October Wrap-Up

Brushing off the ol' blog here since I've sorely neglected it the past month or so!

So Halloween was what I'd call a success.  We only had about 40 kids, but that's about average.  Sad, because there are so many kids in our neighborhood, but the lack of streetlights on our street, no sidewalks and the fact there are maybe only 4 of us in the middle of the block who turn our lights on probably are a good explanation.  But that's OK - that means I can afford to give out full sized candy bars and toys!  

My favorite costume of the night?  A couple came up with their baby.  Mom was wearing baby in a front-facing carrier (she was probably 8 months old or so) and she was wrapped in a cardboard box painted like a podium with a Presidential seal on it.  Mom & Dad were dressed as Secret Service men!  Black suits, sunglasses, earpieces, the works!  Hilarious,  Close second was 2 year old Minnie Mouse who came running up the driveway, just giggling like crazy!  Too cute!

What I thought was funny were the parents wanting to get their kids' picture in front of the pony....and I could see the kids looking around all confused,  probably looking for ....

PONY

 

but this is really what was there!

 

Skeleton PONY! 

The horse is named ZipTie so of course the pony is DucTape!

I was pretty tweaked to get a text from my sister from Home Depot that they had their Halloween stuff half off - so I scored him for $50 Sunday - 2 days before Halloween!  He was actually on my list to get for next year, so this was a happy bonus.

I had a half day off work on Halloween so I texted Angel as I left work and asked if she wanted to grab some lunch.  This is how she went to lunch!

Luckily we chose to go to a restaurant she used to work at and the waitress was a girl she has danced with for years! 

I did my makeup right before trick-or-treating - it apparently looked pretty creepy after dark.  I actually forgot I was painted up like that, so some of the little kids were sort of hesitant to say anything to me - they just stared!   In fact when I came in,  Randy made me wash my face!

As of yesterday, all of the outdoor Halloween stuff has been put away for the season.  We emptied & cleaned out the shed of the squirrel carnage (I posted about that HERE), then put the Halloween blowmolds away and cleaned up & staged the Christmas ones in front so they'll be easy to get to after Thanksgiving. I still have to get the minimal indoor decor put away, but there's not a lot of that.

A bunch of us went to a haunted house / hayride on the Saturday before Halloween.  I haven't been to a haunted house in years and I've heard a lot about Slaughtered at Sundown.  We sat on the back of the wagon for the hayride and I made the mistake of being between Target & Target Jr. (my sister Laurie & Miss Angela) so the 'ghouls' kept going after them since they (and niece Lisa's boyfriend AJ) were freaked out the most. They kept trying to drag them off the wagon (it was one of those places that the actors could touch you). I thought it was funny & random that we were stopped in the woods and the wagon was swarming with ghouls and this girls walks up with a tray of donuts & cups of cider, shoving her way between the ghouls, offering them to us!   

I was disappointed in not being able to see the scenery - they clearly made these (probably really cool) scenes along the trail but weren't lit up well enough to see anything.

 

The haunted house was pretty good.  I asked Lisa which of us was going to lead, and who bring up the rear, so we could protect the weenies in the middle.  As it was, a ghoul followed me in and kept reaching around me to grab at AJ!  It was hilarious!   We had paid extra for a VIP pass to get us to the head of the line so we walked right up and saw a couple girls Angel dances with in line.  They wanted to go thru with us but it would have been too big a group, so the guy at the door wouldn't let them.  As it was, being the back of our group of 5 I missed a lot since things happened at the beginning.  

Speaking of dance, they had their annual WERK intensive early this year.  Usually it's in mid-November, it was Oct 22 this year..  This is where they have 6 guest teachers come in and they get their happy little butts worked off for the day.  They love it!

 #teamDOS

I volunteered to take pictures again and one of the other moms did SnapChat videos. It was a lot of fun for me, too.  I like to be able to go into the studios and watch.  I confess I almost forgot to take pics during tap & hiphop because the guys who were teaching were completely mesmerizing. 

Their first competition is in February this year - regionals!  And they just decided this past week to scrap the hiphop line (all ages) dance and revisit the one they did so well last year.  So they can spend the next couple months polishing & tweaking it instead of learning an entirely new one.  There's a small line up change, but it's mostly the same girls.  We probably won't have to get a new costume,  woot!  The owner of the studio has high hopes for this dance.

Moving on - on Friday the 13th, Laurie had to have Captain put down.

 

Pic is from 2014 so he still looks good here.  He'd lost a lot of weight toward the end.

He was like 25 years old and hadn't been ridden in probably 2 years due to bad legs / arthritis / old age.  He had a hard time last winter, so Laurie was kind of expecting the inevitable.  So much so that she'd been looking for a new horse to help her other horse, Kisses, when this did happen.  She'd been looking all summer and just bought Remington about a month prior.  She called me the night before from his stall and she told me that he was telling her he just just tired and ready to go. He was having a hard time standing and even more of a hard time getting up from when he was lying down.  So she called the vet, gave him an extra dose of horse aspirin to keep him comfortable and spent most of the night in the barn with him.  The next morning, she treated it like any other day, gave him breakfast & let him outside.  So his last hours were peaceful & happy for him. It's been a few weeks now.  She said Kisses & Remi are settling into their new routine quickly.  It's sad.  She'd had him for a good 15 years.  He was such a good boy.

So that's all the excitement here,  I think I'm going to stop at the gym on my way home tomorrow and get back into a routine of moving my carcass.  It seems to silly to be paying for both Weight Watchers & Planet Fitness when A) I'm not following the plan so the fact I've only lost like 8 lbs in the last year is my own damn fault and B) I haven't been there in months.   So yeah.  Even tho I heard it's time for Weight Watchers to update their program again next month, I need to get my lazy ass doing some meal planning.  Exercise will help, too.  I didn't want to go back during October since it was crazy getting ready for Halloween, but now that it's passed.....game on! 

And I'll get back in the habit of updating my WIP page and posting here, too.

This Friday I'm going to see the Thunder from Down Under at the Motor City Casino with my sisters - so that should be something fun to post about!   We're hoping it's better than 'Girls Night Out' that we went to last year - words cannot describe how awful that show was. 

Another gratuitous Daisy pic!

 

Until later!