Happy November!

I just can't believe it's already November 1st. As Paula Deen says, "Great time of day!"

Halloween was a huge success. We met at Tara's for dinner, as we do every year. We had pasta salad and a whole mess of sides. I made the cutest pumpkin cake

but there were a ton of sweets already so I ended up bringing it home. We had no problem cutting it up today! The entire crew headed out as soon as it got dark, Lisa and I went to her house to give out candy. Joel had decorated his front yard with tombstones and other scary things. It was a big hit because we had a lot of traffic! Lisa and I stayed by the firepit trying to stay warm but it was tough - my hands were still pretty frozen. There was a wide array of costumes, some pretty creative. Of course my kids were the cutest! Liv was a dragon fairy.

Kind of hard to see her wings in this pic. Alex was a black ninja...

He was totally hamming it up once he put his costume on. Mary was a Bratz leopard/cat thing. I don't think it actually had a name but she looked awfully cute, even if she wouldn't smile for the picture.

They were so excited and it was very contagious. Alex and Mary ended up going to the Fall Festival at church with my brother of all people. He said they don't have good trick or treating in their neighborhood so they were looking for an alternative. I heard the festival was really nice - carnival games, pony rides, hay rides, hot chocolate, jumpy things. Fun, fun, fun. It was the first Halloween where we weren't all together. But everyone had a great time and I guess that's all that matters.

Tomorrow will be another long day. It's our turn to provide breakfast for Sunday School, then we have a picnic afterwards and I have to take a covered dish. After that, I have a Women's Leadership Team meeting. Later in the afternoon, Liv has small groups.

A few weeks ago, Alex had his belt testing ceremony in Tae Kwon Do. It was a big deal for us since it was our first time going through this. He worked hard and he passed the test and received his yellow belt. I took a ton of pictures because it just all looked so cool!

He had to do the white belt Form (or as Master Choi says "porm"), He had to break a board, he had answer questions from the judges. Some of the questions included the Korean names for some of the moves as well as counting to 10 in Korean.

He had to take several tries to break the board but it was very exciting when he finally did! A few days later, Master Choi had the belt ceremony - another interesting experience. It just happened to fall on our wedding anniversary so we ended up having a fabulously romantic dinner after the ceremony, with the kids, at the Waffle House!!! Hey, what's a busy mom to do but just take whatever comes along, right? We'll have our date night next year, in April, when my dad gets back!

So I joined this NaBloPoMo thing. Blogging everyday for a month. Considering I don't have an audience, who's going to care? LOL. But I'm going to do it anyway. And I will hopefully post a bunch of pictures so my dad can keep up with the kids' activities. Hope I can keep it up!

It was a happy November 1st after all.