on the radio, and then from word-of-mouth never matches up. What was so frustrating for us was that half of our neighborhood got their electricity back within a few days, while the other half - including us - had to wait 2 weeks.
So.... I know it's Halloween and it's supposed to be a fun day that brings back the nostalgia of being a kid again... and while you should still have a great holiday this evening, just please remember those on the East Coast who have lost everything.
I have to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my aunt!
That's right, being born on Halloween. How fun is that?! There are a lot of October birthdays in our family, many which share their birthdays. (For instance, my brother shares a birthday with his cousin. Of course, this sharing of birthdays in this family is common not only in October).
Did you hear the HUGE announcement last night? Thanks to $4.05 billion dollars (that makes my head spin) Disney now owns Lucasfilm, including Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound and Lucas Arts. They even own the Indiana Jones Franchise.
On the one hand, I'm shocked Lucas did this.
If you know his personality, hearing this news gives you a serious moment. Yet on the other hand, I'm not surprised seeing how Lucas's favorite place is Disney World and that over the years he and Disney have had a positive working relationship with The Hollywood Studios theme park.
But wait, there's more news to share. And to me it's GREAT! Yesterday morning, we lived in a world where there was no hope ever of there being any new Star Wars films, but now they've announced there will be a new Star Wars film released in 2014!!!! They plan on making Episodes 7, 8 and 9.
And SW naysayers, please don't whine to me about how much you hated the prequels. While they certainly weren't perfect, you have to remember that they are first and foremost meant to be campy children's/family movies, and a lot of people out there accept that and still enjoy them. I was... AM...still extremely PO-ed that Lucas took liberties in changing when Padme's death occurred. I still think this is inexcusable, but in the end no one can argue with the hard fact that this man has changed how movies are created. He's the mastermind behind all that technological advancement that we see in movies today. The man is a true innovator, just like Walt Disney, so I think him "selling out" as some folks are saying was actually a great idea.
And I've discovered that people - especially die hard Star Wars fans - are very unforgiving and critical of Lucas. I can understand being upset over certain things in the prequels, and of Lucas refusing to put the original trilogy on dvd before he made all those updates. (I'm in the same camp, by the way. In a lot of ways I actually prefer the original/unchanged trilogy.. especially the end of ROTJ. I hated how they changed the music and replaced Older Anakin with Young Anakin).
Thanks to Lucas selling his rights to Disney, however, maybe now we actually have some hope of those originals being released. I certainly hope they will. I can't imagine them being so ridiculous as to not, as clearly there's A LOT of money for them to make in doing so. The classic, diehard fans have been extremely vocal about this and I agree with them 1,000%!
And ahem.... remember how I mentioned people sharing birthdays in this family? Well, I don't share mine with anyone but I DO share it with the plaided one himself, George Lucas.
That's always been the only good thing about my birthday.
I'm going to have to take A LOT of photos of our decorations tonight. Halloween is a big deal around our house. People tell us that they come to our house every year just to see the decorations and take pictures in our yard.
They do the same at Christmas, but decorating for Halloween is the most fun!
We did get rid of a lot of our Halloween stuff last year, but I still think it's going to look great. There are a few things we wanted to add at the last minute - we seem to do this every year - but unfortunately the people that are supposed to be delivering our new mattress and box springs today are running late. We caught them in a lie about their delivery start time. They were SUPPOSED to be here from 8 - Noon.
I really despise when people think only their time is valuable and not their customer's. And this isn't free delivery either. They're being paid for a service which they aren't upholding on their end.
So folks... beware of having anything from SAMS Warehouse delivered. The head hancho my mother spoke to was very nice, and Mom said she could tell the guy was really upset, but their delivery people need a firm kick in the pants. Thanks to this particular experience - and one in the past which we've ignored - we're through with them. Even when the mattress was ordered at the store, the manager working the cashier first asked us to STAND IN LINE A SECOND TIME for him to ring up the order.
This was one l-o-n-g line, too. Thankfully, his brain registered that he was about to lose a sale because he rang it up himself anyway.
Boy have I rambled today, but in my defense I'm not feeling well and I'm stuck at the house waiting for the delivery guys to show not show up... when there are errands to run. So other than needing to run errands and not being able to, there's not much to do since last night was when I did the last of the re-organizing in my bedroom, the guest bedroom and my bathroom cabinets.
Although I am seriously thinking of putting up the Christmas Village early. We have people spending the night the day before Thanksgiving, and it takes such a long time to put up all our decorations. I can't have them here and NOT have our Christmas tree and village up. And our tree takes so long to decorate. We have so many ornaments, so our tree is always a popular spectacle around here. It's worth it in the end, but putting it up is such a chore. I think climbing Mount Everest without oxygen would be easier.
UPDATE:
After waiting longer than the 4 hour window, putting off errands, and having to keep the animals in one of the rooms with us so that they'll already be together once that doorbell rang and the breaking-the-sound-barrier-barking-fest began.... the delivery guys FINALLY arrived close to 2:30 in the afternoon. They take the box springs and mattress up the stairs (no set up involved with their fee), and they leave only for us to discover that they DELIVERED THE WRONG MATTRESS!
Ugh!!!! How could the people that load the truck do that? It isn't like SAMS has a lot of mattress brands to choose from. To my knowledge, they only have something like 2 or 3. Can they read English? Apparently, these people are exactly like our mailman that's always delivering the wrong mail. They're probably related.
It really is Halloween, because steam is coming out my ears and I can feel horns growing on my head.
And now for more Halloween goodies! I never did use all my Halloween-themed headers, so I guess I'm trying to make it up to myself through videos.
I hear that Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party is sold out for tonight. I wish I was there right now! Would you know I dreamed about Disney the other day? It was so simple, too. I was with my mother and brother, and at Aloha Isle I was trying the Pineapple Float instead of the Pineapple Dole Whip.
See? The rumors are right. Those drinks/ice cream alone are part of the whole Disney Experience. They really are that delicious!
And now I'm thinking of their cheese fries, too. Make it stop!
We always buy too much candy, because some Halloween's the trick-or-treaters that come by just don't stop coming around... but that's okay. Even when it's a slow night, the neighbor's are always more than happy to steal some sugar loot for themselves. 
