Halloween Brings Out the Weird

I have decidedly mixed feelings about Halloween. On the one hand, I love seeing the creative ways people put together costumes and the choices they make. Kids are especially adorable.

On the other hand, I'm not very creative and I get nervous having to think up some sort of costume idea. 

On yet another hand--CHOCOLATE! 

Like I said, not crazy about the holiday. (Pay no attention to the wastebasket overflowing with candy wrappers)

In keeping with the tradition we started last year, I will now show you our costumes and give you a chance to vote on your favorite. The winner gets the all important bragging rights. 

Last year's winner was Troy who was Avatar: The Last Airbender

I was accused of unfairly persuading the votes by posting my picture last--I got a fair percentage of the votes. Therefore, this year I will post in alphabetical order.

And now, without further ado, this year's contestants:

 Amy--A Barmaid

I had a corset already on hand and so just had to figure out how to use it in a costume.

Jasmine--Luna Lovegood (from Harry Potter)

The cat insisted on being in almost every photo. This time it worked.

Thomas--A Wild Man from Borneo

Originally Tom called this costume Tom in 10 Years. I told him it had better  be an alternate universe because there is no way that is my future!

Timothy--Phantom of the Opera

A point for you if you know where he's posing to take this picture.

Troy--A JabbaWockeeZ Dancer

This is from a dance group featured in one of the Step Up movies and winners of America's Best Dance Crew

So, join in the fun and leave your vote in the comments. We'll love ya for it!

You can also send me an email or write on the Facebook page. All votes will be compiled and the winner announced on Friday.

Exactly One Year Ago: Costume Fun

Exactly Two Years Ago: Beautiful Ham--one of our lovely girls.

Cinderella's Report and a Winner

First, let's get business out of the way: For my birthday contest I had 18 entries. Random.org's number generator gave me #3 as the winning number. 

That means that Robin is the winner! Hooray! Robin, please send me your mailing address. Thanks!

Now, on to the story of the ball. 

Really, compared to last year the story is pretty tame. The event started on time. It was in the same room as last year (so, pictures were pretty much out of the question due to bad lighting) and there was no real drama.

We were a bit nervous about whether things were going to go ahead as planned (tickets were bought in advance) because the day before the Ball was supposed to take place, Tom received a call from the Police trying to reserve the room at the Lodge. Apparently they had jotted Tom's number down next to the Lodge's name on their papers and mistakenly called him. But this meant that the booking was being done the day before the event! We were sure there was going to be a problem but things must have worked out.

This year we managed to get food (last year the food ran out before we could get to the buffet line) and it was filling. Filling is really all I can say about it although Tom had the best comment: "This food would make the judges on Top Chef cry!" --and not in a good way....LOL

We had a really nice time though. Tom knows many more of the policemen now. He was fairly new to the reserve force last year so this year he did a lot more mingling and chatting. The guest of honor who was the former Provincial Commander for Luapula even called us up to dance with the members of the High Table.

Finally, at 12:30 AM the time came for us to perform our prepared dance. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do the dance at all as we'd forgotten to copy the MP3 file onto a CD and though we had it on my tiny computer and on a flash drive, the DJ had an old system and could only use CDs. Thankfully, he just happened to have that song on CD. 

We chose to dance to No Air by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. The second glitch came when the the DJ neglected to listen to our instructions and rather than starting the song at the beginning when we got to the stage he did that fade out/fade in thing so by the time the volume came up on our song it was several measures in already. This kinda messed with our choreography but we managed to pull it together anyway.

Everyone loved the song and cheered for it. I wish I could show you video of it but we had set our video camera up on a tripod--not trusting any guests to hold the camera as they can be pretty enthusiastic in using the zoom button no matter how many times you ask them to just point and let it run. :) Anyway, we had the camera all set up and then just after our dance started, a guest came up to the floor next to the stage wanting to film it on his camera. He even showed it to us when we got back to our table. He was so excited that he had managed to capture it. When I saw his footage my heart sunk. I just knew which angle he had shot from. Sure enough when we played back the footage on our camera this man had stood directly in front of our camera for 75% of the dance. Grrr!

Here is the only good photo we managed to take that evening. Despite the small hiccups we had a really good time. I loved having the chance to get dressed up on my birthday and have fun.

Two days later we had friends over to our house and Jasmine and Summer baked me a chocolate cake infused with an orange simple syrup and iced with orange buttercream frosting. So good! Then we watched The Sting. It was just as good as I remembered and knowing the twists and turns did not spoil my enjoyment at all. The whole evening was perfect. Thank you for all the birthday wishes! You make my life so much fun!

Exactly One Year Ago (yesterday):  The Reason for the Season

New Word Contest

Last Monday we had Family Game Night. Out of three choices: Yahtzee, Boggle and Rummikub the winning vote went to Boggle.

The game was a lot of fun and educational too. To even the playing field I only allowed myself to get points for 4 letter words and higher. This allowed the younger players a greater chance of gathering points.

What made us laugh most was that some people (who shall remain nameless) kept writing down random collections of letters that they were sure were words and insisting I look them up in the dictionary. Every round had about 5-10 words that we had to look up in our large collegiate dictionary.

Lo and behold, out of the dozens of nonsensical words we found 3 new words. I am going to write them below. If you know the definition tell me.

The commenter with the most words right will win a beautiful African cloth called a chitenge. If no one guesses any of the words I will choose a random comment. We will be operating on the honor system--no Google or dictionaries allowed.

The contest will run for one week. You have until Wednesday 8 AM CST, November 4 to post your answers. I will announce the winner by Thursday 8 AM CST.

Here are the words:

1. hoy

2. gib

3. lase

Have fun!