Hogs and Halloween

Big weekend! Lots of pictures! Settle in.

People at my office kinda go nuts on Halloween and this year was no exception. I didn't dress up as I have in years past, but we did something a little new this year and combined our usual Halloween festivities with a fundraiser for Saatchi & Saatchi X's non-profit, The C.A.R.E. Initiative. The Dead Man's Ball was an excuse to dress up and play Guitar Hero at work — all in the name of raising money for the kids. Here's a taste. This is FPO (Fanny Pack Organization) featuring my friends Ashley, Lauren, Josh and Michael from work.

 

I love my job.

Saturday was Homecoming for the Razorbacks and the game was late, so we loaded up The Boy and took him tailgating. We know he probably won't remember it, but it was the first time he's seen all the pre-game traditions in person.

We stood on the hill just outside the stadium so we could see the team run through the A and hear the National Anthem. Colt enjoyed the excitement, and it wasn't so crowded that we couldn't make ourselves comfortable.

 

It was Halloween weekend – so, of course, there were some crazies out at the game. We stumbled upon a pack of wild Elvi that we couldn't help but photograph.

But it was otherwise a perfect location to do some Hog-spotting.  

 

And he was totally and utterly fine – enjoying himself, calling the Hogs, pointing and laughing at the Elvi, soaking up the Razorback Game Day experience. Until the fireworks.

Not a fan.

And we never really recovered after that. So we headed home to watch the Hogs beat Vandy from the comfort of the best seats in the house. Sooie!

Halloween fell on a Sunday this year and from the way people were acting you'd think that had NEVER happened before. What night is trick-or-treating? Saturday? Sunday? Both nights? People. Be cool. Act like you've done this before…

I decided to try my hand at some cool pumpkin carving this year and invested in one of these babies.

Don't worry, I read the book. But I didn't really believe the book when it warned me of the mess this little project would make. My original plan of carving multiple pumpkins was abandoned after the first one left me (and the entire back deck) covered in pumpkin dust. My hands are still a little orange.

   

It's totally unimportant that you know just how many photos I had to take before I got some that even remotely resembled my child looking in the general direction of the camera and kinda sorta smiling. 

It's probably also unimportant to mention that Colt wanted NO part of this costume. I went out of my way to choose a costume that would be indistinguishable from "real clothes". It doesn't get much more comfortable than a t-shirt and overalls, right? Wrong! It took both of us and a LOT of sweet talking to convince Colt that he was indeed NOT going to be wearing jeans and his motorcycle shirt for Halloween. He was going to be Dennis the Menace and pose for way too many pictures and that was that. It's the holidays, dang it! Get in the spirit!

But the fun didn't stop there! We headed to Nancy's house for trick-or-treating with this gang.

Colt didn't join in for the above group picture for fear of standing too close to the terrifying Blue Man (a.k.a. our preacher, Chad!), but we had a good time seeing friends and reminiscing about Colt's first Halloween spent with much the same crowd two years ago. Here he is posing with his friends Carol Grace and Connor as Little Bo Peep and her sheep.

And while most of the kids headed off to go trick-or-treating, he was pretty content to hang out on this bench, taking it all in. What candy?

It started to get dark and the trick-or-treating was really heating up, so we headed inside to help distribute candy and Colt busied himself with this helicopter (which he can ALMOST say!) and he informed me that Batman was driving. Duh, Mama.

Another successful Halloween! We spent time with friends, took some photos, ate some junk food and managed to make it home without a single piece of trick-or-treat candy! Happy Halloween!