Hallowthankmas!

I thought that I would mesh all of the fall/early Christmas festivities into one post. Very innovative, and not at all lazy like you might have thought initially. First, here are a few Halloween pics for your viewing pleasure. This spider showed up right underneath our patio door, 4 days before Halloween. It was like the the Great Pumpkin, only in spider form and pretty nasty. Both Duane and I were afraid to capture it, so we just monitored it and waited until it passed away. It did, two days after Halloween. Crazy huh??





Duane and I had a carving competition with pumpkins--it didn't start out that way, but after several critical glances back and forth, things got a bit tense and competitive. Mine is on the right and Duane's is on the left. I think Duane's got the edge in this picture with the lights, but mine happened to be a crowd pleaser with the trick-or-treaters.





Moving along, below are a couple of snippets from Thanksgiving. Duane and I went to Vancouver, WA to be with family for Turkey day. I was also supposed to run the Seattle Marathon, but ended up getting really sicko on Thanksgiving night and many nights after. The picture below was taken with my niece Ronnie about 6 hours before I started my barfing extravaganza. Look how clueless I am...and how cute her shoes are!!

Someone stole my camera (Amy) and took a video of Nina and also of Dylan and Andrew playing around (below). Nina is Ross's mom, and Andrew is my cousin. Pretty silly...

Finally, to start off the Christmas party season, Duane and I were invited by one of Duane's coworkers to a Philipino/American Christmas party at her church. Here's Duane posing in front of the main course, a pig. It looks as though he's protecting the identity of the pig. But then he ate some...I'm confused!

Okay, I had to document this part of the party. The hosts wanted to show the audience some traditional fighting "moves" from the Philipines, and what better way to show that then to bring in a bunch of native Boiseans in muscle pants?? I kept thinking that someone was going to pop out from behind the stage and tell us that we were part of some kind of prank, but alas it was no joke. Those men were intense! They stayed after the performance to party it up--they even changed out of their muscle pants. Overall, the party was really fun and everyone was so nice. There were several traditional performances that were more appropriate (see below) and definitely beautiful and entertaining. I can say with confidence that I've never been to a party like that before!!!