Halloweening, Part II/Grandpa Ron's Visit

 The day of October=lots of fun! My dad came down for Halloween/my birthday.  He came Halloween morning (yep he woke up ridiculously early and drove 7 hrs straight down to Phoenix).  We went out for lunch at The Pita Pit.  Erik doesn't like the Pita Pit, but I like it.  I wasn't expecting a sit-down restaurant though. I ordered the gyro and my dad ordered the black bean burger.  I ordered a kids meal for Ian and for dessert I ordered the baklava.  It was pretty good food, I thought.  And healthy(er) too!

Ian and Grandpa!

Ian's plate.  It was nice to have a balanced meal for him instead of just mac n cheese.

My gyro.  The wrap was soft and it was generously filled with yumminess. 

My dad and his food!

The baklava.  It was good, not the best I've had though.

 My dad watched Ian while I went to Elisa's class Halloween party.  I helped out with a candy corn/monster game. I was told they really really needed help, so I [uncharacteristically] volunteered.  Then 15 other moms showed up to help, so I guess I could have gotten away with not helping at all, oh well.  Elisa had a good time, although I was so busy with the game I only got to visit with her for a little while.

Elisa and her silly spider

I found this on one of the walls.  She was clearly obsessed with getting a guinea pig!

Elisa and her silly hair.  

Elisa getting a treat and posing in her cute Halloween dress

 And finally, Trick-or-treating time! The kids were super excited, of course! Elisa found her friend Nila and Gabe found his friend Sam, and Ian and me went with Ian's friend Declan and his mom: 

Elisa decided that she wanted to be a fairy instead of a rainbow unicorn. So she changed into her old tutu-dress that was waaay too short for her. She was made to upstairs 3 times in order to put something appropriate under her (very) short skirt.

Ian as Thomas the Train.  Super cute!

Grandpa Ron and Ian.  Grandpa helped pass out Candy while we took the kids Trick or Treating

Ian had fun going around with his friend Declan and getting lots of candy!

Elisa's stash

Shark Gabe and his stash

Randoma October Happenings, Part IV

Here are some more fun things that happened in October, independent of Halloween:

Oct 25

While Elisa was at gymnastics, I took the boys to Wendy's for some $2 kid's meals.  They ate all of their food and enjoyed playing with the silly activity toys that came with the kid's meals.  Gabe was also fascinated by the soda machine! 

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Oct 26

Spirit week for Elisa at school.  This is her on 80's day.  She looked cute and awesome, but she came home a little upset because she thought that people were "making fun" of her because they were telling her that she looked like JoJo.  I told her that was more of a compliment than an insult, but it turns out that Elisa didn't even know who JoJo is! Here is her website, you can see that she is indeed dressed like Jojo! 

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Oct. 29

I hated our old entertainment center (aka junk displayer) so after much searching around on the internet for what I liked, I found this one on Hayneedle.  I also ordered the end tables and coffee table because ours were old and I wanted all the furniture to match (I hate mismatched furniture sooo much).  They came unassembled so Erik put them all together. I should mention that we did not throw out our old entertainment center; I bought $50 worth of dark brown spray paint and sprayed the entire entertainment center (outside, of course).  I figured even if I did a crap job of spray painting it, it would still look better than it did before.  Thankfully, I didn't do a crap job--the entertainment center turned out great! It was put in the loft/toy room upstairs.  

I should also mention that we also got a new TV! It was bought in conjunction with our new entertainment center--the old one only allowed a tv up to so big.  We have a huge family room--the wall is large and the couch is far away.  Our new TV is a 65" that replaced our old 48".  I think we could have gone even bigger still! We put our old TV upstairs.  The couch is much closer to it, so it doesn't seem so small. We've been using the old entertainment center as a bookshelf.  It has helped keep book clutter down to a minimum. 

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Greek fried cheese, aka Saganaki

Norwegian brown cheese.  

Ian playing with a neat toy that I thought about getting him for Christmas, but then I completely forgot about it.

Oct. 30

I had a sewing date with my neighbor down the street.  She wanted my help on some pants she's learning to sew with me for her boy.  It also doubled as a playdate for Ian and Declan! I brought some banana bread and some greek cheese, which she dredged in flour and fried in oil, and served with lemon juice.  It was delicious! I also got to try brown cheese for the first time! It is a Norwegian specialty.  It's really sweet so it doesn't quite fit into the cheese category IMO, but they call it cheese nonetheless. 

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Baby Girl got a new coat! It has a gorgeous yellow floral print lining and probably costed more to make than I'd spend on a ready-made coat, but isn't she so cute in her adorable new coat? Its nice to know that no other girl in the whole wide world has this special, unique, and beautiful coat!

Halloweening, Part I

Halloween/October 2018 was great! It cooled off really quick so that was nice. Here are a fun Halloween stuff that we did:

Some one Boo'd us! We got a big bucket of Halloween goodies.  The kids really enjoyed it.  We tried to Boo some people, but we never got around to actually delivering the stuff.  Next year!

We had a special visitor.  It was a black widow (red hourglass on bottom of abdomen).  She was granted visitation rights, only on account of it being Halloween time.

A friend down the street from our church invited us to a free Halloween event, put on by the city of Phoenix.  It was really fun, but super crowded. Here are the pictures:

The kids in line for free candy. 

Elisa got a cupcake painted on her cheek

Erik took this picture of Gabe and a random old dude who requested that he get a picture with Gabe.  Weird, but okay.

The kids riding the "train"

 The kids went through the costume contest, but of course didn't win. There were just so many kids.  I really think Elisa should have won, but I'm sure the judges eyes were starting to cross after watching hundreds of kids walk across the stage. Actually I'm pretty sure they were arbitrarily chosen.

After the costume contest, we, the adults, waited in line forever and a year while the kids played around on the grass.

The kids got to experience a 3-second slide drop after waiting in line an hour!

Elisa got a new Halloween dress.  How cute is she?!

A Very Fun Saturday

On October 20th, our neighborhood had a fun community event.  There were lots of games, a few bouncing structures, face painting, hamburgers and hotdogs, and a photo booth! The later was the most popular out of anything.  The kids spent almost the entire time taking picture after picture in that photobooth. Both Gabe and Elisa found some friends from school and hung out with their friends the entire time we were there. Ian found a friend, too! His little friend from down the street, Declan was there for a short time.  We all got photos together in the photo booth! I can't find them right now, hopefully I can post them when I do. Elisa went through the photo booth about ten times, and most of the pictures didn't even turn out because her face wasn't even in it!

Gabe and one of his friends from school

Ian and his buddy, Declan in line for the photo booth

Silly Ian getting his face painted 

That same night: Erik convinced me to attend my cousin Jaydra's wedding reception in Gilbert.  I wasn't going to originally because I literally have never talked to her in my entire life, but I went anyway.  It was nice seeing relatives on my dad's side, I guess. We're not that close but its good to keep in contact. It was like a mini-family reunion. The kids played at the nearby park and we al enjoyed the yummy French desserts.  

Elisa in front of the dessert table

Some pictures I took of the Gilbert temple