Our Halloween Celebrations

We had a couple of Halloween parties this year. The first was on Thursday. We invited our primary class over for some Halloween games and activities. Five of the eight kids in our class came. We decided having five wound-up and rambunctious nine-year-olds over at a time was plenty for us. At least they seemed to have fun! We played Halloween charades, made masks, ate doughnuts off strings, played "Pin the Nose on the Witch," and played "Zombie Attack" (which involved trying to knock down "zombie" soda bottles with bean bags).

Friday evening we went down to Orem for my family's annual Halloween party. That was a lot of fun. First we ate dinner, and then we carved jack-o-lanterns:

My brother Allan carved the up-side-down face (which keeps looking like a cat to me), my parents did the one with the mustache, Nate and I carved the one with the wide toothy grin, my aunts carved the one with the glasses, and my brother Nathan made the can jack-o-lantern at his STEPS program.

Then of course, we all dressed up:

Nate and I dressed as Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox. Nate thought it was so much fun to refer to me all evening as "Babe." We also found a costume for Zipper. She was a cow with a stuffed cowboy rider.

True to her character, Zipper ran around in her costume whenever we put it on, doing her best to snatch the hat the cowboy was holding and shaking as hard as she could trying to get the costume off.

On the other hand, we also tried the costume on my parent's dog Apollo. He is the most patient dog I know. He sat there with the costume on, not moving, and patiently tolerated the costume until I took it off.

My parents and Nathan dressed up as pirates this year:

I was particularly impressed that my grandparents decided to get into the fun, since usually they don't wear anything special for Halloween:

After eating some doughnuts, cider, root beer, and chocolate milk, we finished off our evening with a Halloween story and by watching "Little Sheep of Horrors."

More Home Improvements

We have actually had the major work done for these rooms for quite some time; we just haven't had a chance to take pictures and post them.

Master Bedroom:

Before:

 After:

 

Master Bathroom:

Before:

 After:

Studio:

Before:

After:

We also recently adjusted the chandelier over our dinning area. We took it down, shortened the chain, and then put it back up again. Now we don't accidentally bump our heads on it as we walk by. The added bonus was that having the light up higher actually made the room feel brighter when we turn the light on.

It was sort of hard to hold the lamp up while working on it though, so instead, we stacked boxes up for it to rest on:

When we took the chandelier down, we also found the tail of a dead mouse hanging down. That wasn't the first dead mouse we have found in this house. I think that they must have had a mouse problem at some point from all the signs of it. At least we were able to get the dead mouse out.