Oden Adventures

We are not really big on Halloween, but since having Vianne, we feel that any holiday which serves to enhance her already phenomenal cuteness should be commemorated ;-D.  This year, it was a bit of a comedy of errors...but the phenomenal cuteness prevailed nonetheless.

A couple weekends before Halloween, the church next door to our house had a Fall Festival so we met Rachelle & The Boys over there.  We decided to go for a very simple fairy princess costume (thank you, cousin-hand-me-downs and Dollar Tree).  Vianne was a bit hesitant at first so the fairy wings came in handy as a shield...

Coaxed her out of the stroller, but still not sure...

...until she discovered an empty playground.  For about five whole minutes, she had it all to herself!

Then we met up with the twins and did some Trunk or Treating.  (Noah & his ark are what you're seeing behind Patrick & the princess.)

Pumpkin Joel & Pirate Jesse

What you don't see pictured is the fact that I was horribly ill and had taken three naps that day (and I never ever take naps) and barely made it over there and felt like I was going to pass out the whole time. 

The weekend before Halloween, we went to a roadside pumpkin stand of sorts because densely populated San Gabriel Valley gave up all its farms for housing developments so you have to drive 1 1/2 hours to find a real pumpkin patch.  Yes, this Oregonian is not impressed.  Added to the disappointment of the place was Mama's miscalculation that Vianne would be ok without a nap for this outing so we were largely only pretending that this was at all fun.

And yet, phenomenal cuteness as Vianne debuts her real costume for this year, a parrot.

She looks like she is being cooperative and charming. 
The camera lies.

In her frenzied state, we didn't dare subject the poor petting zoo creatures to her, but we let her enjoy them from outside the fence.

This actually was cute because she kept saying "Baa, baa!" when she saw the sheep and finally leaned up to its face and said "Baa, baa!" and then waited, and seemed rather disappointed to receive none in return.  Like, "Adults have been telling me for months that this is what you say.  What gives, sheep?"

We picked out and brought home the three most ridiculously expensive pumpkins (never again!) and a few days later saw similarly sized ones at Target for 1/3 of the price and cried our eyes out we set about carving them.

Vianne was so cute with her cleaned out pumpkin that the inevitable didn't occur to us as we cleaned out our own: Of course, this would lead to the pumpkin rolling off the table and splitting in four places, though fortunately not breaking all the way through.

So we improvised with the ol' Bandaged Head look.  Turned out awful cute, regardless.  Our pumpkins three.  From ideas off facebook, I used a drill on mine (right) and put some marbles in the holes. 

And finally on Halloween itself, I chased her around the yard trying to get a decent picture or two.

The parrot costume now explains itself...

And then the day became a whirlwind of car buying (more on this later) and a crazy Mama, who insisted Vianne have some Halloween fun even though Daddy now had to stay home and grade papers, who foolishly thought "We'll just drive down the street to Christ Church of the Valley and go to their party" which resulted in driving around and around the block because this is a huge event with shuttles from faraway parking lots and police cars blocking streets and hundreds of people nabbing any parking they can for miles (now I know).  Fortunately, about the third turn around the vicinity of the church, Rachelle called and we went over to meet The Boys for a little old fashioned trick-or-treating (never mind that it was now about an hour past V's bedtime).

A bit of a chaotic attempt to "celebrate", but even still, in the end, phenomenal cuteness prevails. See?