Blogger Bates: Vessel's Shindig and Halloween (or the longest post of all time)

So I'm finally catching up on posting. I hate the feeling I get after something special ends. Like last month. All month was such a build up to Halloween & it was so much fun and this time it was even more fun because it was Vessel's 1st birthday on the 28th. All October I was very excited for Vessel's birthday and Halloween and they're both over now and it's a little depressing. I get the same way when the Christmas season ends. But let me tell you a little about the month.

Mike and I debated whether or not to throw a 1 year party for our son. I always said I wouldn't do it because at age 1 it's not like the kid is going to remember it and it's basically all for the parents. But since Vessel's birthday is so close to Halloween we decided to throw a combined birthday/Halloween party as an excuse to socialize with our friends and family. I prepared for it all month. Usually I'm the queen of procrastination, but I started early. It was fun decorating the house. I made jack-o-lanterns, ghosts and bats out of construction paper and hung them up all around the house. I made little ghosties from tissue and hung them from the ceiling, Mike covered our living room with cobwebs, and I handmade a Happy Halloween and Happy birthday sign and hung them in the entrance way. It was nice to get all the decorations done early, not only so I didn't have to worry about them last minute, but also because I actually got some mileage out the decorations by having them up all Halloween season, instead of the day before. Every morning when Vessel woke up and I took him into the kitchen for breakfast he would point at all the ghosts and bats hanging up and would "talk" to me about what he was seeing. It was really cute. We wanted to invite a lot of people to our party, but because we have such a small apartment we thought it would be best to have 2 parties; one for family and one for friends. We had both parties on one day. Talk about stressful! I will never do that again. But with Mike's help everything turned out okay, even though I couldn't relax the entire time. Hopefully other people had fun though. We played a game called "guess the scary movie clip" and my friend Tracy helped me compile a bunch of scary movie clips onto a DVD and it played like a slide show. We also played some other games and we had a costume contest and a pumpkin carving contest. Thanks to all those who were good sports and participated! For food I tried to keep things simple, but really it would've been a lot easier on me if I didn't home make the majority of the food. We had a delicious chicken salad that Mike made which we put on croissants. We had blue and yellow corn chips with salsa and a 7 layer bean dip I made, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, sliced apples with caramel fondue, a fruit platter, a veggie platter, punch with frozen hands, orange dream salad, and soda. Plus I made two cakes, one ice cream cake and a 2 layer chocolate cake. I think cooking was the most stressful part of the party, but it seems like most people enjoyed what we made. Some people from both parties were kind enough to bring a treat to share.

Vessel received a lot of awesome gifts from everyone and I think he was a little bit overwhelmed by all the new stuff and all the visitors. By the time the 2^nd party approached he was so tired he couldn’t keep his eyes open so we had to put him to bed during the middle of it. Our friends Sheldon and Michelle came a little later along with my cousin Amanda and we played a game called “mafia.” It was a really fun day, but also very exhausting!

On Sunday (Vessel’s actual birthday) my dad and Christine came to visit Vessel and we had cake and ice cream and let Vessel open even more presents from Steph, Grandpa Brett and great grandma and Grandpa Hiner. Vessel started walking for real that day. He’s still a bit wobbly and unsure of himself and times, but he let’s go of the furniture or the wall without encouragement from us and takes off by himself. It’s so cute.

Tuesday was the ward party thrown by the Elder’s Quorum. More sugar was consumed. Vessel got to wear his Japanese lion dancer jumper. He had like 3 costumes this year and wore all of them at one point.

Wednesday was Halloween and I substituted for a fellow crossing guard. It was actually fun because all the kids were dressed up for Halloween and I got to see them in their costumes. Mike and I were planning on taking Vessel on his first trick-or-treating adventure, but Mike had class from 6 until 9. He was on campus the entire day, so Vessel and I took him out for a late lunch to give him a break from all his studying. After we dropped him off at school again, I decided to go to the Mount Olivet cemetery which is across the street from the stadium. I used to see it when I rode TRAX to campus and I was always so curious about it. I have a fascination with cemeteries and since it was Halloween I thought it might be fun to walk around and look at headstones. It was the coolest cemetery ever! It was like straight out of a movie or something. It was around 6:00 so it wasn’t dark yet, but the sun was starting to cast long shadows and turning everything gold. The air was crisp and the sky was bright blue. Vessel and I were the only people there and it felt incredible like we were in an entirely different world. I don’t know why it was such a cool experience for me. The cemetery had the biggest, most elaborate headstones I’ve ever seen. I later found out from Tracy that there are a lot of famous people buried there (including historical church figures.) The cemetery was silent except for the crunching of leaves under my feet. As I was walking around I heard more footsteps and was totally blown away when I looked up and saw that I was face to face with a large group of deer. The buck of the family was seriously only 10 feet away from me. There were some doe and fawn as well, and another buck further away from the others. I was a bit nervous because I know that moose can be very aggressive and temperamental and have been known to attack humans, especially to protect their young. So I kept my distance fearing that they might act in the same manner. After we stared motionless at each other for some amount of time, the deer went on their merry way and I continued looking around at the graves. I pulled out my camera phone and took some pictures of the deer, but since my camera uses infrared, I don’t know how to transfer the pics onto our computer, so my apologies that I couldn’t show you all. As I was wandering I saw a huge headstone shaped like the Washington monument and all that was written on it was “Cheesman.” No dates or anything. I saw another one with the name “Gassman” on it. It was awesome. I know it must sound cheesy but I really enjoyed being there at the cemetery. I want to go back when I have more time.

That night Gavin and Tracy got me some tomato soup from the soup kitchen (My favorite!) and we ate dinner together. Then Tracy went with me to take Vessel around the complex for his first trick-or-treating experience. We loaded up on enough candy to last us the next month or so. As Tracy, Vessel, and I were walking back towards our building Tracy said she saw our kitchen blinds close. It freaked me out A LOT so we made Gavin go investigate and it ended up being Mike all along because he got home from his class earlier than expected.

Well, that’s how the party and Halloween went down. Sorry it took me so long to post it! Hope you all had a very festive Halloween season like we did!

The sign I made.

Witches night out at Gardner Village.

Vessel and his aunt Kathy dressed up as an 80's aerobicizer.

Opening presents with Daddy's help.

Vessel with cousin AJ the tiger.

Vessel poking cousin AJ in the eye. I thought this picture was hilarious.

Jenny the prom princess, Karen the hula girl, David the dark mysterious figure, Danny as Jason Vorhees, Steph the army girl and Mike the skull head guy. (Danny won the costume contest at the family party.)