Fall Parties

Our youth group bonfire happened the night before Halloween. It started off a perfect, crisp fall evening (and steadily grew colder). I decided to go in costume as "The Crazy Chicken Lady." I thought it was nice that my NGF's mom had her chickens out when we arrived at the party location. It really completed my costume ;)

On the way to pick up my Gabby and our pastor's Gabby from where our Gabby was watching our pastor's family (minus big brother, who was at our house for a couple days) while he (our pastor) and his wife were off on a birthday adventure (that was a lot of extra information), I had my basket of eggs sitting on the center console between the driver and passenger seats. We turned a corner and the basket toppled towards the passenger seat . . . from the back came a huge intake of breath and a chorus of, "Oh NO!!" My four teenaged passengers' concern was sweet, but they all laughed when they found out I had hard boiled eggs in my basket :) I'm not THAT crazy ;)

In the first picture, I asked them to smile. In the second I said, "Do something your character would do." Brennen is spraying on his shoes, Caelan is cheesing like a weather girl, Gabby is doing whatever Chester V usually does, the other Gabby is posing like Agent Carter, lol sad Fat Thor, and G$ as camera guy Manny (he built that camera out of cardboard, too)!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, just in case you didn't get the reference. I'm a fan of homemade theme costumes :)

We arrived at the party, and Brennen de-costumed almost immediately to play football. I guess he didn't care about winning the best costume prize (which, now that I'm thinking about it, was never awarded anyway :) Because I can't vote for my own Crew, my pick was a toss up between Goldilocks and her boyfriend, a giant teddy bear, and the giant teddy bear's twin brother the cow. The cow added his gallon of milk to the dinner table, and was a bit surprised when milk was missing at departure time. He said, "I basically stole this milk from my mom; she's probably wondering where it is right now." Lol! Funny cow :)

Where's Waldo? I bet you can spot him :) The youth group evening consisted of hotdogs, a fire pit, smores, axe and knife throwing, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and tours of my NGF's youngest brother (and my nephew's doppelganger/birthday twin)'s bunker. He actually has a little cart on a pulley system to remove dirt from the giant hole he's been working on digging for a month or two. Eventually the kids made their way to the original bunker/storage cellar--which is thankfully reinforced with cement and structure, etc. They had a portable speaker, a few neon light bracelets, and a big ole' party underground. 

When I called for my Crew and our ride-along guests to emerge from the earth, an UNBELIEVABLE number of teenaged children followed them out of the hole! It was like on the police shows when they break up a party and people just keep spilling out of a place that is much too small to be possibly holding that many humans, ha! The group of parents at the threshold observing the (wholesome) rave were just as stunned as me :) My half-dozen, dust-covered passengers were raspy with lost voices and inhaled dirt, but couldn't stop talking about how much fun it was to dance and sing and stomp together in the bunker. I mean . . . 2020 :)

The next day, we attended a simply genius soup party at my NGF's house. Soooo many DELICIOUS soups! Plus sides like cornbread, cinnamon rolls, and cupcakes. I had a little trouble with my store-bought (but soooo yummy soup)--I waited too long to start heating it in the crockpot. So, my NGF came to my rescue and heated it up on her stove for awhile. The weather was wonderful for being outside, and they had a little firepit going. Buck even managed to attend the tail end of the party, at his friend's request, and together they broke out their Arkansas tobacco and puffed into the night air :) 

I think my NGF was a little shocked at how many people RSVP'd for her party. That's 31 kids and teens in that photo, lol! They all went out trick-or-treating en masse . . . can you imagine that costumed mob arriving at your doorstep for candy? I took a video of them walking by and it took a full minute :) But below I share a video of my NGF's youngest ringmaster and her wonderful center ring show!

Below is a funny photo of the grown up ladies around the fire all trying to bid down a seller who was incredibly rude to the glowing cloud on the left. Let the hilarity ensue :) Oh and also, the glowing cloud and a new military family trick-or-treated baby kittens during the party! That's an unusual thing to offer lawn guests, but the kids came back all enamored with the idea, and baby kittens found new homes. Awww, yay fall parties :)

A few days after Treat Night, Caelan and I ran some errands which happened to include stopping by Target where they happened to have their dog costumes way on sale. At first we thought XL would be way too big (we were way wrong, it fits perfectly!) and if Caelan had known the costumes were only three or four dollars each, Muriel probably would have also been a punk rock tutu dog and a mermaid :)