Our Halloween

Halloween is a weird holiday for me.  Every year I go through the same thing- {battle in my head}

Should I buy decorations and decorate my house?
No. You don't care about it that much, and therefore it would be a waste of money.  

Ok, but should I dress up in a costume and come up with something clever?  
Nah, that also isn't worth the money, and you're not creative enough with your wardrobe to come up with something.

But wouldn't it be cute if husband and I dressed up as a cute couple costume?
No.

Ok, fine.

So this year it was, yet again, pretty low key.  However, I did make "arrangements" (I guess you could call it) to get a group together, and thankfully a few committed to go with us, and we went to Markoff's Haunted Forest. As much of a pansy I am for horror movies, I DO love a good scare at a haunted house (or forest.)  It was a lot of fun!  And I screamed.  A lot. And the chainsaw guys feasted on my terror like wild beasts. There really should have been footage of that.

photo taken from crouching tigress in green

 Anyway, the day after the "holiday," at work we had a pumpkin carving and "Iron Chef" contest.  Can you guess which pumpkin was from my team?

sorry, bad lighting

Ok yep, ours was the one in the last two pictures.  Vulgar?  You mean funny.  And the err, "waste" coming from the pumpkin was our food for the contest!  "Pumpkin fluff" and pumpkin soup.  We didn't win either categories.  Lame!

Here are some other pumpkins Wolfgang and I carved with some friends a few weeks prior to Halloween also. {Their pumpkins included}

We again didn't get one single trick-or-treater, we didn't even bother buying candy this year.  How was your Halloween?

Things to be grateful for- like candy.

Well, Halloween was a fail this year, or a win, however you want to look at it.  Since this is our first Halloween in this area, we weren't sure if we were going to get trick-or-treaters or not, but I bought some candy, just in case.  And of course, I only bought candy I liked, in case no one came because someone would have to eat it in the end, right? It's the least I could do.

In the end, we didn't get one single kid at our door. More candy for us! We're trying to be responsible and not eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so we've put it out of sight, so that way we don't go into a sugar coma.  'Out of sight, out of mind,' right? So far it's actually working pretty good.  Not to mention we still have a stack from my cousin, who works for Hersheys (yesssss)

 We didn't dress up for the holiday, nor did we go to a haunted house like we kinda wanted to.  But that's ok, we still did my family's tradition:

Jack-o-lantern Sloppy Joes!

their before shots

...and after

And since it is November, which is usually a month to remember the things that you are grateful for, I have to tell you about why today was particularly so great.

Well, it didn't start out so great.  This morning I woke up with really bad neck pain.  (How old am I?) I literally had never experienced that before, and made me grateful that I don't have chronic day-to-day pain. Anyway, I'm not sure what I did to myself, maybe just slept weird, but it was super painful.  I babied it for about an hour, and it got a little better.  It's still not 100% pain-free, but much much better than it was this morning.  I just kind of have to awkwardly hold it to the side a little, or so that's what it feels like.

Moving on, I'm suppose to be telling you why today was great.  For over a year now, our "check engine" light has been on in our Corolla.  Not to responsible for having it on that long, right? Well, we knew what needed to be fixed, and no one made it sound like it was that urgent, so we put it off.  Not to mention, our "trusted" (mechanic shops can only be trusted so much, right?) car garage place was quoting us at $1,200.  Yeah, we weren't going to pay that.

Coming here to Maryland, we knew we were going to have to get it fixed, and fairly quickly, before getting emissions testing and before registering it in state, which all has to be done within 60 day to not be charged any fines.

Last Sunday a couple kindly invited us over for lunch, and somehow our car came up, so I asked them if they had a go-to person for car maintenance. Sure enough they did, Wolfgang got his info and today our car was finally fixed for...$180 !!!  Isn't that a miracle?! I almost cried (well, may have cried, I'm easily on edge at times) We were so happy.  It literally took him only about 30 minutes, and we were outta there, even with a warranty.  This was such a HUGE blessing at a time that we really needed it.  We tried to express to him how grateful we were for him, but I don't think he'll really understand how much it helped us.

And you know why else today was awesome?  We got to eat at Pei Wei.  It doesn't take much, people.  Oh, and the fact that I had TWO fortunes in my ONE fortune cookie.

This is going to be a good month.

Happy Halloween!

This year, we did absolutely nothing for the "holiday" this year. It's not really that tragic, because I never really go out of my way to do anything special for Halloween anyway. I don't even know if we had trick-or-treaters, because we both were at work tonight. Although I do have some regret of not doing our family tradition this year {sorry mom} of the jack-o-lantern sloppy joes {this is when I would usually link that to a previous post when I blogged about it in years past, but remember, Google suuucks and deleted all my previous photos...#*&#%$(*&...}

I also kind of wish we would have went to a haunted house, I really enjoy going to them, even though I'm a complete pansy.

Instead, I watched a few minutes of Ellen's show today while at work which of course, was Halloween themed. I forget how much I love Ellen until I watch her show. I laughed a lot. She's hilarious.

I hope you enjoyed your day and ate lots of candy and dressed up in ridiculous outfits, if, of course, that's your thing. If you just watched Ellen instead as well, then two thumbs up for you too.

What is....

I find it as a fun challenge to have to explain something that is common to me, to someone who has never heard of such a word, thing, concept...etc.

{is it ironic that I think I explained that poorly?}

While attending BYU Hawaii {and maybe since meeting Wolfgang?}, I did that a lot more often than I thought I would ever have to.

Yesterday, a co-worker asked me what Halloween was. Halloween! That was fun. I then got into the discussion of what a haunted house is.

I have a love-hate relationship with haunted houses. I don't like to be scared, but I really like going to haunted houses. But I will only go under these conditions: I MUST have a death grip on someone; preferably be in the middle of two people; not be in the front of a group; and I usually scream way too much. I find them terrifying yet exciting.

Now I'm excited to hopefully find one here and go!

Jack-o-what?

Not only is Wolfgang funny half- asleep, he's also pretty funny awake, too.

For those of you who watch the hilarious "Modern Family" tv show, you might appreciate this even more, after watching the episode from 2 weeks ago.


On Halloween, before making my traditional "Jack-o-lantern sloppy joes" (ever since we were little) with some friends, Wolfgang was trying to clarify the name, Jack-o-lantern.

He thought they were "Jack-o-Lennons"
Wolfgang: "you know, like the singer, right?"

Nope.

He can get away with it, because of the whole "English as a second language" excuse.

I'm considering making an additional blog, and only filling it with random quotes from him, but I'm thinking I would be the only one that thought it was funny.

Who knows, maybe I'll give it a try.