I missed out on art night since I was in Michigan, so Tom had photo duty!! I had been looking forward to more ceramic ornaments, but this year they decided to do paintings!
Sitting with friends!
Owen’s on the left, Tom’s/Katie’s on the right.
And a photo from Heather:
And the finished projects:
We lived in Troy for three years and I wanted to eat at Zingerman’s Deli the whole time but we just never got there. Today, since we were literally right down the street, it happened.
Linda and I split a large reuben and it was still too much (we should have split the small).
Then we sampled this $26/lb cheese and it was VERY tasty. I was sad I couldn’t take any food home…
I wish I could come back here because there were A LOT more sandwiches I wanted to try…
What a small world! I posted on Facebook that I was in Ann Arbor at the hospital and my college roommate, Marina, saw it, posted, and long story short, stopped by to catch up! We haven’t seen each other in 20 years (aside from posts on Facebook)!! And I had forgotten…she’s actually a nurse at the main hospital!! What are the odds?!
Here’s us waaaaay back then, at the end of our freshman year (1992):
I’m always a little anxious about flying—not the actual flying but the timing of things and getting through security and getting to the right place, etc. So I just really looked at my flight info so I could find my gate on the map (yes I’m that person) and I find out that I’m leaving from (apparently) THE MOST FUCKED UP GATE IN THE KNOWN WORLD: DCA 35X. Google it. Or read some of these FourSquare comments:
Down an escalator at which point there’s no room to sit and then hopefully you hear your announcement for your plane and then you are SHUTTLED out to one of the many commuter planes where hopefully there’s no weather happening because you’ll be outside.
Seriously?
My Facebook friends tried to assure me I’d be okay (though they admitted it was confusing) and I kept my fingers crossed and told myself I was an intelligent 43yo and I could surely manage an airport gate. 🙂
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 🙂
P.S. I’m flying to Michigan because my dad is having an aortic valve replacement. It’s nothing we’re seriously worried about (it was planned and not an emergency procedure) but it is surgery so I want/need to be there.
I didn’t take any pictures during the first play date, but today we had another…YES, a second play date. 🙂
And this is my ever-goofy boy. His smile just KILLS me. 🙂
We haven’t made it to every month, but we made it to SER this month with our Tivo friends!
This is a friend of Katie’s who is in first grade. She’s a young first grader but still.
We had one of our Saturday Night Dinners for our Thanksgiving this year. We thought we’d keep it simple—we’d do a turkey, mashed potatoes, instant stuffing, fresh bread, and mulled cider; one couple was bringing a sweet potato casserole; and one couple was bringing dessert. Easy, right? Well holy hell it was still a lot of work. Last minute stuff, really, and not hard, but still craziness. Especially at the last minute when I realized I had completely forgotten to start the gravy! (At least I already had the stock ready so it didn’t take long at all.)
My very first use of a selfie stick!
We got a box of Christmas presents today. There were a few small things for the kids to open now. They loved their Santa hats…
And the scarf matched Katie’s outfit perfectly!
OMG. 😯
Finally wearing one of the necklaces Marcia bought me for my birthday!
Lunch with friends beforehand at Succotash in National Harbor. It was DELICIOUS and we highly recommend it. (We had fried green tomatoes; pimento cheese fundido; bacon mac and cheese; collards, kimchi, and country ham; Belle’s punch and a gochujang infused bloody mary.)
My super fancy home manicure (yeah, it’s just glitter polish):
Us, before:
Before & After
And this is what it takes to get ready for the ball. :p
A few fun pics trying to get THE PERFECT shot:
And the best shot:
And my favorite fun shot:
So as we were starting to get dressed, Tom had a uniform snafu—he realized he forgot a major piece. The exchange was closest (about 45 minutes round trip)…but they were out. Home was next closest (about an hour round trip) but that wasn’t appealing, either. A few furious texts found a buddy who lived somewhat close that had extras and could bring them to him…but that took almost an hour as well! So, while he was downstairs waiting for the delivery, I was finishing getting ready and hanging out with our friends in their room and then we came back to our room to wait for Tom. Our friend Tom was having a FIT because Tom’s uniform wasn’t even prepped to start dressing…so he got everything ready for him.
Waiting longingly for his buddy:
The group shot without Tom:
It was getting to be time to be seated for dinner (we’d already missed the entire cocktail hour) so Karen and I headed down while Tom waited for Tom. They made it with a few minutes to spare.
After the ceremony was over, we booked it out to the photo line while it was still short:
Random shots of us:
And the official photo which was emailed to us before we even left the event:
We actually had other friends at the table (plus her parents!), but we somehow managed to go the entire night without taking a big group photo OR a photo of us with them! So, here’s one I snagged off Facebook (that I actually took on her phone):
And lastly, to give you an idea of the scope of the event, here’s the seating chart: 288 tables of 10.
Overall, it was a fun evening, but unfortunately, it was once again a big ol’ waste of money—we should NOT have spent the night again. Last year we had decided it had been a mistake because we didn’t NEED to spend the night—we didn’t drink enough to need to stay and we were tired and wanting to head out by 10 so we could have easily just came home. But this year we thought we’d all stay (all three couples) and have this epic night…but we were all petering out come 10:00 so we all just went our separate ways LOL. We could have actually been home by 11 and saved the $350 we spent on the room and sitter! Lesson REALLY learned. 🙂
Our two Pokemon: Squirtle and Pikachu!
Our yard and porch! This was the first year we’ve left the lights on and just left treats out for kids to grab. I kind of miss carving a pumpkin, but honestly it’s a lot of work and I don’t miss the stress about needing to get it done. Plus, I have this light-up pumpkin that I can use.
Starting at our neighbor’s house…
We weren’t planning on going with them, but she was ready when we got to their house, so we all went together!
Maddie, a neighbor friend.
Then, on another street, we ran into more friends, so our group grew!
Trick or treating hours were from 6:30-8 and we used every last minute! We were walking back into our yard at 8:00!
The kids got entirely too much candy…and were super excited!
Since the Marine Corps marathon is this weekend our normal hunting spots were closed…so we headed to Old Town Alexandria!
Fighting a gym! We kept getting errors so we just moved on.
A birch!
Success fighting another gym!
This was a Japanese maple—so absolutely gorgeous I had to get a picture! (We saw about 15 different photographers and families out this morning!)
These two were best buddies all day.
These bullet points are great.
Relaxing with a delicious lunch at TJ Stone’s Pub in Alexandria.
Friends (the Brownes) invited us to a costume party and we hadn’t been to one in ages—and I’ve never been this thin—so I eagerly bought myself an awesome costume! I mean, I figured why not?!
So, you saw the sneak peek:
And Tom had a few costume options from previous years…but I had seen a friend do Cousin Eddie (from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) and thought it was brilliant…so I picked up the pieces for that. And of course we had the two Pokémon kidlets.
On our way…
Ta da! Thankfully we had an unseasonably warm day and we were actually comfortable in these.
Who wore it better?! 🙂 The consensus was Tom, though Randy showed more nipple. 😀
I loved all our costumes but I really want to have a theme one year. We briefly tossed around being Team Rocket or Ash and Misty from Pókemon but the costumes were too expensive for what they were and I didn’t feel like creating them myself. Maybe next year will be the themed year.
Our themed hosts:
Even Squirtles need to eat.
And Pikachus need to potty. 🙂
I really lit up well in the black light…but I don’t think it even looks like me.
The kids had a blast—we barely saw them the whole time. They were playing in the yard and going on a treasure hunt with 20 other kids.
Black light paint!
The funny thing was that we were all thinking it was like 9-9:30 (it was dark and we were tired) and we looked at the time…and it was only like 6:45! Are we old or what? 🙂
Once the sun went down it quickly got chilly so they started a fire and we hung out there for a bit but then we called it a night and were home by 7:30. ARE WE OLD OR WHAT?! 🙂
Our neighborhood has a decent fall festival so I took the kids down today while Tom continued working on the new landscaping!
Katie’s first time bobbing for apples. Or, more accurately, attempting to grab a stem with her teeth. 🙂
The costume contest! Our friend Kayleigh won!
So, it was an interesting night to say the least.
It started with deciding at the very last minute to take Katie as well. We hadn’t been going to do that and she was a little bummed but then the mommy guilt got to me and I changed my mind. We had a minor fight with Owen about what costume he was wearing—we bought him Squirtle because he really wanted to be Squirtle…and instead he wanted to wear some random skeleton costume with a mask (they aren’t supposed to wear masks) so we said he needed to wear his new costume.
On our way…
So.
Then.
Every year thus far, Owen has had a sudden onset of shyness or nervousness when we approach the school for the festival but it was never anything bad or lasting—we’d just walk in and he’d be glued to our sides for about three minutes until he saw all the fun going on and saw his friends…and all was forgotten and he had a great time.
Except this year. He COMPLETELY freaked out and wouldn’t even set foot in the building. At first we thought it was just his normal routine, but when we tried to coerce him in, he refused. REFUSED. And got visibly upset. We tried to be nice and loving and that didn’t work. We tried tough love and that didn’t work. After 10 minutes or so, I went in with Katie and Tom stayed in the hallway waiting to see if Owen would come in the building. I talked to his teacher and she tried to get him to come in. Nope. A few of his friends went out to try and get him to come in. Nope. I tried again. Nope. It was absolutely maddening. He had a whole litany of reasons he didn’t want to come in, the biggest of which was he hated his costume, it was stupid, and he knew everyone would laugh at him and he’d be embarrassed. It didn’t matter that everyone who saw him said they loved it (I mean, Pokemon is ALL the rage!) and people had heard about the Squirtle costume and were LOOKING FOR HIM.
He also said there were too many people and they’d all be looking at him. What? The kid who has no problems (anymore) of speaking in a group in front of an assembly? The kid that everyone seems to know and like? The kid who loves people? I was gobsmacked.
It didn’t matter what anyone said. He was NOT coming in and he was in full meltdown mode.
In the midst of this, I was with Katie playing the games and getting her face painted and she was having an absolute blast. (The face painter was Miss Anne, the assistant in Katie’s classroom that she also had last year and is a friend of ours.)
Putting her name on her treat bag!
Picking a sucker for a prize! (Bonus: notice that they reused my signs from last year?!)
With our neighbor, Jackson (first grade).
Getting her picture taken.
Then Tom texted me to say he was DONE because he had just had to chase Owen down because he ran off. What the hell?! So we went out again for me to try talking to Owen—at this point he was actually in the building quite a ways so I thought I would have more luck, but nope, he was still refusing to come in to the festival. And when I tried to coerce him in again, he literally turned and ran away down the hall. Some older kids saw his costume and came up and told him how awesome it was. Nope, still not moving. Still thought his costume was embarrassing. By this point I was just done (he’d been out there for almost an hour) and told him we were done—he was either going in or we were both going to sit in the car until daddy and Katie were done. Which is exactly what we ended up doing. 🙁
So, Tom had switched places with me and had taken Katie in to the cafeteria to dance…where she had even more fun! It would have been even more fun if we were all there together. Ugh.
A bunch of snippets of Katie dancing…and frolicking!
So, overall, Katie had an absolute blast, Tom and I had fun when we were each with Katie, and the rest was a hot failed mess dealing with Owen. We have NO idea where this all came from or why it was so traumatizing for him. Of course, now we’re worried that something else more serious is going on that we don’t know about or he hasn’t told us about…
We were at the neighbor’s house and they have lots of little pumpkins so Katie created her own pumpkin store.
Of course, we just went to Burke Pumpkin Playground and that’s where Katie’s class took their field trip. I was really torn—the mommy blogger part of me felt I had to go but the actual mommy part of me said We were just there and this would be an extra half day for her to be at school… A friend was going so she promised to take a few pics for me…so that lessened the guilt.
Heading into school.
She had a blast!
Last day of our summer weather + driveway drinking while kids play = CHEERS!
Owen and Colton
We didn’t win any of the bingo games, but they were giving away free pizzas at the end of the night so both boys got one!
We went to Flight with a neighbor. We were literally the only four people there for most of our hour. It was awesome.
We went to a friend’s house to stay with her napping kid while she had to make an emergency run to school. Katie immediately took to the car. I instantly felt guilty again about selling theirs. 🙁
We could have had one of the kids take the picture, but this is more fun!
The kids didn’t have school today so I wanted to do something fun. There are a lot of fall festivals around but I didn’t want to drive to far…so we went to the same place we went for Owen’s kindergarten field trip and invited friends!
They added rolling tubes since we were last there.
Caitlin braved the tubes before I did.
The boys LOVED it…Katie didn’t want anything to do with it.
Not one picture with either of them actually looking at me!
Owen LOVED the train and spent most of his time here.
And then Katie decided she wanted to go down the slide…with Caitlin.
And this is why I love Caitlin. 🙂
Hayride!
Back at the tubes, Katie decided she wanted to try…with Caitlin.
Then I finally got in the tube and Liam rolled me down! It was much easier getting in than getting out.
My little pumpkins!
And two Then & Nows:
We went to visit friends down the street and Katie had to wear one of her generic princess costumes.
And then her friend had new costumes, so of course she had to try them on!
