Renaissance Festival

With the end of year schedule filling up, we realized we'd better use our Renaissance Festival tickets, so we made last minute plans to go on Saturday.

We couldn't have picked a better week-end for weather. It was a beautiful day.

The first thing we did was catch a couple of the shows. We saw the first act of the jousting tournament, then saw Fire Whip do his thing.

Next we saw the escape artist Rondini. Olivia and Carmen got to help with one part of the show.

We split up for lunch. I took the girls and got my Polish food (they got chicken-on-a-stick and pizza). Carmen and Olivia sweet talked me into getting some souvenirs.

The boys meanwhile got to ride on a few rides.

We watched some more jousting.

We went to the Arsene comedy/magic/juggling show.

We made a very fast trip to the gardens to take our pictures.

(This year I went back and properly collected them all for a good comparison.)

Then we rushed back to see the final outcome of the jousting tournament.

I like that they change the story lines up. This time there had been a murder that the heel Spanish knight had been accused of. He ends up killing all the other knights to prove his innocence in a trial by combat.

Only to have the murder victim return as the headless horseman to kill the Spanish knight.

It was a fun day in the kingdom.

Halloween

Halloween was on Thursday this year. Over the previous weekend we started looking for some pumpkins and couldn't find any anywhere near us. As a last resort, I decided to stop by a few places on my home from work on Tuesday and was able to find some in the pouring rain outside a Kroger.

We carved them that night, which was our only free time before Halloween.

We ended up with a witch, a pirate, a Minecraft Creeper, and jack-o-lantern with a hat.

Wednesday night we had the ward trunk-or-treat. Amber valiantly got the costumes finished (including helping Olivia, who made her own this year) and our Minecraft Ender Dragon, Minecraft Creeper, Sloth, and Harley Quinn made it to the church.

We had chili to eat and chilly outside. There was a chance of rain and it was pretty cold, but we ended up doing the trunk-or-treating outside. Damon won his category for best costume.

On Halloween the school had crazy hair day, so Carmen once again did her rag curls to make a beautiful fro.

On Halloween night, Carmen decided to go with the DiValls, while the rest of the kids went with Amber and the Pomazals while I manned the candy bowl. They were pretty happy with their hauls.