Happy Halloween from the cutest little pineapple and firefighter ever! I was really glad that I took the kids and took these pictures the Saturday morning before Halloween because after that nice morning the weather deteriorated and decided to pour rain all through Halloween. Our ward Halloween party was scheduled to be outside at the Reynold's property and I have to hand it to our ward members, we had a really good turn out in spite of the rain. But, it was dark and wet and Emery was a very angry little pineapple through the whole thing so it wasn't my favorite event. Levi had a lot of fun with the trunk or treat though. He now likes to play pretend trick or treating at our house. He will put a candy in each room and close the door then go knock on the door or have me knock on the door and say "trick or treat!" to get the piece of candy. Haha.
The actual Halloween night was honestly one of the weirdest nights of my life. Here's how it went down:
Two Sundays before Halloween, a new convert in our ward named George was chatting with Eric after Sacrament meeting and invited us over to dinner. On Sunday before Halloween, Eric called him and George invited us to have pie with him on Halloween. He said dinner and then asked if we liked pie so we weren't sure what to expect food-wise. I was thinking, "does he mean chicken pot pie or something?" Anyway, so 6:30 on Halloween night we show up at this guy's house. He actually lives in our neighborhood right next to another member in our ward's house. The house looked totally typical from the outside (aside from being all decked out for Halloween of course). Anyway, so we go up to the front door and one of the first things I notice is he has a giant (like 20"x24") fancy framed print out of the 13 Articles of Faith hanging on the wall by his door. I was thinking, "Well that's one way you tell people you're Mormon now." Then he opened the door and the only way I can describe it is an art museum meets an episode of hoarders. We step inside and the first things I notice is a giant oil painting hanging by the stairs. The walls are covered in oil paintings and the house is filled with small statues and artifacts. Then George was like, "Did I mention that I'm a Baron? My father was the consul of Hungary. And by the way, you are no longer on US soil. This house is a consulate." I think Eric and I both just looked at him like, "Come again?" He then proceeded to give us a tour of his typical suburban home filled with treasures including two Rembrandts, a jade statue with the seal of China on it apparently given to his family by the last emperor of China, a Guttenberg Bible, the twin pistol to the one that shot Abraham Lincoln, and tons of other artifacts. I just kept thinking, "What is happening right now? Is any of this real?" followed closely by the thought, "Oh my gosh my toddler is going to break something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars!" Eric and I just kept shooting each other glances like, "Well this is unexpected." Then, then George opened another narrow door and we stepped into reptile world! There were tons of aquariums on the walls filled with rare geckos and tortoises and snakes. And before I know it, George is letting Levi pet a lizard! (I freaked out on the inside and washed Levi's hands as soon as we left the room. I am super paranoid about salmonella, especially since Levi is still always sticking his hands in his mouth!) Anyway, apparently, George's daughter breeds these rare lizards and sells them. And they have a three-foot long pet lizard who roams the house and apparently is house trained and eats and drinks out of doggie bowls! After the crazy pronouncement that he was a Baron and all the old art and the animals, I think I was in a little bit of a daze. Anyway, then we proceeded to eat blackberry pie off of hundreds of years old silver while the Baron told us about how he was going to be going back to Hungary soon to speak to Parliment. It was all very surreal. Then Levi peed on the Baron's floor! And George was very nice about it but we ushered our son and our sleeping baby out of the house and back home. And as we were leaving the Baron was like, "If things start to get weird, and I mean really weird, you guys come here immediately. I bought this house because it is tucked back away from the street enough that there is space for a military helicopter to land in the front yard." I was thinking, "How worried should I be right now?"
Anyway, so then as soon as we got home, I just had to google him. So I looked up his full name on LDS Tools and found out that he is Baron George Von Bothmer Zu Schwegerhoff. I googled him and that's when things got even wilder. Turns out he was actually born George Davis and grew up in CA. Then when he was 41, his aunt who was married to a Hungarian Baron adopted him and made him her sole heir. So now he's a Baron and that's how he ended up with all this stuff. But he clearly has some delusions because he's of no political importance, his house is definitely not a consulate and there's no way he's speaking to the Hungarian Parliment anytime soon.
So yeah, that was our crazy Halloween night! And here is some more about what else has been going on here lately:
Eric and I took a painting class with a few friends of ours to celebrate our friend Lavell's birthday. It was cool, but I think I would have liked it a lot more under slightly different circumstances. Because it was a Thursday. So first of all, I work on Thursdays. So I had to leave work early and even with leaving a bit early it was still a huge scramble to get back to Tualatin in bad traffic, pick up the kids from daycare, feed Emery and put her down for a tiny nap, pack a dinner for Levi and then get both kids ready to go again and drop them off at the babysitter's house. By the time I finished all of that I was running 15 minutes late and still hadn't had any dinner myself. Then I had to drive up to this hard to get to location in Portland in the dark and pouring rain by myself because Eric went straight from work and I ran into bad traffic again. So by the time I finally got there, I was behind the rest of the class, wet, hungry and frazzled. Thankfully my sweet husband brought me some dinner and I did manage to catch up to the rest of the class, but it was still stressful and not exactly the way I would have hoped it would go. I would love to try one again under less crazy circumstances.
Emery figured out how to sit up last week! It seemed to happen all of a sudden! She went from not wanting to practice prop sitting at all to now she can sit and hold herself up for minutes at a time without toppling over and often with no support from her hands at all! It's crazy!
Mom came and visited last week. We always love it when grandma comes to visit! We are so lucky and spoiled that she gets to come so often!
Sometimes I take the kids to Cabelas in the afternoon. Levi likes to play with the pop guns and look at the big fish. The other day we were there and we found a little John Deere tractor that Levi had a lot of fun "driving."
Emery looks like she's not so sure about his driving abilities. Haha.
Emery has been really in to sticking her tongue out and making funny faces lately.
Levi is so mischievous! While I was putting Emery down for a nap the other day he dumped out this entire dominion set all over the floor. I still haven't resorted all the cards yet!
I have the cutest boys in the whole world!!
A lady in our ward made Emery this beautiful quilt and surprised me with it on Friday! Seriously so sweet of her. And gotta love my little miss with her pretty eyes and chunky thighs!
So this happened yesterday. I finally bought a toy organizer and got Levi's toys all organized. It looks so much better and I just don't even know how all those toys even fit in his room and closet before I did this.
Levi reading Emery a book. Sooo cute! He loves this one because it has an airplane in it and one picture of luggage.
