Carved pumpkins

It was really hard to get back into the Halloween spirit since the snow had us home bound and unable to go to our friend’s annual Halloween party. Our costumes sadly hung from their hangers being unworn and the cookies I spent hours on went uneaten in the fridge. Having no electricity made everything difficult, boring and cold. How did the pioneers possibly survive without the internet?!

David loved gutting out the pumpkins

Carefully carving out the outline.

David and I were determined to have some kind of Halloween fun. So in the sunlight streaming in from the kitchen, we carved pumpkins.

This is what I usually look like when I'm concentrating

It’s a tradition that my family has done every Halloween and what I plan to do with my kids one day. We choice our designs and went to work.

David’s pumpkin! Isn’t this little bat adorable! I love his eyes. This was David’s first carved pumpkin. So proud of him!!

My pumpkin. This design took me FOREVER to carve out. I have been doing pumpkins like this for a few years now and wanted to challenge myself this year. I thought it came out pretty darn good!

These look great on the deck of the house! At least there will be some kind of lights going on our street.

First big snowfall of the year...BEFORE HALLOWEEN!!

I actually lie a bit with the title of this post. It actually snowed briefly on Thursday night.
It was enough to make this snowball that David was proud to show off. It was also enough to make coat my car in a quarter inch of ice and snow in the morning causing me to be 10 minutes late. Not happy! But it wasn’t enough to stick to the ground or cause a panic.

Now today’s snow fall was a hard hit. It started about 4pm while I was making cookies for our party. At around 6pm the roads it was coming down faster and harder. The roads were quickly becoming dangerous and cars slide in all different directions. By 7pm we had to cancel going to the party. I was not a happy camper having to miss out on the annual Halloween party at my friend’s house.

With our plans cancelled, we decided to watch a scary movie. I wanted something really scary like Phenomena Activity but David wanted to see another movie he didn’t see. We decided on watch a movie called “Behind the Mask, The rise of Leslie Vernon”. Not a great movie and almost laughable to times. I didn’t find it at all scary and more annoying at times.

Just when the movie was finally getting good (I say that loosely) there was a loud pop and the lights went out. The whole street had no power and we were forced to try to keep entertained until we went to bed….at 10pm!

It was not the best Saturday and I went to bed feeling very disappointed and a bit worried. Throughout the night all you could hear was trees breaking. Because the leaves are still on the trees (that rhymed) the snow lay heavy and cause large branches to come down.
Never in my life had I experienced this much snow before Halloween. I am hoping this isn’t a sign of the Winter ahead of us.

9th Annual Family trip to Salem, Mass!

There may have been a lot of confusion, stress and craziness trying to plan the annual trip to Salem this year. But we managed to pull it off successfully. In fact this may have been the BEST trip to Salem…EVER! David loading up the mini van

David and I packed up the 8 mini-van and picked up my family. Because my Dad had some car problems, we needed to all carpool in David’s parents mini van. Work fine for me! I liked that we all got together instead of separate cars.

Dad posing with a witch

I love the differant looks on their faces

Finaly we hit bumper to bumper traffic on the highway heading to Salem. This time we sailed right though. There was no traffic at all. Maybe it was because it was the middle of October, the fact that it was Sunday afternoon or maybe we just got lucky. Whatever the reason, everyone was happy to have made it to Salem without sitting in traffic for hours.

This year we really enjoyed Salem. We saw new stores, watched a motorcycle parade and didn’t have to fight our way through the crowd. The weather was beautiful, not too warm and not too cold. It was a great day!

Tried to take a pictures of all of us

Pumpkin decorating contest

My personal favorate pumpkin! Miss Piggy!


A creepy demon Ernie who David felt the need to hug

The awesome zombie telatubbies. This is what nightmares are made of! Espcially the look on David's face!! Yikes!






My Dad with Frankie




Goofing around in the graveyard



In the graveyard.

The tree which several witches were hung from.

Got a picture of everyone except me. David kindly posed for me.

Love the look on everyones face as they realize what David was doing behind them. Too funny!

Not sure what everyone was looking at....

David the Gray with Gandolf the White

Got to see a motorcycle parade!

Eating lunch on the roof of the parking garage. Mmm cheesey (private joke)!

Love this picture of us! We had so much fun!!

10 Years have passed

Today is the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. I still can how I felt, what I was doing and where I was. Tears still rolls down my face when I hear the stories about loss and heroism. My heart breaks for the children who lost their parent, the parents who lost their children or the families who never fully got closure. Often I find myself wondering what those poor people in the building or airplane felt moments before their death. I put myself in their shoes and wonder if I too would be brave enough to fight or would I have passed out from panic.

September 11 will be a day that I tell my kids of. I want them to understand how it changed our nation. Why we should be thankful to the many men and women in the military. Why we should thank a fireman, police officer or paramedic any chance we can. Today is a day that we should fell blessed for what we have and appreciate that life can end in a moments notice. To remind our family how much we love them. How lucky we are to be a nation that allows us to speak our mind, practice any religion and marry who we want (or divorce who we want).

I hope everyone has turned this event into not a day of mourning but of a day of appreciation and pride of our country.

You can read my post 10 years ago on September 11, 2001 here.

Saw the last of Harry Potter and friends

SPOILER ALERT: This post may contain some information regarding the books. My suggestion is to read the book already!!

Harry Potter may not have died in the last movie, but in a small way he did. Along with the rest of the gang that I have seen grow up in the last several years. It is not secret that I love Harry Potter, heck my blog is an tribute to the movie. But I was not always a HP fan.

My brother and sister loved HP from the very first movie. They were obsessed and I would tease them on the nerdiness of it all. I giggled when I went to see Lord of the Rings in the theater and saw countless kids dressed up as Harry. Not to mention the 3 theaters playing the movie completely sold out. What was so great about this little boy who was a Wizard?

Well I didn’t find out until I got sick and stayed home from work. I was about 20 at the time and was laying on the couch looking for something good to watch on TV. I saw the DVD case with the first Harry Potter movie by the TV. Reluctantly, with some coaxing from my brother, I put the movie in. The rest was history. It was a tornado of me reading all the books, waiting in line at midnight to be the first to get my hands on the newest book, collectable wands placed on my shelves and buying my ticket for the newest movie 2 weeks in advance. I truly became a Harry Potter geek.

Even though I had read the book and knew the fate of Harry and his friends, I was sad to go to the last movie. I knew who was going to die and who was to live, but seeing it with the characters that I have witnessed grow up was both thrilling and slightly sad. I still had to hold back tears when one of the twins died or when Doby was buried.

I personally loved the movie and thought it was one of the few movies that followed the book pretty closely. Many people disagree with my opinion and that’s fine. I love to hear peoples take on the last movie and hear how they would have made it better. I do admit that that I was disappointed at Mrs. Weasley’s big line came up in the movie so flat when it was so strong in the book. But I understand that the book is ALWAYS better then the movie.

Sadly I saw Daniel Radcliff portray Harry Potter for the last time today. Eight years of following this movie is now over. I will patiently wait for the box collection set of DVDs to come out to have a movie marathon with my sister and brother. I like to think that my kids will enjoy watching and reading Harry Potter as much as I did. But after hearing David’s 7 year old Nephew came right out and says Back to the Future was boring and wanted to watch something else made lose hope for the future generations. Then again they still love Wizard of Oz…

Went to the Bruins "Rolling Rally" parade

The Bruins won the Stanley Cup and tradition in Boston was to celebrate by having a “Rolling Rally” parade on the duck boats.
I had never been to a parade to celebrate a Boston sports team win. But David, being a huge Bruins fan, insisted that we go. I agreed and we made plans to meet some of my friends in Boston.

We got to Boston at about 7am. The weather was cool and I wish I brought a sweatshirt. The parade didn’t start until 10am so we had a lot of waiting to do. But if order for us to get a good spot, we needed to get their nice and early.
The sun came out and it got HOT!! I wish I brought a nice cold drink but I didn’t dare lose my place because the crowd was forming. Hundred of people lined the sidewalk to catch a glimpse of the cup and team that were to pass by.

Finally, after what seemed like FOREVER, the duck boats were in view. They made their way to us and were inches away from us. I loved watching David’s face as the players he rooted for were right in front of him.

Even though I am not a Bruins fan and had no clue who any of the players were (except for Tim Thomas) I got into the whole parade. I clapped, waved and smiled big as they passed by. It was amazing.

The Stanley cup passed by us and I felt an electricity in the crowd. It was truly awesome to witness. I felt like I just saw a piece of history. David nearly jumped the roadblocks to when the cup was right in front of us.

Although we waited 3 hours for the parade to start, it was well worth it, despite that we both got major sunburns and almost past out from the heat. David kept that smile on his face the entire day. Nothing better then that!