Halloween and Famiily Pictures, in mostly pictures

blehhhhh....  You know I loooooooove Halloween, right?  And also my kids have been hilarious.  also haven't blogged about the mysterious illness that took over our lives during july, august, september and some of October, and a little of November. 

And now we are about to embark on our travels to Utah for weddings and holidays and so I've got to get sort of caught up.  I wish I had time to blog about it all!

Here are some pictures of Halloween, which was, as usual, wonderful, and horribly exhausting.  I can't decide if I love or hate that Halloween was a full 4 days this year:

You've seen the unicorn costume before, but have you seen the way Layla works it?  I'm telling you, she was sooo loveable.

Looove this picture of Camcake and Bergen, fingers fingers everywhere.

Trick-or-Treating at Walmart home office: Princess Bride (no pics because I thought I would have several opportunities, but she was sooo cute!), Trunk-or-Treat: Angel/tooth fairy

 

delicious little cupcake!



The Aquardians!  That's right, first prize in group category.  You should have seen our performance!  The pool in these pics is a little sad, but it was marvelous before we were too cold and tired to do anything about it.

Jill and Mark.  While Mark professed to be "not too into this" and such, he came up with the idea, and he built the pool, and DANG, you should have seen their moment in the performance.  We called their move the "spoon stroke."  it was good.

Dan and Tara.  Dan drives a big truck and keeps his beard rather gruff, but look at that pose--you know those are just to hide his affinity for pretties and "spirit fingers".  and yes, it's annoying to be friends with somebody who looks like Barbie. :)

Serious as a heart-attack, baby.

lady aquardians, grace and beauty rivaled by none...

except possibly the man (ish) aquardians :)

And now we are finally to the REAL Halloween!  Getting ready to go out trick-or-treating, you'll  note that Cadence is in yet another costume!  That pretty girl with Campbell is one of our favorite babysitters (who is too old now- booo!) who offered her help with the wandering of the neighborhood.

oh....happy kids.

since I was feeling Lyme disease-y that night, I manned the door.  Spent the down-time reviewing "Raising Your Spirited Child" and facebooking about the trick-or-treaters that annoyed me.  Next year I am posting my trick-or-treat rules:  I will not give candy to the following:
 1. Adults
2. Pregnant girls.  If you are old enough for your "fun" to impregnate you, you are too old to trick-or-treat.
3.  If you are under the age of 8 months (i.e. if you are holding a baby who has no clue what is going on, is hopefully not going to eat the candy, and have no other children with you)
4. If you are old enough to drive.
5.  If you have ALREADY BEEN TO MY HOUSE!!! 
6.  If you are NOT dressed up as anything.
7.  If you are wandering around the neighborhood, which is filled with children, shouting obscenities.
8.  If you refuse to take the candy I offer and whine for something else.  and esp. if you do so and a parent does not seem to care.



having curly hair is soooo exciting!  This picture is out of order.  my condolences.

The Witch, Rapunzel, a unicorn, cupcake, and a hotdog examine their spoils.  Thor and his hammer are around there somewhere.  Sigh of happy relief...that was a lot of fun!  

We got our family pictures taken the other day.  I should say, we forced Tara to take our pictures the other day.  I went through a lot to secure this awwwwwesome location, which in the end, wasn't secured at all but we mostly stayed on our side of the fence :)

In order to get some good pictures with this old fuel pump, spencer cooked up this great plan: "hey kids, here are some coins, and here is a CANDY MACHINE!  You just have to find where the coins go to get the candy out."  It worked.  don't worry, we were armed with candy.

see this? (below)  Yes, that is a tree growing out of an ancient truck.  can't tell you how much I love this spot.

There are so many more but it takes about 4 thousand years to upload pictures onto blogger.  anybody else having that problem?

Thanks Tara, it was all I had dreamed up!  and Thanks Jill, for being the toy-shaker in the background (or dead-bush-stomper, or dog-watcher, or consultant, etc!)  You girls rock!

and as annoying as this is going to be for the rest of the world: I hereby declare that my kids are as cute as humanly possible!  (And my husband, too.)

there, said it.  for you, family, not for them.  glad to get it off my chest.

can you tell i'm tired? no more caps.

and since i'm moving on in my blog to what is coming up next (wedding, etc), I will just say this:

I was never officially diagnosed but Lyme disease makes the most sense.  It actually makes perfect sense, minus the tick.  But that is perfectly easily explained.  It still comes back about once a week or so, usually just for an evening or morning, but that is nothing compared to all day every day like it was back when.  I have an appointment with an endocrinologist to discuss some family history + my blood sugar weirdness, and then if that doc has nothing remarkable to add, I'm going to close the case as Lyme Disease.

And there you have it.