Mwahahahaha Halloween

It was a nice day today.  I actually carved a few pumpkins this morning, this right after a nice bowl of Count Chocula.  We were listening to the vinyl record for "Nightmare Before Christmas," amongst others - later on, even the "Thrilling, Chilling Sounds of the Haunted Mansion."  I picked up Maddie from school, and Mom had a pumpkin-shaped pizza ready for her there.  And after that, it was time to get ready!  Trick-or-treating was at hand, and so with a little help from Mom, she got into her new costume and got ready to go out on this special night dressed as Constance Hatchaway, the creepy frequent widow from the Haunted Mansion.  The night was perfect for trick-or-treating, and there was just the right amount of people out there roaming the streets.  We saw  firetruck early on, parked alongside Riverstone Drive - the firefighters were passing out candy and other items.  The houses were decorated amazingly, of course, including our usual haunts.  One house was decorated with a "Back to the Future" theme though, with mini-Deloreans in the front yard, with a line of lights running up to the top of the house where there was a clock tower perched.  The family members there were dressed up as Biff, Loraine, young Marty, a cowboy, and even George from the dance.  The grandfather was handing out flyers to "Save the Clock Tower!"  It was fun.  We did our usual trip up and down the streets, and of course the trick-or-treaters collected a lot of candy.  One house, like always, was giving out large-sized candy bars, and that was a thrill.  Meanwhile, Mom and Nana were resting on the front porch as is the custom, handing out candy to the kids who came up to our house.  When we returned, Maddie and I did that for a short window, but soon enough it was time to go inside. for the night and inspect all the loot, and maybe eat some of it too.

It was a nice Halloween.  I've got some pictures below to share, and Maddie does too, including some commentary about her day as well:

Maddie's pov:

First off, I had school still, so I tried to wear something that had a Halloween vibe to it. Some people actually wore costumes, most just did what I did and wore something normal and did a Halloween vibe outfit. My friend, Preslie, was a pirate, and my Early Childhood teacher was a witch. In my ap world class, we watched history videos that were Halloween themed like a Dracula video and a video about the Salem Witch Trials. Mrs.Garcia gave us candy, and so did my Spanish teacher. My ela teacher did kinda scary videos. It was an intro to our next unit of fear, so why not do a Halloween themed lesson. In Mrs.Grogan's class, we did a test lol. In my early childhood class, Mrs.Nizalek let us go through the nostalgia of going through Halloween centers. We had cookies, made pumpkin/ghost lima beans, and did ghost lollipops. In math, we did a quiz, so happy Halloween they said jk.

I got home and had a pumpkin pizza.

Then I got ready and got into my ghost bride costume (like 30 minutes for makeup lol), my dad carved two pumpkins, and the Welborns eventually came. So did my friend Christina. We took some pics together and then we were off.

Back To The Future house

Ghost Bride with skeleton groom and bride and priest

End of the Quest

It was a nice morning today at KidPak, and as you can see above, there was somewhat of a surprise in store for me!  It's my birthday coming up tomorrow, and the entire gang sort of tricked me into going out there on stage at one point, gave me a cupcake with a candle, and then led the entire audience into a very loud singing of "Happy Birthday!"  It was super sweet.

It was a great day too, a good final skit for "The Quest," with a look at crazy phobias, many of them featured in the Indiana Jones movies.  This was another series we've visited in the past, but the entire thing was fun because we had a whole new series of skits and although things seemed like they were somewhat "The Quest Lite," it still had a great end result.  I loved this series a lot, and enjoyed watching the movies and getting into the whole Indiana Jones vibe again, even playing some of the LEGO games with Maddie.  It'll be good to have my hat back again too.  
 

We got home, and it was a relaxing day after that.  Maddie still has school tomorrow, so yes, there's still some work to do there, and some studying too.  We had a nice meal today, just like we usually do of course.  It's close to the end of October, and the weather is pretty nice outside still, so we're able to sit and relax on that beck deck, of course getting visits from all the different birds, chipmunks and squirrels.  

David S Pumpkins came back last night for a skit, and we got to see that today, pretty much a copy from the first skit so long ago, but with some new lines in it that are still hilarious to me.  He's been a great part of the holiday season - we just watched the cartoon special with that character, and yes, I'm going to wear my David S Pumpkins outfit tomorrow night.

It was a nice day.  We did some reading tonight, and we said our prayers.  Tomorrow is going to be really fun!

Saturday in October

Maddie's been working hard with her choreography for Team Edge, as have all the other students, and the end result is really picking up steam.  There is definitely a bit more focus and concentration, still a smile and still a good attitude about it all, and yet their time together practicing is certainly more deliberate.  Everyone gets along wonderfully and it's a great group of students.  Practices have extended on Saturdays to two hours of their time, and that's a pretty big chunk of a day off.  The end result is missing out on other things that may or may not be going on, which is kind of tough sometimes, particularly when there's great weather outside.  But this is where her focus is right now, and she's enjoying it.  She also enjoys the boba tea that she has afterwards - it's a great way to cool off after a few hours of intensely working out.  Maddie has settled on one flavor now, on flavor of boba tea that she hasn't strayed from in weeks.  I usually try new things, but always come back to an alpine green tea milk flavor with pearl boba inside it.  We sit for a few moments looking at the games they have set up there - eventually we'll need to take our time there and actually sit and play these games.  But usually, we're just there to pick up a drink and have it on the ride home.  After all, Mom is waiting there, usually with a nice big meal for us.

So October is winding down and we've managed to do pretty much all of our Octobery things, and watched all the Octobery movies we were planning on watching.  There were some new things in the mix this year too, of course, and that's always fun.  Of course, our family dynamic is such that we're a bit more limited than usual, but at least there are a few things we can do together, and that's worked out.  I just finished all my Monster cereal, and wouldn't you know it?  A neighbor knows of my love of that cereal and brought by some Frankenberry and Booberry, so that we'll be eating that until Thanksgiving!  I was rather insistent we watch "Monsters University" and "Monsters, Inc." today, at least in the background.  There are so many Octobery movies out there that you just can't expect to see them all.  We only do the family-friendly ones, and there's still just about too many!  

We have been doing a lot of Christmas shopping lately, and that's been fun getting out of the way.  Mom has some great ideas, and we've got a lot of energy for that, even now while it's still October.  We'll need that energy, because soon enough we'll be quite occupied with the Christmas production material.  We grilled out some burgers today, and this might be one of the last times we do that before it gets cooler, but there's this one burger out there called Waigu, and we were wanting to try it, and now we pick that up whenever we see it at the grocery store.  

She's busy working on Pilgrim costumes though.  We have about five Pilgrims and five Indians - and one turkey - for KidPak at Thanksgiving.  I was so happy to see that we can reuse the skits that we did so long ago.  The last time was twelve years ago, when Maddie was four.  The scripts date back to a time before that though, and they'll be able to be converted in such a way that our new cast can do them, including Maddie of course.  She'll be a Pilgrim.  Mom's got a nice outfit for her in mind, and she'll look nice all dressed up.  I myself will be a Pilgrim too, and yeah, we'll have to do a nice photo together, hopefully on our main stage.  It's great embracing this theme again.  Our friend Josh borrowed a book from me, "Mayflower," and he's working on a new animated project that really tells the true story of the Pilgrims and Native Americans at Thanksgiving, which is something that sadly isn't taught so much anymore.  In fact, a lot of history is not taught, and this is a pet project of ours - telling the true story of religious persecution, and of stepping out in faith.  With incredible videos, a new set, new booklets, and a full cast of characters, this new series is something to be excited about!  We still have one last day of "The Quest," of course, but we're already looking very much forward to the future.

I've just decided I really want a Monsters University hat.  Our Georgia football team seems to be doing well, although there is another big test next week.  The Braves may be out of the World Series, but the University of Georgia is still very much in contention for the rank of #1.  It will own that soon enough, I suspect, and that means a lot of our friends will be quite happy.  We're not so much college football people ourselves.  And again, I'd rather have a Monsters University hat than a UGA one.  But it's a nice season to be a  college football fan from Georgia, where you team is genuinely a number one team just romping over rivals that used to torment you, like the University of Florida.  Sorry, gators.  Love you, but it's time for you to feel our collective anguish for a few seasons now.

Moving on, we saw "Andor" tonight, and I have to say personally, I'm not as excited about this series as others.  I dunno.  It's just really down and dark and moody with one bad thing happening after another.  We'll see what happens next, but at the moment, we're sort of watching it to get to the end of it.

Okay, closing up, tonight we read.  And we said our prayers.  Tomorrow is a nice day at KidPak, again the last day of "The Quest."  It's been fun, but we're now wrapping up the series, and it looks like we're wrapping up October here too!

Edgefest 2022

We were back at Edgefest tonight, and as you can see above, it was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme at Edge ATA.  I carved that pumpkin above, and let's just go ahead and say it's Raphael.  Raphael was always my favorite turtle.  Anyway, I carved this earlier as my traditional pumpkin gift to the evening, and this year the weather was perfect.  We were up and on our way.  

Maddie wore her Lilo dress, and I wore a Stitch onesie that you'll see later, so the two of us were Lilo & Stitch.  We've got these two onesies in the house now, and Maddie is excited about that.  Oh, and check out the TMNT balloons in the back.  Four columns of balloons, each with a different turtle on top.

And of course there was a presentation tonight with Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael.  Four of the instructors practiced a great routine, performing to a song from one of their movies by Vanilla Ice.  It was a great routine!

Outside, the movie was playing on a big inflatable screen, and nearby, they were giving out all kinds of free pizza of course.  Because the turtles love their pizza, right?

It was a fun night, and a good number of people showed up.  There were families like ours that showed up in coordinating costumes too, like this fast-food family below.

I love the hamburger costume.  This is in front of one of the many trunks that there were, where families decorated their cars and gave out candy to trick-or-treaters passing by.

And of course there was a TMNT themed trunk as well.  I've been somewhat of a staff photographer lately, taking pictures for the events that I'm there, so of course I shared a lot of these online, along with many, many others.  They all came out really well!

Here's Master Edge, and he's wearing a Donatello shirt we literally found for him three days ago at a thrift shop.  We washed it, and passed it along just in time!  

Maddie had a great time of course, hanging around with friends and walking around checking out everything there.

At one point, there was a TMNT themed trivia game, and we called it "The Secret of the Ooze"!  Contestants who guessed wrong had green slime dumped on their heads.  Fortunately, there were goggles and ponchos available.  But it was still pretty messy!

Ah, this is my favorite costume of the night.  It's a Rick Roll costume, and it took me a while to figure out who's face that was, and when it dawned on me, I just thought this was hysterical.

It was a fun night!  We had a great time wandering around, eating pizza, trick-or-treating, playing games, watching movies, and watching the demo team too.

We've been going to Edgefest for quite some time now, and of course it's where Maddie first broke a board and first got interested in martial arts.  That was back in 2015, and we've been going to this event, and of course taking classes ever since.  It's a fun night!

 EDGEFEST YALL

Maddie's pov:

So I was going to do facepaint since we thought that Chloe wasn't gonna be there since she was sick, but she came. My dad and I did Lilo and Stitch for this year. Last year we had done Wanda and Vision, so it's cool we matched again. I hung out with Lolly this year. Neither Chris nor Evan were there this year for some reason. I got a lot of candy lol. Ms.Walker had her coffee shop, The Blonding Swan, there. Us kiddos weren't allowed to get coffee unless if we were 16 or older (or exceptions like Lolly lol) cause some of the kids would be so crazy, but they were allowed to get hot chocolate. The demo team (Mrs.Hardin, Mr.Gunderson, Estavon, and Mr.Cornett) did a Teenage Mutatn Turtle theme demo for us. It was cool honestly. I broke a board with Mia; it was one of those real thick boards. I got pizza for Mr.Gunderson cause he really wanted one, like really wanted to but he couldn't leave his post of holding boards. He had seen me with it and so I got him one since he was like "THERES PIZZA???" There was a slime trivia game where the girls lost lol. The guys know more Teenage Mutant Turtle stuff than we do lol.

Also here's a funny segment from the game:

Master Edge: What's the Turtle's least favorite pizza topping?

Lennox: Humans

Me: *stares at him questionably*

Lolly: LENNOX

Lilo and Stitch lol

Me, Logan in the hambuger, and Lolly

Fashionably Pilgrim

Here is Maddie doing a fashionable Pilgrim pose, a sort of Puritan glamor shot, which is actually a fun thought.  As fashion trends go in cycles, it will be fun to see the Puritan look come back again.  I mean, why not?  Soon at London, New York, Milan and Paris, there'll be fashion models strutting down the runways in Puritan clothing like this, and of course the guys will be marching down the catwalk with buckles on their hats, tall socks, and buckled shoes too.  Crowds will cheer, and everyone will be asking, "Who are you wearing?"  "Oh, we're wearing William Bradford's latest line.  But next year we're wearing Samoset!"

These costumes, of course, are for our upcoming Thanksgiving-themed series, "The Voyage."  It'll be a great return to these classic Pilgrim costumes, and the Native costumes too, plus the turkey costume.  I'm looking forward to celebrating a bit more of Thanksgiving this year, watching some of those movies we watch this time of year like "A Peanuts Thanksgiving," "Free Bird," and even "Pocahontas."  We've got the decorations from the old KidPak display case, and some are pretty nice - we'll have things looking good inside too.

Of course, first we've got to clear October, and there are some fun things ahead in the coming days.  Tonight was taekwondo, and Maddie was there to help train and then to learn a bit in leadership.  We were doing a bit of grocery shopping while she was doing that, picking up some of the standard items, and some seasonal items too, like pumpkin spice cream cheese, and even pumpkin spice Cheerios.  I'm not a super huge fan of these, but I don't mind trying new things.  We also have the bat knit crazy cheddar, Freaky Frankenstein Sage Derby, and some Transylvanian Cave cheese.  One night soon, we'll have to just have ourselves a night of spooky cheese and crackers.

Maddie is about to embark on a new book, and it's one that I had to suffer through, and one Mom even read in school herself:  "The Lord of the Flies."  Why?  I'm not asking you, it's more of a rhetorical question, because if you've been to school, you've probably had to read this too, and you've probably asked the same question, maybe in one of those dramatic moments where you clench your fists and yell it upwards to no one in particular.  Anyway, Maddie will be reading that soon enough, and it will make that joke from the movie "Hook" make better sense.

What is this?  Some sort of Lord of the Flies pre-school?  Where are your parents?

 Anyway, it was a decent day today.  We read from our book in the Discworld, and afterwards said our prayers.  Soon enough we were asleep, ready to tackle on a very fun day tomorrow!

The Hunt for Constance

 ...

Maddie had youth tonight, but while she was at church, we went over to a thrift shop to assemble a costume for her that she was asking to dress as. She wants to be Constance Hatchaway.  That's the ghost bride from the Haunted Mansion, or the bride in the attic.  She was just a creepy bride at one point with no real significant effort of a story behind her character, at least in the ride.  But soon that evolved, and there were portraits of ex-husbands, or rather axe-husbands.  See what I did there?  Anyway, she's somewhat of a black widow character, and not the super spy sort of variety.  Apparently she's a ghost now, and she's looking for a new husband perhaps?  Or she just likes using her axe.  Either way, that aspect of her story has really developed over the years.   Based on the 2003 movie, the ghost bride had an entirely more innocent background, and the short story of "The Bride in the Attic" has another story that makes the bride a lot less menacing.  I think my favorite rendition of Constance may be version of her we see in the comic book series, where she's a bride in the attic that even the ghosts in the mansion know to stay away from.  Imagine that, all these ghosts scared of a ghost.  Anyway, Maddie always loves this ride at Disney, and while at the parks you can always hear Maddie semi-singing, "Hurry back.  Hurrrrry baaaack."  So tonight we found some items that can pass as a wedding dress for her, and material that Mom is going to convert into a veil.  The plastic axe will be from the tin woodman.  Or maybe she'll have a cleaver instead - we have a plastic version of one of those too.  Oh, and a bouquet too.  Got to have that.  She'll look great on Halloween!

So Youth was tonight, as I said, and it was a FCY United Night, which meant that all the kids from the Georgia campuses came to the same location for a night of worship, a short message, and then basically a small amusement park outside.  There was free food, slides, rides, music, and just a lot of fun for everyone.  Maddie had a great time, and it was a little chaotic, but it was a whole lot of fun.  We picked her up a few hours later after we dropped her off, and she said she had a great time.  

We got home, and it was late - so we read, and we said our prayers and got to sleep.  It was a fun night!

The Tiny DaVinci

Aren't these cool?  Maddie was sharing with us some of her tiny Davincis.  Which would be a great name for a rock band, "The Tiny Davincis."  Anyway, her task was to recreate the artwork of a famous artist on a really small piece of paper.  She did Leonardo, and no it wasn't the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  It was Leonardo DaVinci, and as you can see above, considering the size and tools and time she had to complete these, I think she did a really great job!  There's "The Last Supper," "Mona Lisa," and a self portrait as well.  A friend of hers had to do Picasso, and I'm not entirely sure if that would be super easy, or super weird.  I wonder if anyone was recreating the artwork of Jackson Pollack?  Ha!  Or how about a tiny Mondrian?  Or a Rothko?  Those would be super easy, of course, and pretty funny too.

Anyway, life goes on here.  It's Tuesday and that's our natural break night, the one where Maddie does not have taekwondo or anything else going on.  It's a chance to catch up on homework or just sit back and chill.  The temperature outside is anything but chill right now, of course.  Rain is supposedly on the way, but it's been warm and dry this entire month to the point that we're in a fall drought.  Some rain will do us good.

Tonight we read, and we said our prayers.  Maddie is still doing her daily Bible reading each night, or at least listening to the Bible each night in smaller segments.  She and the other girls have been doing that nightly, and it's been great to hear.  She's not far from the end by this point.

Maddie's pov:

So the most interesting thing today was in ela (shockingly) when my ela teacher let us sprint back to the classroom. It was really random and honestly fun. There was this one teacher that was just staring at the four of us that were running to our class being "why, no, just why" and just questioned us, but it was funny. I was laughing when I got into the classroom.

After school, I did some homework, watched a movie with my family, joked about how my dad smells bad, and did a split (jk I didn't do a split). There were tacos since it was Tuesday, so that was nice.

Chicken and Taekwondo

Maddie's school picture turned out really well!  Mom liked it so much that we actually bought the digital version.  Of course, that version is amazingly overpriced.  If things were more reasonable, we'd be buying up a lot of different prints.  As is, we'll just take the existing digital copy and use it to print out whatever we need from this point on.  I'm not sure how school photography businesses work, to be honest.  Apparently there are enough people paying an exorbitant amount of money for prints to give out to friends and family.  Regardless, we like the final picture, as does Maddie.  She's looking so grown-up!

Today was another busy day.  I'm a bit fatigued, but Maddie's got a few things to share about today below:

Maddie's pov:

So, we started a stupid ela assignment and everyone's complaining about it cause we don't have time lol. I'm starting to make a new friend kinda with this guy named Ben. He's new, so he doesn't know the craziness of this ela class in full yet, and today I found out my school picture as shown above. Lipstick and eye shadow am I right :))).

Anyway, tonight I had taekwondo. We had done sparring, and luckily it was mostly combat sparring. I went against Charlie I think at first, which was chill then this kid name Colt or something. Idk, I'm bad with names. He was doing real good, so I liked that. After class, Kaylee, Chloe, Mia, Mrs.Hardin, Mr.Gunderson, Estavon, and Mr.Cornett stayed a little later with Master Edge to talk about Edgefest and kinda go through what we would do. *Spoiler alert I ended up not doing anything with helping*. We were going through why we joined, and Mr.Gunderson was basically like: "I joined because my friends were doing it. *pause* Then they left..." and we all just started laughing cause like honestly, we weren't expecting that. After this, we left and I did homework. It was time to go upstairs soon, read, and go to bed. Before I went to bed, my dad and I were talking about the rubber chicken I had and what to name him. We were gonna name him Jacque, but I forgot his name so I just declared him as Joaquin cause I don't know why lol. Anyway, bye y'all :D

The Sound of Music

This picture above cracks me up.  We went to see "The Sound of Music" today after church, and they had this place for photo ops in the lobby, one where some mountains were put in the picture too... and of course we had to go and do this.  I think we did some more serious ones, or at least ones with us smiling and more visible in them.  We also posed with some of cast members, which of course is why we came today - we knew one of the older Von Trapp kids, and he did a great job today.  

Ezra is also one of our cast members at KidPak, a great member of the team that we'll be happy to have back with us in about a week or so.

KidPak was great this morning, of course, both services.  We wrapped up the four-part story of "The Quest" with Maddie and the other students helping Dr. Jones along with this fun little adventure.  The messages have been super solid and I was so happy to be back with the Indiana Jones movies and adventures again.  We saw "The Kingdom of the Krystal Skull" recently, wrapping up the last of the movies, and we even played LEGO Indiana Jones again, just because.  Sometimes you just have to really immerse yourself into these themes, and it does help with writing and everything that follows.  I was happy to have four entirely new scripts for our characters, and Maddie did a great job with her portion on stage.  I don't think we really recycled any jokes so much, doing all kinds of new writing for this one, and including a lot of references and quotes to the four movies.  

We got home late, and we were pretty wiped out.  It's been a long, long weekend.  But a great one, of course. Mom had chicken marsala ready for dinner, and that was amazing.  We also drank some Frog's Breath coffee.  Mom made a chilled version that Maddie enjoys.  We watched a few seasonal things, and how funny it was to watch the Shrek version of "Thriller," something that came out a few years ago.  We just so happened to pop that in, and wouldn't you know it?  Shrek is in the middle of a nightmare where he basically has to watch "The Sound of Music!"  Which, of course, is what we just got done watching this afternoon...

Tonight we finished Nicholas Benedict's first adventure at the orphanage, the fifth book in the series and final one so far.  We've been in these books for a good bit, and all four have been pretty good!  We finished our reading tonight, and then it was time for prayers, and a good night's rest.  Everyone was super tired, and sleep came pretty easy.  So long, farewell...