Happy Halloween!!

We got home in time for Halloween, and we were pretty happy about that. We always like seeing all the kids and their costumes. We usually have about 100 kids when the weather is nice. Tonight it was about 50 degrees. A little cool, but clear and dry, so we saw lots of little trick or treaters. I think I counted about 60 or 70 kids. We saw the Hulk, Spiderman, several witches, an angel, a caveman, Cleopatra, a ninja, a pirate, and Elmo, to name a few.

Kirby decorated the front porch with some of our yard art. We made these a few years ago. He cut the patterns out of plywood and then we spent lots of time painting them and getting them to look just right.

The Boos Brothers are my favorite. When I first saw the pattern I loved it. They are really easy to make, too, because they are pretty much just black and white.

Kirby's other passion for Halloween is painting our son, Rusty!! He has been made up many times over the years, and even though he is now too old for trick or treating, he got painted up again this year. On the way to show off his make-up to Grandma, who lives a couple of blocks away, he somehow managed to fill half a pillow case with candy!! I don't know who was more excited, him or his Dad. I guess boys never really grow up.

You should have seen us trying to get that black make-up off his eyebrows!! And the glue from the horns was pretty fun too. I had to use Goo Gone on him. The funniest part was that after we got the make-up off, I found out his Dad had used a ball point pen to draw the pattern on him. Make-up remover didn't help, so we tried soap and water, but it wasn't very effective, either. Maybe those pen marks will wear off in a day or two!!

Too busy to blog!!

I just realized it has been three weeks since I put anything on here. Right after my last blog we went out on the road for two weeks and I didn't get a chance to get online. Then when we got home, I immediately left for a vacation at the beach. My sister Claudia, my mother, and I rented a condo at North Myrtle Beach and spent a wonderful week shopping, eating, visiting with my sister Veda and her family, and relaxing. The week is always too short, and now we are home again and I'm going back to work.

My mother was determined to get oysters while we were there, so we ate at Prestons, which is a great buffet with all kinds of good home cooking as well as seafood. The shrimp and oysters were good, and so was the roast beef. Another evening we drove down to the Sea Captain's House, which I'm pretty sure used to be somebody's house. It's right on the beach and while we were waiting for our table, we sat in their backyard and watched the waves and the sea gulls. It was a beautiful evening for sitting outside, followed by some of the best flounder and scallops ever.

Even though we tried to find shoes at every store we went in, we had very little success. They either didn't have what we wanted, or didn't have it in our size. We did, however, all find new purses. Claudia and I bought ours one day while Mom was in the room reading a new Betty Neels novel. Then the next day, Mom found the exact same purse that I bought in a different color and bought one for herself.

The Betty Neels book and the search for Barnes & Noble is the most interesting story of our trip. Four new Betty Neels books are released every 4 or 5 months and we found out on one of our trips to the beach that we could get them at Barnes & Noble. So we stopped to pick up the latest ones and learned from a sign in the window that the B&N had moved to Market Common. I'd never heard of Market Common and didn't know where it was, so we went back to the condo and did some research. I called B&N and got directions to their store. We followed the directions, which took us on some strange backroads at the Myrtle Beach airport, but eventually brought us to the back side of some buildings, and a back entrance to the B&N. After looking around and finally purchasing our books, we decided to exit the front door and see what Market Common was all about.

Claudia and I both described the experience as feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she wakes up in the land of Oz. It was like the world was suddenly in color!! We were fascinated by the beautiful, perfectly landscaped, little village we walked out into. I don't know when they built all this, but they have been busy, and are still building. Check it out here:

http://www.myrtlebeach.cc/MarketCommon.html

Guess that's all for this time.