Halloweekend

Even though we had our Halloween party last weekend, we still found some stuff to keep us busy.


I won some Jazz tickets from a local radio station (holla for free stuff!), so we went to the Jazz home opener on the 30th.


We spent Halloween afternoon at the Carters and got to see everyone's costumes before they took off to their various parties.


Later that night we took our little ladybug to a couple houses in the neighborhood to do some trick or treating. I'm pretty sure Halloween is Macy's new favorite holiday...she ate more candy this weekend than she's had the past couple of months. I guess that's what Halloween is for, right?

Great Costumes...What Are You?

I'm starting to believe that when it comes to Halloween, we tend to think just a little too far outside the box.

Take last year for example. We decided to dress Macy up as Max from "Where the Wild Things Are" (see last year's post here) and nobody got it. Instead of being praised for our creative costume idea, we spent the entire night explaining what she was.

So this year we come up with what we think is an absolutely hilarious idea, get all dressed up and head off to our Halloween party looking like this:


So here's your Halloween pop quiz. Were we:

A) Cavemen/women

B) Disco dancers

C) Zebras on crack

D) None of the above

If you answered D, none of the above, give yourself some candy corn, you're right! Still stumped at what we did go as? (Drum roll, please.) Sigfried and Roy! Okay, so it wasn't the best attempt at creating the gay tiger trainers' getups, but I thought the intense bronzer and gold bling would totally give it away if our little white tiger sidekick didn't.


Anyways, despite our costume confusion, we had a fun night with the friends.


The Cooke crew featured 2 pirates, 2 Handy Mannys and 1 ladybug.


The Fields came as vampires, and apparently pretty scary ones. One of the Cooke's little boys hid behind the couch for a half an hour after he saw Brad with his "scary teeth."


The Johnsons came as Fred and Wilma Flintstone. I absolutely loved their costumes and might be hitting up Heidi to borrow their get-ups next year.


Moral of this story? If you can't come up with recognizable costumes, at least hang out with people who don't care!

Pumpkin Patch

Last week I decided to take little Miss Mace to a pumpkin patch a few miles away from our house. Would it have been cheaper and closer to get our pumpkins at the local grocery store? Of course...but how much fun is that?


I'm pretty sure they had this set up so that people with any kind of camera skills could make it look like their little one was perched atop this big ol' pumpkin. Obviously I need a little more camera practice...and a child willing to hold still for more than 2 seconds at a time.


Macy had lots of fun running around all the pumpkins, but got frustrated when she couldn't pick any of them up.


Inspecting the goods...


After searching through hundreds of pumpkins, she ended up picking the teeny tiniest one they had by the entrance.


Our little pumpkin picker. (And I promise, the overalls were not chosen purposely for this outing...I'm not that weird.)

Family Pics

Here, for your viewing pleasure...
Carter Family Pictures 2009!

(Photos by Jaclyn Davis Photography)

Couples Costume Ideas

Halloween always starts out as a frustrating holiday for me. I love dressing up, but usually have such a hard time coming up with good costume ideas. Google searches rarely come up with anything fun, unique and cheap, so I thought I would share some of my favorite couples costumes that Brett & I and our friends have come up with over the years.


Halloween 2005
(L to R) The Johnsons as Gomez and Morticia from the Adams Family, Brett and I as each other and the Cookes as nerds in love.


Close-up of Brett as me. Nice hair, right?


Halloween 2006
My absolute favorite! Our group of friends dressed up as the characters from the Wizard of Oz.


Halloween 2007
The Cookes as Pam and Jim from The Office.


The Johnsons as Mario and Luigi.


Me and Brett as Little Bo Peep and a sheep.


Halloween 2008
We weren't able to go to our traditional friends Halloween party, but did get invited to another party where we dressed up like Saturday Night Live characters Mary Katherine Galligher and Matt Foley.

Hopefully this has helped get your creative costume juices flowing. I can't wait for this year's party to see what everyone came up with. (You are going to LOVE ours...but I'm not going to give it away, so stay tuned!)

Hogle Zoo

We have been wanting to take Macy to a zoo for a long time, but just never seemed to be able to find a good time to go. So when Brett was able to take a half day off today, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go up to Hogle Zoo.




We got to see Zuri, the new baby elephant that was born in August. Right as we got there, Zuri decided to lay down for a nap, so we didn't get any good pictures of her. She was pretty cute through!


Giraffes have always been one of my favorite animals to see at the zoo. They also had a baby giraffe there, but it was impossible to get close enough for a picture. (The crowds were terrible...I blame the fact that it's UEA weekend.)


Macy LOVED the gorilla. She really liked all the animals, but she watched the gorilla forever. I was so glad that she got to see him this close.