So let's talk October in November.

Every year, I look forward to October.  For, well, pretty much the entire year.  

Because I am a creature of supreme habit, my year looks about like this: Post-holiday exhaustion in January, hate on February for being cold and icky, plan madly for Leah's birthday in March.  Then, beginning somewhere around April, a longing for fall kicks in.  Because, really, I love summer, but after summer comes fall and I looooove fall.  The anticipation kicks into hyperdrive after we watch fireworks, and by the time the kids are going back to school I'm all it's totally fall!  Whip out the sweaters!  Let the leaves change colors!  I'm putting up Halloween decorations! even though it's still 98 degrees outside and the pool hasn't closed yet.

And then, after all that anticipation, after the decorations go up, the kids get in their costumes, the candy is piled up in a massively large bowl that should be used to hold punch, I wake up disoriented, completely stunned and struggling to believe that... October is... over? and it's November 1st.  How did that happen?!

Every year.

We had an amazingly great October.  Casey was gone a lot, which didn't leave me time to do much more than prep for school, cook meals/clean up after the two littles with a side of Labrador and Shih Tzu.  

Still, we managed to fit in quite a bit of festive fun.  And we got a ton of mileage out of their Halloween costumes!

I was a little stumped at first as to how to combine the boy/girl thing to create a workable theme.  Leah spotted this Sully costume from Monsters Inc - her current favorite movie - and I was sold.  I was able to use my fabulous sewing machine to make a few improvements - like stitching the dress and the underskirt, which came in two pieces for unknown and totally ridiculous reasons - together.  Once our Sully was in place, Mr. Mike was an easy jump.  

I love it.  Love it for so many reasons, one of which might be that her first request for a costume was a princess, which I was not digging.  I'm not ready to enter the world of princesses, folks.  I may never be, so for this year I'm grateful for the little monsters that invaded our house.

We attended Halloween parties.

We visited pumpkin patches with our dear friends.

I got my first grown up hair cut in such a long time I'm ashamed to cop to it.

We practiced for the Big Night at trick-or-treat street near our music class.

Casey and I celebrated our anniversary a little more with a date night, and tickets to Book of Mormon (which we've been trying to see literally since it opened in New York two years ago.  Review?  Awesome.  Hilarious. Creative.  Best show I've see in ages.  And completely offensive.)

For the fourth year in a row, we Boo'd at the Zoo.

Halloween itself was filled with wonderfully fun events:

We played games like spider fishing.

And pin the nose on the Jack O Lantern

And did a scavenger hunt.

And lots of crafts.

And carved pumpkins.

And had dinner with good friends.  And trick or treated till our feet were tired.

And came home completely exhausted to eat candy and fall, spent, into our beds.

Whew!  It's been a crazy and wonderful October. 

I am ridiculously, sickeningly in love with and grateful for this life.  We're just as blessed and lucky as we could possibly be.  

Hoping everyone else had an equally happy October!  And so... bring on November!