A Wee Halloween Interruption

I will post more about the Epic European Tour, but before it gets too far past the festivities, a word about some Halloween goings-on:

First things first, there's this:

XD

It didn't last long, as expected, but it was a nice surprise anyway.

Then we had a race:

Go Mom!

Go Dad!

Go me!  I made it!!! *dies*

We have done the Hale Center Theater's annual Highway To Hale race for several years, since we like it so.  It's a little expensive, but they have good prizes, nice shirts, and are pretty fun, especially to see all the costumes.  This year I wore all gray and, um, went as some kind of gray ghost/elephant thing.  It was just what I had on hand.  Mom and Dad joined us, and Julie sat this one out, as she was recovering from a little bug she caught at the tail end of the cruise (right, Elise??) and hadn't been able to get back in the running routine yet.  I decided to do the 10K again this year, in an attempt to make up for last year's food poisoning fiasco.  I met my goal (under 45 without walking!!!) and came in at 44:17, 4th in my division (missed 3rd by 20 seconds, eurgh), and 22nd overall.  It was some kind of something at the time though, it was pretty hard at some points, there are a lot of hills on that course, and I kept saying, I know I said I wouldn't walk, but I'll just run to the top of this hill and then walk for a block...  And then by the time I made it up the hill I just decided to keep running, and thought, I don't have to walk, I can just run a little slower for a break instead.  And it worked!  And I was able to make my goal.  Mom and Dad did the 5K and both placed 1st in their divisions.  And it wasn't until days later that I realized we didn't even take our traditional group photo.  Well, we've had one before at this race, that will do, and luckily The Wife was ready on hand to take pictures of us crossing the finish line.  Dad's just taking his time.

Then we had Halloween!  We had a Groupon deal for a fun little Halloween cruise on the Provo river, which was fun, though a little short, and we were glad we had a 2-for-1 deal for it.  We might even do the same thing for Christmas if we find a similar deal.  We didn't have a big party or anything to host or attend on Halloween, but our ward DID have trunk-or-treat, and we had a sort of last-minute costume idea, so here we are:

The Boy With the Bread

The Girl on Fire (and with bread also)

We were Katniss and Peeta!  It was fun watching who caught on.  Lots of moms did, though some of the younger ones took a minute to figure it out, if they did at all (even tweens I thought would surly know!).  Some people thought I was just a baker (the idea!) but once I sat closer to Julie and dropped some hints people figured it out (see here for reference).  We didn't have a bow-and-arrow on hand, but Julie pulled off the look with her jacket and Mockingjay pin and boots anyway.  We were a big hit.  It made us wish we had a party or something to go to so we could be seen somewhere else, especially since we ran out of candy to hand out pretty quickly.  So we went to the mall to get some really awesome SubZero ice cream and walked around a bit to check out the scene there.

The artfully placed baking supplies on my clothes make all the difference.

Angst.

And that's about it!  Festivities.  It was a subdued Halloween, but it was fun.  And now it's time to start filtering in Christmas music and looking forward to a wonderful Thanksgiving and stop being distressed when people pronounce Halloween like Hollow-een.*

And then this happened:

 

My wife is ever so creative sometimes when it comes to cooking, especially when it comes to one of our favorites, gourmet grilled cheese.  So resourceful!

And soon I will post pictures from the cruise.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled Epic European Tour anticipation programming

*  I know, I know, I'm sorry, but it's just one of my favorite annual pet peeves, I can't let October go by without mentioning it.