Pre-Halloween Festivities

Halloween weekend ended up a little crazy this year; good thing I had the girls' costumes done early! We had an ostrich rider (again -- gotta love getting two years' use out of a costume!), a cheerleader, and Jewel, the blue bird from the movie Rio.

Friday night our elementary school had its trunk or treat, plus Livian had a halloween party to go to. Taxiing everyone around was a little crazy, but in the end the girls had a good time. Livian sure loves all the attention that ostrich costume attracts!

Saturday morning was unexpectedly crazy as well. Let's see if I can explain this... Last week my friend and neighbor Amy asked me if I wanted to enter a contest for HGTV for a show called Curb Appeal. Basically you submit pictures and a video showing how icky the front of your house looks, and if you win, you and two of your neighbors get fancy schmancy makeovers for the front of your house/yard. Initially I said I'd go in with Amy as an applicant, but after some thought and discussion with Tuell, we ended up declining. (Our main reasons were not wanting to be on TV, and Tuell not wanting other people messing with his yard.). So Amy went in with two of our other neighbors to create a video to submit.

Soon after applying, Amy received the news that they made it to the top 10, and Saturday morning some PR people were going to come out to interview them and take some videos. This would allow the network to narrow the choices down to a winner, which would be announced by Nov. 1. The interviews started early, so by the time I got outside to go watch them, I figured they'd be nearly done. After 15 minutes or so of watching them walk around Amy's yard filming, a car drove up and stopped. And out came John Gidding, the star of the show, to surprise them with the news that they had won! I hadnt seen the show so I didn't realize who this guy was, but it was pretty obvious from his model looks that he was someone from TV. Then when Amy, Amanda and Hollee started screaming and going nuts, it was pretty clear what had just happened!

The next several hours nearly all our neighbors were outside watching the filming. It was seriously unreal! So now we have to wait until January when they will do the filming to find out what cool stuff is going to be done to three of my awesome neighbors' houses!