Gearing up!

Friends, fellow blogians, readers and viewers of the world wide web!

Chris and I are writing to you after a crazy cray month of many fall activities. Most that included raking and burning leaves and bobbing for apples. (I'm really good at this...I dare you to challenge me)

Anyway, with all the leaves and apples aside, we are mostly excited for our annual trip to my Dad, Uncle Ross' house for Thanksgiving! He always saves us a special spot next to the creamed corn and my Mom Aunt Linda. A lot of people get confused when I tell them my parents names. They actually are Aunt Linda and Uncle Ross, which is why I like to refer to them by their first names when I talk about them. It's more fun that way. When they are naming me, they thought about naming me Cousin MJ, but they realized that through their many years of name ridicule that that was a bad idea.

None the less, we'll be spending Thanksgiving with Uncle Ross and Aunt Linda, the best parents I could ever ask for. Chris and Uncle Ross always fight over who will win the wishbone tug of war. It usually ends up being Aunt Linda, don't know how that even works. She's got some sort of supernatural powers. Too bad those genes didn't pass on to me.

Our trip to Uncles Ross and Aunt Linda's would not be complete without the annual game of "Guess My Age". This game started a few years back when Uncle Ross forgot how old he was and asked everybody to ...guess his age. He gave us a few clues about his life to help us out. Clues like how many times he has been to summer camp, how many children he has, how many sandwiches he had eaten in his life...stuff like that. We all put number in a hat and then he finally did the math to figure out how old he really was. We would then take a look at the numbers and whoever's guess was the closets got "For He's (or She's) a Jolly Good Fellow" sung to them 5x, speeding up each time (this is including the "which nobody can deny" part, mind you). Each year we try and guess Uncle Ross' age again. For some reason we always forget from last year and for some reason, it's always a mystery.

So, yeah, that's about it. I just love the little traditions that having a family and being married can bring up. It just warms the soul, just like a dancing candle.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween! MJ and I were so excited to celebrate this holiday as a married couple for the first time ever! We went to one of Zach's famous parties and it was a lot of fun. More on that later.

This year, MJ and I decided to dress up as people who were inspirations to us. MJ dressed up as a pencil sharpener, which... yeah, I don't really know what the story is on that one. You'd have to ask her. I went as a receipt for a $16.95 shopping trip on which I saved $4.00. That was really inspirational to me because I bought cereal and milk that day. Breakfast!

Incidentally, most people just throw away their receipts, but those are easily recycled. We use them to make boxes for kittens.

Anyway, I'm posting a picture of our costumes. MJ's was so realistic, she looked just like a pencil sharpener! I pretty much just wore a white shirt and had to explain it to people, but you know, that's what makes halloween fun. Anything that involves long explanations is my kind of holiday (that's why I love Armistice Day).

We had lots of adorable trick-or-treaters. When I lived alone I never gave candy out because I just thought it was so awkward... you know, they say, "trick or treat!" and then I would never know what to say... I would invariably just apologize for not wearing a costume or ask how their day was. But MJ was super enthused about it, so I went along. Besides, when most people opened the door I think they ignorantly just assumed I wasn't wearing a costume, so MJ ended up doing all the talking. I'm fine with that. After it got dark and the kids were too afraid of getting mauled to come by the house, we went to Zach's famous party. More on that later.

Well I guess that's all there is to say for now!

Check out our costumes: