Its already November??

Ok, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, so this is a very long post. And it's actually about Halloween. I didn't post a few weeks ago because I was waiting for pictures. Truthfully, I'm ashamed to admit that despite how hard we worked on our costumes, we didn't get any pictures of Charlie or I. We did get some of the kids, so you can see bits and pieces of us on the sidelines sometimes. Oh wait, I just remembered we did get one picture each, here they are. Aren't they nice?

We look pretty authentic, right? Silly for us to choose costumes that nobody understands but us. But the only way I can get Charlie to dress up is if I appeal to his inner nerd (I know, its kind of outer too). Our first year of marriage he dressed as a Borg, the second year he was a Jedi and the third year he was a star trek commander. Several of those costumes he still tries to convince me that he should be able to wear them to other things too like Church. I never let him though. What a mean wife.

Anyway, with this latest installment in a long line of nerdy costumes; nobody got it, which we knew would be the case. But Charlie got lots of funny suggestions about what he might be, things like Rambo and an Indian terrorist. And no matter what the suggestion was, Charlie always told the people they were right. They would go away like, "Yes! I knew he was a homeless arms dealer, I just knew it." People didn't ask me what I was, but I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was a Gypsy since that is what I would have thought if I didn't know.

We had a surprising amount of activities planned for the Halloween weekend, and we went to most of them. We had a dance, and a party at Lydia's school, and a party with some friends, all on Friday. I didn't think they did Halloween very much here, but apparently its gotten very big in the last few years. Though they don't have a lot of costume variety. There are basically like five different costumes to choose from at the stores. So people try to get creative. We entered Lydia in a costume contest at a school party (before you ask, she didn't win) Lydia was dressed as Cinderella and she was one of two princesses out of at least a hundred other little girls. That never happens in the states, you usually have 30 percent princesses and 30 percent fairies and the other 40 percent fairy princesses. I've never seen so many little girls dressed up as witches and zombies in my whole life. Lydia was like that girl from Labyrinth in the ballroom scene. But I guess a zombie is an easy do-it-yourself costume, since all you have to do apparently is dress in black raggedy clothes and paint your face white.

The next day, all the stakes in La Paz hosted a big Cultural Dance show, with each stake in charge of different dances. It was great, but we didn't stay for the whole thing, since it promised to be upwards of three hours. Then we went home and ate pizza and watched a "scary" movie with Charlie's family: Casper. I know, you are shaking in your boots. But those are the kind of Halloween movies I like.

On Sunday I had my primary sacrament meeting presentation. It went very well, I thought. The kids sang great. We had to skip a few of my favorite songs because our transitions were painfully long, but I felt pretty good about it when it was over. After church, we went over to the in-laws as usual, we carved our "pumpkins" which were actually yellow peppers, and ate pumpkin soup out of a green pumpkin that the girls had painted (they don't have orange pumpkins here). Even the two pickiest eaters Michelle and Jason actually liked the soup, plus everyone loved the carving activity, so I felt like the day was definitely a success. I stressed a lot over the weekend Because of getting costumes done and activities planned getting ready for my presentation, but all in all, everything worked out great and we had fun.

I'll catch up on other more recent stuff later, but now its Charlie's turn to post some pictures. Right baby?