October: the month in review

OK, OK...so it's been about a month since the last time I even signed into my blogger account. Apparently reliability & consistency don't rank too high among my blogging virtues.





October always seems to be the busiest month of the year around the House of Crackers. Between soccer games, anniversaries, birthday parties, hayrides, and Halloween, we seem to spend every October running around like crazy people. By comparison, even December seems peaceful.


Now that I am in the final week of the month, I feel like I can finally start catching my breath a bit. I still have to host the Halloween party at K's pre-school on Friday & we still have a hayride & a soccer tournament to face before the month closes, but I think I am starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.





Just to catch up a bit (if there is still anyone who still visits this blog in the off chance I actually write something), I thought I'd fill you in on what has gone on here at the House of Crackers over the past several weeks:

We always kick off October getting the house ready for Halloween. Mr. Crackers and I have always loved Halloween, even before the kids were born. We used to host an annual costume party when we lived in Atlanta. It was great fun & we'd go nuts getting the house ready & picking out our costumes... but that's a story for a different day.


While we don't throw a Halloween party anymore, we still love decorating the house and now that kids help out too, it just makes it even more fun.

We don't do anything too spooky, just a few ghosts hanging from the trees & a small yet tasteful graveyard. Usually the leaves on our large maple tree don't fall until after Halloween, but this year they have started falling a bit early.

I think it's helping with the overall ambiance. At least that's the story we are telling our neighbors. It sounds better than saying we won't get around to raking the leaves until after Halloween is over.

Around mid-month I attended K's field trip to a local farm. I would call it a pumpkin patch, but that would be generous since there were very few actual pumpkins there. I wouldn't have minded much except for they charged $7.00 per person to go on the hayride, which meant I paid $14.00 for the 2 of us to ride about 400 feet in a wooden wagon, and then hunt through a pumpkin patch cleverly disguised as a field of briers to try to find a pumpkin.

It was like Where's Waldo. I mean, look at that picture, can you even spot another pumpkin? I'm telling you, these pumpkins were hard to find. The few that we did find were either green or rotten. There wasn't a single pumpkin there larger than about 5 inches in diameter. K is proudly holding the largest, non-rotting pumpkin that we were able to find. Thankfully pre-schoolers can't carry very large pumpkins anyway, so they left the hayride as satisfied (and very, very muddy) customers.

Later that same week, Mr. Crackers took a day off of work and we headed over to a nearby Children's Museum for the day as a special treat for K's upcoming 4th birthday. We had a great time & even found that they had a Star Wars exhibit going on.

Is it just me or does it seem like every other post I write has some reference to Star Wars? It probably won't be a surprise when I tell you that C's Halloween costume this year will be Star Wars related. I bet I can guess what will dominate his Christmas list as well...

Later that same weekend we hosted a neighborhood party for K's 4th party. We invited a lot of the neighborhood kids for the puppy themed event. We played games, did a craft & of course had a pinata. Here is K whacking "Burrito" (yes, she named it) the puppy pinata.

I found the whole puppy pinata visual a little disturbing. It seemed wrong to be encouraging these small children to whack the dog as hard as they could until all of his guts spilled out. It was even more disturbing once poor Burrito lost his head.

Poor, poor Burrito. The kids weren't sad though....they were thrilled that Burrito was hiding packets of Skittles & M&M's inside his tired, broken little body. Rest in peace Burrito.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the month (at least for me) was the visit from our good friend KK. She & I have been friends for about 15 years. We met back in Atlanta when we were both still working for the company that sponsors that big parade on Thanksgiving Day. We hit it off instantly & have been close ever since. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and one of Cameron's Godmothers (he had two - who couldn't use 2 Godmothers?)

She travels a lot and keeps herself busy with work and her passion for photography. Even though we keep in touch pretty regularly, time has flown by & she hadn't seen my two hooligans in a couple of years. I was thrilled that she was able to make the trip north for a visit. It's amazing how easy it is to hang out with good friends, even if you haven't seen them for ages.

The highlight of our weekend together (at least for my 2 hooligans) was a visit to our local pumpkin patch where low & behold they had pumpkins. Oodles of pumpkins & not a one was rotten or green ... and most measured significantly more than 5" in diameter.

We all looked around for a bit & took the opportunity to take our annual pumpkin pickin' pictures before paying for our booty & taking it back to the car.

Now all we have to do is carve them. Oops, I guess I need to add that to the to-do list this week as well. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel is a little farther off than I thought.