The Halloween Live Blog!!

Happy Halloween!!!

I'm going to keep you (and myself) entertained tonight as we pass out candy with a list of my favorite Halloween costumes as I see them. So far, my favorite has been a little boy dressed as the Geico money stack. He had a piece of cardboard sticking out so far on each side, and the eye balls popped up off the cardboard right in front of his face. His mom was holding his arm and helping him walk up and down our stairs and walk. I asked whether he could see and his mom sighed and said, "yeah, we didn't think about that!" Awesome costume, but poor kid!

Sooo...here goes:

• Geico money stack
• Hot dog and ketchup bottle (this one was a mom and dad couple respectively. I couldn't even tell what their kid was!)
• Girl in a princess dress with a tiara and a giant sword (she was supposed to be a musketeer, hahaha. Her mom had to clarify)

(Chris here) Katie has been standing at the door literally for about 8 12 16 minutes straight now as one kid after another after another keeps coming up to the door.

(Katie again) Oh my!! This has been crazy!! Chris had to keep getting up to pour more candy in my bowl because there was a constant stream of kids. Now back to the favorites:

• Kid on a leash!! (I'm pretty sure he wasn't wearing a costume)
• Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion (this was a sibling pair. There have been more than 4 Dorothys so far, but these two were so cute together! Especially the lion)
• Little 3-year OCD cowboy. (He grabbed the door after Chris gave him candy and his mom just looked up at Chris and said, "Sorry, he has this thing. He has to shut all doors." So Chris said okay and the kid slammed the door. But since our door is a little strange it didn't shut, so he came back and banged it shut. Haha.)
• Twister board (yes, the game)
  

On another note, some of these parents are LAZY. There is a log-jam on our street because some of these parents are driving their kids from house to house! We live in a neighborhood. The houses are right next to each other! PLUS, we are totally kicking the other neighbors' butts. We still have candy left because we bought a TON and they are dropping like flies. Lights going out and doors being shut all over the place!

Okay, well I'm going to wrap this post up now so we can get on with the evening. It has been several hours of trick-or-treating and kids are only trickling in now vs. the floods we were having earlier. Have a happy Halloween!

Jack-o-Lantern

On Thursday we decided it was time. Time to bring in the pumpkin and carve it for Halloween. I appreciated all your ideas on what to carve, but here's the thing: your ideas were too complicated for me! We had limited time to get this done. You see, now that basketball season has started, Chris doesn't get home until around 8 PM every night. We were busy on Friday and this morning he has practice and a soccer game, so if he wanted to participate (which I'm not actually sure he did, but I wanted him to participate!) our last opportunity was Thursday evening. Chris did a great job of helping me carve the pumpkin and pretending to be really into it even though The Office and Parks and Rec was on tv :)

By the time we finished eating dinner and did the dishes it was already pretty late, so we decided to go simple: two eye holes, a nose, and a mouth.

We hacked off the top of the pumpkin so we could clean out the insides.

The insides of pumpkins are pretty nasty. I mean, have you ever really looked in there?

And to think we eat that stuff in various forms...

After the pumpkin was hollowed out, we began the carving. I was trying to keep things clean so I tried pushing the first eye hole through into the center of the pumpkin. It didn't work. It got a little stuck so I decided to push it from the inside out and ended up launching it clear across the room!

When we finally got done we were pretty pleased with our results. Looks a little scary right?

But here's the thing. If you look at it from the top down, sure, it looks evil and Halloween-y...

 ...but if you look at it from the ground up, it just looks like it's smiling. 

I mean look at that face. It's so happy.

What do you think? Creepy from a down-ward facing angle; gleeful from an up-ward facing angle. Not what we were going for...

Well, we may not have been overly successful at creating a jack-o-lantern to scare all the little kids tonight, but we sure had fun trying!

Operation Christmas Child

As a heads up, I know this is a strange post because it's about Christmas during the week of Halloween, and I'm completely bypassing the Thanksgiving holiday all together, but here it is anyway:

A few nights ago we volunteered at the local church here with Operation Christmas Child. It was quite an experience! Everyone brought food and had a potluck and then we grabbed boxes and started filling them. Chris worked hard to wrap his box nicely. I was impressed!

I was especially impressed because the boxes were really hard to wrap. We used a lot of plastic boxes so they could be reused by their recipients for water later and the tape would not stick to the outsides. After we spent much more time than necessary trying to figure away around this problem, the boxes were wrapped.

I think Chris had a much better handle on appropriate gifts for his age group than I did though. I kept forgetting what age I was packing for. I think I should have stuck to wrapping the boxes for other people!

Today's Farmville Moment - Road names

I hope somebody enjoys this. We live in a place where you can name streets and roads whatever you like because almost no one drives on them anyway! I thought this one was really funny... Tinkling Spring Rd. I don't know whether to feel bad for or congratulate the people that live on that one.

Pumpkins

Last weekend we stopped on our way coming back into town at a pumpkin place! Halloween is coming up a LOT faster than I realized so we needed to get in gear and get ready.

As you may know from prior posts, Chris is not the hugest fan of stopping at places like this and picking fruits and vegetables...but I love it! AND, I didn't even suggest it this time, he did!

It took me a little while, but I finally found our perfect pumpkin.

Now we just need to carve it...

...any ideas??

Homecoming '09

This past weekend we headed back to our alma mater for our 2nd annual homecoming as alumni. It's strange to think that this is already our second year out of school. When I walk around campus and see my old dorms and class buildings I feel like I've just graduated, but then when I see everything that has changed since we've left  and all that we've done since we've been gone I feel like I've lived entire lives since I was in college.

The campus was in its full fall swing and we had some gorgeous (and humid) weather. Plus, the football team beat JMU (sorry Lauren!). Going there really feels like going home, especially since Farmville is still not quite feeling like home yet!

The best part about going back to W&M is seeing friends again! I was spoiled last year living in such close proximity to a lot of my friends from school, but getting together is always a ton of fun.

On Sunday we went to Chapel and on the way out of town, we stopped back at the Cheese Shop (pretty famous in Williamsburg for those of you who haven't been there!) so Chris could get a sandwich before we left.

It was a great weekend!

Lady Apple

Speaking of apples, as I seem to be doing often right now, someone brought me an apple at work the other day. I've never seen anything like it before - and I don't know whether you have either - so I thought I would take some pictures of it :)

Here the apple looks normal:

But then when you stick it next to a jumbo-sized paperclip, you can see it most certainly is not!

Or when you compare it to a stack of post-it notes:

Or if you put it in the midst of the jungle that is the out-of-control plant on my desk:

They told me it was considered a "lady apple" and they grow like this! I didn't know how to react when I first got the apple...

But then I decided to eat it anyway...

Yum.

As American as Apple Pie

Surprisingly, apple pie reminds me a lot of Germany, not the U.S. When I was living in Germany in 2006, one of my good friends taught me how to bake apple pie. And since apples were so cheap and we did a lot of group dinners, we made apple pie often! However, once the weather starts getting a little cooler and football comes back on tv, it's apple pie season no matter what country you live in!

Soon after we went apple picking, we decided it was pie baking time. I love baking (mainly because of all the delicious stuff you get to eat while you're doing it) so we picked out our apples and went to work.

I made the pie crust:

Put it into the pie plate and cut off all the extra sides:

Peeled the apples, cut them up and put them in the pie:

Covered the pie up and cut some holes for baking:

Baked the pie and let it cool for awhile:

And finally...we ate it!

Where I work

Last week was fall break for students and faculty at the college. Notice I did not mention staff. To give you some perspective, I am one of about 7 staff members in my entire building. At any given time, there are about 15-20 professors and about 150 students in my building, but on my floor (3rd floor) there are only two staff members. Me and one other person. That one other person was out of the office on Monday and Tuesday so that just left me. I was basically alone! I hardly saw anyone all day and it was ridiculously quiet, so I decided to take a couple pictures of my office so you could get a feel for where I work! (Above is the building I work in.)

Let's play a game. Can you spot Chris' influence on my office? I'll give you a hint... it's in the picture directly above this.

The Alternative to Central Heating

We have oil heat... and radiators... This is a first for me! Everywhere I have lived - in our apartment last year, at my parents' house, in my apartment in college - I've always had some sort of central heating system. I've just never dealt with radiators before. We had not been able to successfully turn on the heat since we moved here, but we hadn't needed it yet. Since the weather took a turn for the worse this past week, we decided to get serious. We called someone to come fill up our oil tank.

When we called, they asked whether our oil tank was above ground or below ground. Thankfully, I was able to tell them the answer, as a few nights prior to this I was outside in the dark doing laundry and completely tripped over the little knob sticking out of the ground marking our tank. Yep, our tank is certainly underground.

Now we have oil in our tank and the heat is running. The one thing I was not anticipating is how utterly creepy the furnace and radiators are. The radiators pop every now and again and when I'm not expecting it, it makes me jump! It's incredibly loud. The pops have even woken Chris up in the middle of the night (Thankfully, I sleep through everything!). Plus, when the furnace starts up in the basement, it makes the strangest noises you have ever heard. I may avoid doing laundry down there until we turn the heat back off in a few months just to prevent the fright of it coming on unexpectedly while I'm down there.

I mean seriously. Look how creepy that radiator looks. Not friendly.

I am pleasantly surprised though with how well the radiators work. We have been keeping the thermostat set at 60 or 62 degrees, but it feels so much warmer.

Too proud? Maybe...

As part of my job, when a professor is sick or out for the day in my building, sometimes they ask me to cover their class. Believe me, it's not taxing whatsoever. This generally means handing out a worksheet, proctoring an exam, or simply putting in a video and hitting play. The other day, I was asked to do just that. I received very simple instructions: stick VHS into player, press play, wait around long enough to adjust the volume for the students. Simple.

But it wasn't.

I got to the classroom about 5 minutes before class started to get the movie ready. The VCR was inside a cabinet on the wooden podium at the front of the classroom (It opened down-ward...think of the usual book drops that are outside public libraries). I crouched down and pulled but it wouldn't open. I pulled really hard and it just would not come open. Being somewhat stubborn, I did not ask for help. To put this in perspective, I'm working at an all male school. I did not want to openly admit in a classroom full of 18-22 year-old males that I couldn't open a little cabinet door. So I sucked it up, put both hands on the handle and yanked and the thing slammed open.

Unfortunately in the process I bent the nails on both of my thumbs backward and it hurt. A lot. I looked down in shock and saw that both of my nails were completely purple. I shoved the VHS in, hit play and stood there willing myself not to tear-up. Taking deep breaths, I adjusted the volume appropriately and slipped out of the classroom door quietly. I think I should have learned a lesson from this experience to not act tougher or stronger than I actually am or physical pain may ensue...but I'm not sure it will stick. I think brief pain may be a preferable alternative to developing a reputation of being a helpless female hardly older than many of the students here...

Pancakes

I like to make pancakes into shapes. My family knows this. You might also know this due to a previous post and maybe even another previous post. This means that when we're all at the house together and my mom is making us breakfast, sometimes I step in for a minute to take some requests.

Since it was my mom's birthday, I made her a birthday cake, including candles:

 

Lauren asked for a star:

My dad asked for a four-leaf clover... or maybe someone else asked for it on his behalf:

Eric usually comes up with the most ridiculous requests. He likes to push my pancake-shaping limits, and let me tell you - I always accept the challenge. This was actually awhile ago, but he asked for a pyramid. I completed the task with flying colors. Base and four sides; which all fit together surprisingly well:

 

Although now that I look at it again, it kind of looks more like a volcano to me...

Driving around Farmville - the positives

Before people start thinking that the driving around here is terrible, let me point out the fact that when you're driving in the day time, no matter where you go or what season you're in, everything is gorgeous! There are no highways down here that don't have trees growing along both sides of them or a river running beside it. Every single bend in the road holds something new. Here are some pictures from various drives we've taken over the past couple months to prove it.

Honestly, I know one-lane roads are more inconvenient (especially when you get stuck behind a slow driver, or a tractor... believe me, it happens.) but I definitely wouldn't trade them back in for the concrete highways and traffic of northern VA.

Driving around Farmville - the negatives

As we were driving home at the end of the weekend we started to realize one of the many downsides to it getting darker earlier. The thing is, when you live a few hours away from family, unless you leave around noon, you're driving at least part of your trip in the dark...always. Now, this wouldn't be a huge problem except for the fact that we live in about as rural VA as possible (I mean, we don't even have a Target!!) and every road leading into town is one-laned.

Added to that mix is the fact that over the last few months I have become one of the absolute worst backseat drivers of all time. I know it's annoying and I know Chris is a great driver, but I seriously can't help it! I get so stressed and anxious in the car that I can't help but point out that he may be following a little too closely, driving a little too fast, not slowing down as quick as I'd like, etc. In my head I'm saying, "Chris is a good driver, just take a deep breath and we'll be home," but the other paranoid thoughts have a mind of their own and just LEAP out of my mouth. I really can't control it!

Anyway, Chris was driving, and being the good sport that he is, he took all my comments with a tight-lipped smile and a nod. But seriously, driving several hours at night down single lane highways is not easy for anyone... so I tried to focus my energy elsewhere than his driving. I spent the majority of the drive playing "spot the deer" out the window of the car. Every time I saw one, I would calmly say, "deer" and gauge Chris' excellent response time. This was perhaps even more annoying (if possible) than my earlier comments, but more relaxing for me. We seriously saw at least 10-15 deer on the way home. It was like driving through land mines (hence the Minesweeper picture!).

As you can imagine, Chris breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally turned onto our street in our quiet neighborhood. That is until he had to slam on the brakes in front of our house because there were deer ON THE SIDEWALK.  IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE! Poor Chris. I had so much energy when we got home and can you imagine that all he wanted to do was sleep? Too much excitement for one night, I guess...