Halloween

Greetings, faithful followers and friends.  And greetings to you, random internet stalkers.  Most importantly: greetings to my son, who will hopefully enjoy this blog years from now after he's learned to read and gotten past that whole "I'm-an-angry-teenager-and-my-parents-suck" phase.

Halloween in Texas is an interesting time.  That's not really true.  Let me try again:   Halloween in Texas is different than any other Halloween I've ever experienced because I didn't have to wear a parka, boots, and mittens.  In fact, the reason that my son didn't wear his actual Halloween costume during the day was because I was afraid he would overheat.

Nolan's daytime costume:

And his nighttime costume:

As you can see by his evening-wear, mittens, footies, and a head piece would have caused him a heatstroke in 76 degree weather.  Yes, that's right.  76 degrees.  Apparently, last year was much colder at a chilly 86 degrees.  (People in Texas have really bad memories.)

Trick-or-treating was largely uneventful.  Brian convinced me to ditch our sketchy apartment complex and check out a subdivision, which provided quite the hall for Nolan.  Botsies enjoyed the ride in the wagon, too.

After trick-or-treating in a neighborhood not ours, we walked to a local church for some trunk-or-treating (clever play on words, 'eh) where Nolan collected even more candy with even less effort.  Literally, more than twenty cars were lined up all ready to hand out candy to kids.  Kind of a creepy concept, actually: "Children, come to this stranger's trunk and collect some candy."  It's almost as bad as luring children to sit on a red-suited strange man's lap.

Anyway, what was perhaps more exciting than a potential Dateline NBC special was the day's earlier activities.  I got my temporary crown replaced!  Wait, no, that's not exciting.  

However, visiting our house in Little Elm and seeing the progress was definitely exciting:

Boxes of drywall goo.

How the heck is a sink supposed to fit on that narrow surface?

Imagine an oven, range, and microwave here.

Any masonry volunteers?

The tunnel to nowhere.  By nowhere I mean the HVAC unit.

How'd a cowboy get in here?

View from upstairs.

One of the bedrooms. 

The other bedroom.

Exciting.

Doorway to upstairs bathroom.

Formal dining room.

Main floor bath.

Guest bedroom closet.

Our nice grassy backyard.

Foyer.  We wanted to upgrade the door but the cheapest upgrade
was going to be like $1800.  Thanks, but we'll do it ourselves.

Anybody know why there'd be these pipes sticking out of the
ground by the front door?

View from the front looking at one of the bedrooms.

That adorable cowboy figured out the way to get
down the stairs.

Anybody need some scrap drywall?  It's only a little wet
and muddy.

Brian and I are about 90% sure this is the stone we picked
out for the place and mantel.  But we could be on crack.

Technically it's still under contract.

Cowboy checking out his new home.

The new family homestead. 

As the house progresses, I get more and more excited to move in.  That's kind of obvious, but it's true. Now that we're into the month of November, I can say that we'll be in our house next month (knock on wood).  YAY!

Two more pictures before I sign off:

Nolan in his fort on November 1.

He happily spent more than two hours hanging out, eating a
snack, and playing on his leap pad.  It was pretty frickin' cute.