Oh, October, how I love you.

I really do love October. Not only is there all the beauty of leaves and the fun of warm weather clothes, but there is my birthday and Halloween. This year Dave was very, very sweet and threw me a surprise party with 15 adults and about 15 kids, all crammed happily into our little house. He managed to get everyone into the house with food and convince them to clean the house in under an hour. Impressive, no?

Here is me, with my mouth open (as always - that's why you never see photos of me - I'm always talking in them) chatting with some of my friends. I didn't have anyone's permission to post photos on the internet, so I figured this was pretty unclear of everyone else.

This past weekend we went to visit the cousins in Ontario. They had a LOT of fun, and both the drives were pretty decent. Here we are at "Crossroads" - the buffet resteraunt Grandma and Grandpa love to take us to (I remember going to it when I came out to meet Dave's parents when we were newly engaged).

The other great thin about visiting the cousins is the space - Dave's brother has a big house (compared to ours) and about an acre of yard that back onto a neighbouring farmer's woodlot. He's been given permission to make paths through the woods, so its a really fun place to play. The kids could be loud, they could run around and they could have a kind of freedom we rarely get in the city. It was great.

Finally, we had Halloween. Here are the finished Jedi costumes. I decided to pick up some brown fabric and make the full Jedi gear. The underneath part is the yellow upolstery fabric I already showed you. The brown is a great basket weave brown cotton gauze that drapes really nicely.

The full costumes were a little too much for me to take on. I spent all my spare time for over a week sewing these, and the house was turned upside down by the time I was done. I've almost go it back in order now.

Emma wore the ancestral cow costume. I don't have blog photos of it, but both Andrew and Aaron have worn this costume for Halloween. Emma went to about half the amount of houses as the boys, as I had to carry her and I'm not that spry right now, but she had fun, anyway.

We went out with two of Andrew's friends - a twin boy and girl. One is in his class this year, and one was in his class last year. Our street is not much for Halloween, being mostly apartment buildings. But one street over and one block south it is Halloween central, as it is all houses and all the kids from the apartment buildings need to trick or treat somewhere. In three blocks (both sides of the street) we had lots of fun and candy for my still quite little ones. There were lots of costumes to look at (both kids and grown ups), decorations everywhere and even a haunted house set up in someone's yard. A super fun time was had by all.

The not so fun part of October has been the appliances break downs. I think I mentioned that our fridge broke down over Thanksgiving weekend? Well, last week, just as we were getting prepared to go away for the weekend, our washing machine broke down. The part Dave thinks we need is on order. Sigh. I was hoping to sew this afternoon, but instead off I go with my four baskets of laundry to hang out at the laundromat. Sigh. Have a great week!