The Mouse, The Skeleton, and The Lions

This weekend was a fun one as we celebrated Carly's first real holiday (Labor Day doesn't count). We started festivities on Wednesday at our Ward's Trunk or Treat. We had some last minute planning problems and ended up at the mall an hour and a half before it started looking for costumes. Luckily, Walmart had this little number on clearance:

the cutest mouse ever

So mommy and Carly went as a cat and mouse. It was rather cute, but I knew I would have to figure out something else for the actual Halloween, because the eyeliner all over my face wasn't the most comfortable thing ever.

Kitty and her dead mouse

Chris went as an unrelated Clark Kent. He looked great but it threw people off and I kept getting asked if I was supposed to be Cat Woman or why I wasn't Lois Lane.

Superman and . . . . Mighty Mouse?

So for actual Halloween we decided to all be unrelated, as Carly had another costume waiting the wings.

the cutest skeleton ever.

We bought her costume 3 weeks prior, not expecting her to grow at quite the rate she did. The accompanying hat looked like it was about the crush her head and her legs definitely stuck out of the bottom. Luckily, she's really cute so no one seemed to notice.

On Halloween we went to a fun dinner party held by some friends in the ward. Then we headed out to another party held by some friends from Chris's program. They recently moved to a new house and Knoxville is really good at ridiculous streets that aren't properly labeled, so we drove around for over an hour on a dark rainy Halloween night trying to find it. While it was rather fitting, it wasn't that much fun. We finally found it and surprisingly Carly put on a really cute front, which was lucky because both Chris and I were in rather sour moods. It turned out fine though and we made it back home in about 10 minutes (go figure).

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Sunday November 1st I decided to dress Carly in my favorite piece of clothing she owns.

A red dress from BabyGap. Super cute.

Playing with daddy.

handsome daddy, pretty girl

But course she drooled all over it shortly after we put her in her carseat, then spit up all over it by the time sacrament started.

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Sunday night we had some friends over for dinner and a rousing game of Ticket to Ride. We like it, but Ticket to Ride is a quiet, slow game, so we hope we didn't bore them to death. We sent them home with some pumpkin spice doughnuts as a reward for surviving the night with us.

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Up next is a November overflowing with goings-on. Three more visits from Chris's family lie ahead. And next week Chris heads to Lansing, Michigan. He applied for the PhD visit program at Michigan State and got accepted, so he gets an all expenses paid trip up to check it out. The program there is excellent and the professor he would work with is rather distinguished, so I'm proud of him for getting accepted for the visit. It bodes well for getting into the program, and while I'm not totally thrilled at the prospect of dealing with 4 Michigan winters, I do want to find the place that's right for us. Only time will tell on that one.

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I'm also getting rather excited for the Holidays. Even though Carly doesn't understand whats going on really, she brings such a special spirit wherever we go and in whatever we do, so the Holidays will be that much more wonderful. Also wonderful? Chris's month-long break from school, weeks at home with just the three of us, and a week-long visit to Idaho.

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Finally, it appears Carly has a thing for lions as her two favorite toys are lions.

On the left we have Mr. Lion (creative, I know) and on the right is LionHeart. She will just stare at them and smile and then look all bashful and smile again. Few things can entertain her as well as Mr. Lion and LionHeart.

Carly and LionHeart on Halloween.