Backtracking

So, nothing really exciting is going on right now, except maybe that today was my last day of classes for about a week and a half. Mike still has classes, so I get to laugh at him. Anyway, since nothing is really going on right now, I figured I'd go back and summarize Halloween and share a little about Christmas.

The Monday before Halloween we carved pumpkins (that's my family's tradition). Mike got to clean both pumpkins out since I'm allergic to them. This is actually a very convenient allergy because cleaning the pumpkins was always my least favorite part. This year was kind of weird for me because it is the first year that I carved a pumpkin the old-fashioned way in a very long time. My dad and I had gotten into those pattern things for the cool pumpkins, but Mike is against those.

The real fun came when it was time to light the candles in the pumpkins. Mike had cut pretty small openings on top, so he was having a hard time lowering lit candles into the pumpkins and he had to figure out how to light the candles while they were inside. The matches would burn out before they got to the candle and we didn't have any long ones so Mike gets this idea. He tells me to go get a piece of paper, and when I bring it to him he rolls it up and lights one end on fire... As soon as that paper went into MY pumpkin, it just burst into flames. In fact, it looked like my pumkin burst into flames. Flames were coming out the top, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, just everywhere! It was hilarious. I didn't get any pictures of the pumpkin on fire because I was laughing so hard. If you look at the picture where they're lit though you can see how black the inside is because of all the ash.

For Christmas this year we're going to VA. I'm really excited for it, but we decided that traveling for Christmas has certain inconveniences. The main one is how to do our presents for each other. We don't want to have to travel with them, so we decided to do a mini-Christmas before we go to VA. Since we are going to have presents, we needed a tree, but living in Wymount means no room for anything extra so we weren't sure what to do. Then I had a thought that I'm pretty proud of. We decided to make a paper tree and tape it to our balcony door. We had a lot of fun making it, especially the ornaments that we drew on. Mike made a smiley face Santa and a Mario themed one. I made a stable one, a Santa and reigndeer one, a winter scene and then just acouple of colorful ones. We felt so creative when we were done!