My Creative Stirrings

This is my cousin's blog:

I think she is the happiest person I know...and quite possibly the most creative. I think you should check her out. I can not think of enough nice things to say about her. So I'll stick with this, I'm the luckiest cousin on earth that she moved across the country, just like us, and now is close enough to visit and go to the zoo with, and have other fun adventures with!

Butterball Turkey Lake Swim

I went for a swim this morning...outside...in a lake. Please remember it is November. November 12th to be exact. The water temperature is 47 degrees. The outside temperature 40. AWESOME.  It actually wasn't too bad...at least it wasn't as cold as we all thought it was going to be. Your hands, feet and face went numb after 5 minutes anyways. So what's the problem?The crazies involved in this event are my swim team buddies. YAY masters swimming! These are the same sane folks that I meet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, at 5:15am, to swim 4000yds with, before work.  I love to swim. Can you tell? 

Jim and Lori prepared an amazing South African breakfast on a "skottel".  A gold star goes to any of my readers who actually know what that is.

10 Months

Today marks another month milestone for Peanut. He is growing and thriving despite our best efforts to ignore him this month. Rob is taking a basketball reffing class two nights a week, which will become actual game reffing in the new year, and I got called into the Young Women's presidency--for those of you who don't go to my church, this is the youth organization, specifically for the girls. Our lives are growing fuller, richer and busier by the moment. And we are enjoying it all...all except for the dark circle beneath our eyes due to a lack of sleep (one that's not even baby induced). So here are a few milestones for the baby:

* He had his first haircut this month. There's not much there but that little bit sure was getting long and scraggly.
* He figured out how to drink out of a straw, just last night actually.
* He officially balanced on his own two feet, not holding onto anything, for a whole 5 seconds. But other than that he wants nothing to do with it.
* He kicks his legs like crazy whenever I pick him up. Like he's running at a ridiculous rate through the air. Hilarious!

Halloween Bash

Family, without further ado, here are some photos of the Halloween party! For the rest of you who have never heard of this party or any of the other variety of reasons I have been too busy to post, here's part of the scoop...I threw a party, with a fantastically fun and creative friend, who also takes amazing pictures. Therefore these photos look far better than the point and shoot fare you usually find here. We went all out, planning for the whole month and cooking for two days straight. The invitations were so neat if I do say so myself. Here's a peak at the toe tag:

This was attached to a pile of skeleton bones that the invitees had to assemble to find out the details. The whole thing went off without a hitch. We had loads of games including a cookie decorating station, tombstone toss, mini scavenger hunt, monster bowling and terrifying twister. We had even put together a round of balderdash, Halloween style, but everyone was mingling so well we never got to it.  The highlight of party though really was the food, my favorite being the home made mac n' cheese... excuse me, vampire teeth. Well Happy Haunting! I can't wait till next year.

Salted Bat Guano & Dragon Eyes
(Curried Cashew Popcorn
&
Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts)  

Brain Cupcakes

Petrified Werewolf Warts
(Pumpkin Spice Doughnuts)

Sweet Bat Guano
(Caramel Popcorn)

Witch Bones
(Parmesan Bread sticks)

Swamp Water
(Something like a pina colada)

Deadly Nightcrawlers
(Jello Worms)

Graveyard Dip
(7 Layer Dip)