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.

31 Is the New 30

Ha ha, that's one of my favorite birthday jokes this year.

So!  A couple of weeks ago I had a birthday!  I turned 31.  It seemed like a little less of a milestone, though I guess it IS the actual start of a new decade.  In any case, I was looking forward to it, and it turned out to be quite an exciting and drawn-out celebration indeed.

First things first, as a sort of early present to myself, I finally paid off my one and only student loan.  Story time: Once upon a time I graduated from BYU with zero debt. Then for some ridiculous reason(s) I decided to go back to school for another year, thus acquiring my first-ever student loan. And then, one glorious day of days, days and months and years later, my unnecessary extra year of college and one and only student loan was paid off. A happy ending!

On my actual birthday (excluding the workday formalities), The Wife and I were able to revel in birthday festivities, which included surprise presents throughout the day.  Julie started off the day by giving me the boxed set of The Hunger Games, complete with two tickets to the movie on opening night!  (So that's why she was so insistent we go that night instead of the day before or the day after...  And I don't know why it didn't occur to me that we hadn't bought tickets yet.)  There were lots of Facebook messages (Facebook birthday parties are the best!) and this remarkable little number from Elise:

And this epic piece from my co-worker, Matt:

There were a few other surprises throughout the day, and the Wife's thoughtful and creative theme of paper presents was revealed: books, printed out coupons for movie tickets and a weekend getaway in SLC, and even a paper crown!

I am da king today.

That night we went to dinner at Brick Oven (where they have finally provided bigger plates at the salad bar... this may seem silly, but trust me, it's a big deal), and then had a double feature of new movies about old movies -- We saw The Artist at the Thanksgiving Point theaters, which was really quite good and not at all the artsy, pretentious snoozefest I was for whatever reason expecting (I blame it on its popularity at the Oscars this year), and then watched Hugo from the Redbox, which kind of WAS the artsy, pretentious snoozefest I expected, though there were some things I liked about it (but was it better than Harry Potter, which DIDN'T get a hefty handful of nominations?  No way).

Yes, the Chicken Al Forno was probably the best thing I've ever had there, and I have had MANY things there.

This is Julie's best picture face, I tend to think.

We were planning on a family party later in the weekend, so Julie made me a mini cake of Oreos to tide me over until then.  It was delicious.

 

 

The excitement about next day was that we finally conquered Donkey Kong Country Returns (the origin of which we are still unaware, but for which we are still grateful).  We have been stuck on the last boss for pretty much three months, just because we were too scared to go back and try to beat him.  But beat him we did!  I promise we only looked at YouTube walkthroughs once or twice.  I'm not ashamed.  It must have been the luck o' the Irish.

BLEARGH, beware the hands.  They will slice you!  And they don't play fair!

The Sunday following we had a fun family get-together for me and Jonny, whose birthday is the day before mine), which included lasagna and lots of other likewise yummy food and one of Julie's exquisite cakes, which was a huge hit, and a nice round of arm- and leg-wrestling (I was the champion at leg-wrestling for a minute until Jake dethroned me), the effects of which I felt in my neck for the next few days.

We didn't get a picture of the full cake, but here's the remains.  It was strawberry chocolate, and it was very popular.

It was a great weekend, and each day had its delights.  So by the time we went back to work, I pretty much thought the fun was done.  We went about our daily lives, and my supply of birthday cereal of Lucky Charms slowly diminished.

BUT, fast-forward to last Friday night, when we had our big Hunger Games night.  I was actually really excited for the movie, though it's been a couple of years since I read the books, and even then I only liked them pretty well, not like they were the BEST BOOKS EVER to me or anything (though I still avoided spoilers, and wish to this day those dumb girls at that wedding reception hadn't been blathering about the ending of the third book SO loudly when it had just come out like two days before).  Anyway, apparently in this case, time and hype have worked some wonders, and I was very much looking forward to what looked so amazing from the trailers.  Julie surprised me with some magical shirts that combined two of our favorite book/movie series, and then off we went to the movie theater.  Imagine my surprise when I saw appear, one by one, my very best friends in the lobby!  At first I thought it was some kind of amazing coincidence, but then I realized that couldn't possibly be the case, especially as more and more appeared, and then of course my parents of all people.  What a clever and resourceful and thoughtful (and secretive!) wife I have!  She really knows how to plan a surprise!  Besides how well she pulled off the weeks-long plan, my evident inability to catch on to major hints and spoilers by unwitting friends and family helped.   Seriously, a couple of people basically said things right out, and I still somehow didn't get it.  I like to think I'm marginally clever myself, but when it comes to surprise parties, I guess I'm a good guy to throw one for.

 

So excited for the movie!

This is Julie the Hostess being pleased that I'm surprised, and me the Birthday Boy actually being surprised.

Most of us made it into the same theater and the movie was marvelous.  I actually haven't stopped thinking about it since, and I can't wait to see it again.  It has so much happening on so many layers and levels, and it was just fantastic.  And if one more person compares it in any way to Twilight (except that they're both books that were made into movies), I may throw a fit.  After the movie everyone came to our apartment for root beer floats and cookies and hilarious conversation, the hilarity level of which may or may not have taken our neighbors a little by surprise.  (Believe it or not, I took not a single photo of this after-party event, but believe me when I say it was really fun and funny and lasted until it was no longer PM.)

So that was it!  Birthdays have always been fun, but as the years go by and one enters one's adult years the excitement kind of wears off, but ever since I had a Wife, they have been really fun again!  I can't wait until my next one. :D