Reasons to be Thankful

We got to spend Thanksgiving with these fun faces.  I'd say that's a pretty good thing to be thankful for.

This is Our Town!

We have a great time when my camp friends get together in Chicago.  I mean, it's Chicago.  It's pretty awesome.  But sometimes, it would be nice not to have to make the three hour trip and to show off what your own town has to offer.  So we did.  The Arcadia gang came to Grand Rapids (well, they started in Allendale, but we'll get to that).  And we had a pretty good time.  Though I'm not sure if everyone remembers...

We started the weekend off at Ike's place for games and socializing and we tailgated at the Grand Valley football game.

We moved downtown on Saturday night where Ike hooked the gang up with a couple of rooms at the

'ol JW and we hit the town, stopping at a few local favorite hot spots, Founders, Hop Cat, and Flannigans, with a few more stopping at various other spots along the way.

I like to think we showed them a good time and they just might come back for more...

This Never Gets Old...

Celebrating my birthday by going to a Steelers game in Pittsburgh?  Yes please!  Throw in a trip to a haunted amusement park?  Absolutely!  And so I got to have a totally age-appropriate birthday celebration in good 'ol PA.  What I love about going to Pittsburgh (outside of the amazing 7 hour car drive), is that we try to do something different every time we go.  And we did that once again this time.  We'd never been to Kennywood, which is a regular-season amusement park, not unlike Michigan's Adventure, so we got to take that in (we will duplicate this adventure, however, b/c they had to close early so we got free tix for next season). 

Ready to begin the scarefest at Kennywood.

  Another first was our pre-game lunch venue, the Buckhead Saloon at Station Square.  And a ride on the Gateway Clipper down the river to the entrance of Heinz Field.   Not a bad mode of transpo...but note for the next time - buy the round trip ticket.  Otherwise you may get lost under bridges late at night in Pittsburgh...

We've begun this strange tradition of taking this picture every time we go to a game...

Shocktoberfest Stats

October is Shocktober.  That's all there is to it.  We cram in as much scary fun stuff as we can and sometimes it overflows into the next month...Scarevember?  Hmm, not sure if that works or not.  But here's how we fared this year...

Sets of Green, Orange and Purple Lights in the Yard: 10

New tombstones made this year: 2

Costumes worn: 1 (just the doggie this year)

Scary Movies Watched: 5

Scary Video Games Played: 1

Scary TV Shows Watched:

2 shows/7 episodes watched so far

Halloween Themed TV episodes: 5

Halloween-themed Amusement Parks visited: 1

Haunted Houses in aforementioned Amusement Park: 3 (we would have gone to more but the park closed early due to potential inclement weather...)

Trick or Treaters: 0...we didn't make it home in time...

Bags of candy bought for those trick or treaters that we now have to eat ourselves: 6