HOME {heart} WINGS: November 2009

Evan and I enjoyed staying home on Halloween and passing out candy to the lil' trick-or-treaters. It was our first halloween where we could enjoy this tradition (or at least this end of it), as our apartment left us disappointed on Hallow's Eve these past two years. We were excited to have roughly 30 or 40 guests stop by! (I think. Evan knows the exact number). Enough to gobble most of our candy but not so many that we had to run to the store again.

We had been delinquent in our pumpkin carving this year so Halloween night we went at it, carving a face out of the pumpkin that had been sitting on our steps, ripening, for most of fall. ... And ripen it had. I do believe that was the first ROTTEN pumpkin I have ever carved! What a slimy halloween treat for us ; ) Needless to say, we forwent the pumpkin-seed roasting part of the tradition! We actually had two pumpkins but since we were pressed for time we decided to team up -- E carved the left side, I did the right. I think they turned out pretty similar actually.

No halloween is complete without a little costume fun! So Evan and I both gave ourselves just about three minutes to come up with costumes. As you can see below, I was a cowgirl. Evan was either some sort of god or a pimp. Perhaps next year we'll have to work longer on our costumes, but I think we did pretty well for just throwing things together!

Enjoy the photos below!

This is a long-overdue post! During a week in mid October my mom flew out to Minnesota to visit Evan and I, and then the three of us took a weekend trip up to Duluth and then Finland, Minnesota where Karrin is working as a Naturalist at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center. You may remember when Kirsten and I dropped her off earlier this August (two photos in collage are from that trip). It was great seeing Karrin in her new home, hearing tid-bits of nature lessons from her growing repertoire (identifying trees, handling birds, reenacting French explorers!), and sharing in her excitement of the great outdoors. We went on many little hikes (we weren't there long enough to tackle anything major), visited a teepee (we wanted to sleep in one but it was realllyyyy cold), and even completed the Ropes Course -- without falling! Although we were there just about a week or two after peak leaf-season, it was still beautiful. Enjoy some of my photos below, and then head on over to my picasa album for a full view.