Sat. Nov. 3, 2012 - Happy Halloween!

 Micaela is 48 weeks old!

 Autumn leaves are still falling

 Riley loves when we play with her in the pile of leaves

 Even Seamus gets buried

 Making milk carton ghosts

 Baby Princess Aurora

 Playgroup friends Rapunzel and Cinderella

 Very cute princesses

 Micaela checks out the pumpkins

 Both girls are very impressed with Daddy's knife skills (which are significantly superior to Mommy's)

" Here Daddy, let me help you"

 Riley scooping out pumpkin guts

 Of course Micaela has to climb on the pumpkins

 What a cute kitty cat

 Cinderella is ready for her big night

"Bippity boppity boo"

Daddy, Mommy, Riley and Micaela pumpkins

 It was too windy to leave our milk carton ghosts outside but they looked good in our front window

Off to go trick-or-treating

 Greeted by a mad scientist (Mommy was very amused)

 Riley was a trooper and was out for 1.5 hours before I finally convinced her to go home

 Guess who loved checking out the candy her sister worked so hard for?

 Everyone loves handing out candy

Unfortunately I had a visit to urgent care the next day. I lost the pad of my ring finger, dermabond on my middle and pointer fingers and a superficial cut on my thumb

Just when I thought I was all caught up on the blog I had another delay. On Thursday, when I usually post, my hand slipped while I was cutting a baking pumpkin and I cut 3 fingers and a thumb pretty badly. I feel very fortunate to have amazing neighbors. I quickly found a friend to stay with the girls while her husband drove me to urgent care. The tip of my ring finger couldn't be reattached, I needed to have the cuts on 2 fingers dermabonded together and my thumb had a superficial cut. I had a follow-up appointment this morning and its not pretty but everything is healing. Its really hard to do my usual jobs; I don't know how she does it but Micaela manages to kick my extremely sensitive ring finger during every diaper change. The doctor said it will take weeks to heal so we've got some challenges ahead (and Chad has a lot of dishes in his future) but I'm thankful it wasn't worse. The girls were great in the emergency. Riley drew a picture of my hand while I was at urgent care: all red on black paper. Hopefully she isn't traumatized. Its worth mentioning that Chad had warned me that he had just sharpened the knife...on the sharpener I got him for his birthday. He can expect something soft and furry for Christmas. 

Other than that, we had a great Halloween week. Riley and her friends all dressed up for playgroup. It was a bunch of little princesses, this age is certainly obsessed with the same thing. She also had a party at preschool where they paraded through the other classrooms and played games. Daddy and Riley did a great job carving pumpkins while I kept Micaela away from the carving tools and choking-hazard seeds. Pumpkin carving is not easy with an 11-month-old.

Halloween night was chilly and required a coat and mittens over Riley's costume. She insisted on her tiara until she finally got cold enough to put on a hat. I kept asking if she was ready to go home but she really loved trick-or-treating, admiring everyone's jack-o-lanterns and checking out the other costumes. We were out for an hour and a half before Riley finally agreed to go home. I honestly had a lot of fun being out with our neighbors as well, everyone was friendly and it was great to meet more people. The police drove by and passed out candy. It was so nice to feel safe after years in our neighborhood in Hayward. Chad and Micaela had fun passing out candy. Chad said she crawled for the door every time the bell rang, she loved saying hi to the kids. These holidays just keep getting better every year.