Long Time No See!

 Whew-  it's been a busy few weeks around as evidenced by our lack of blogging.  And sadly, mom is having brain farts when it comes to her computer and can't seem to find some of the pictures she wanted to post.  Never fear though, she found 19 others so you can still glimpse our fascinating life!  We last chatted a few days before Halloween.  Those are the pictures my assistant can't seem to find.  I went as Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games and you'll have to take my word for it that I was an awesome Katniss.  Mom's work friend even said I was the best one she had seen and she saw lots. It was pretty awesome.  This was also the first Halloween in our neighborhood since we were out of town last year.  It. Was. Cra-cra!  Remember when mom said that we needed to buy our bags of candy at Costco and we bought 7 bags with 150 pieces in each bag?  Well.  We needed all that.  We estimated close to 500 trick or treaters and is was totally cool.  The neighborhood was so fun that night.  It was like a huge party and everyone seemed very respectful of the neighborhood, nothing was trashed and there were even kids out the next morning picking up trash.  All in all a great event!

The rest of the week was spent in recovery and we were happy for the weekend.  Mom headed out with a friend of hers to hike Tumamoc Hill on the west side of Tucson.  It is kind of iconic Tucson and mom had never hiked it in all of her 20 years living here.  It was really pretty and worth the drive, especially when she and her friend hit a popular Mexican bakery not to far from there and got fresh, hot tortillas and empanadas to round out their morning.

While mom was doing that, dad took me and my friend Ella up to Dave and Busters.  Ella had never been so I got to introduce her the fun that is D&Bs.  Everyone had a really fun day.

The next day- Sunday, November 6, Tucson does its version of All Souls Day with a huge procession through downtown that can top 100,000 people.  It really is a cool event and I love going.  We are lucky enough to have friends that own a building not to far from the parade so we head down early, paint faces, eat, drink and be merry, run around and melt our face makeup and then walk to the parade.  My friend Alexa is pretty good at face painting so she was my makeup artist this year.

There was a whole bunch of painting going on, with the moms and dads getting in on the action too.  My mom of course didn't because she was having flashbacks of trying to get the paint off our faces for hours after we got home last year.  She figured one face was enough.  Maybe next year....

I did make my own flower head piece which is also pretty cool, yes?

The next week, mom and I headed out to do our civic duty.  She realized this year that she has been taking me to vote since I was 6 months old.  Kind of cool right?  While we were not thrilled with the results this year we are going to suck it up and see what happens.

Then we had a great visit from the Dallas Goedels.  Uncle Tim, Aunt Dana, Brooke and Faith rolled into town on Thursday night.  I happened to have a softball game that night and they walked up just in time to see me hit a real, live home run!  It wasn't a "circus ball" home run where you score because no one can throw or catch a ball and you just keep running on overthrows.  This was real, over the center fielder's head, roll to the fence home run.  With two runners on.  AND to make things even better, I had to come in and pitch the final inning, with our team up by one run.  Oh the nail biting going on in the stands!  Between some nice fielding by my team mates for the first out and my two strike outs, we were able to hold our lead and FINALLY win a game!  It was pretty amazing and we ended up taking third place in the tournament.  Not bad for a team that won three games all season.  We just peaked at the right time.
The rest of the weekend was spent showing Brooke and Faith around Tucson and all the cool things we have here.  I introduced them to Eegees and they loved it of course.

And then Brooke and Faith really wanted to see cactus and a snake.  We were able to help them out with the cactus part but the snake not so much.

I know Grandpa and Grandma loved having us all together and it was super fun to see everyone again.  The Dallas Goedels left on Monday morning to continue their adventures and then I only had two days of school left until our Thanksgiving break.  We did our annual camping trip and it was another perfect trip.  The weather was awesome, everyone was happy, the food was good.  I ate four rolls, mashed potatoes and turkey.  My plate was very beige but tasted so good!
As you can see, the adults were very enamored of our table setting- we have pictures of people taking pictures.  That's how good it was.

So now, we are caught up to this weekend.  We did some black Friday shopping and ended up buying more for ourselves but that's how it goes right?  We'll be back next week with Christmas decorating pictures!