Halloween, Head Injuries, and Happy Birthday!

OK, let’s take a quick break from the Disneyland re-cap and catch up with what we’ve been doing lately.

Abe has had a lot of injuries the past few weeks. It started just after our Disneyland trip, when Joel and Abe were playing with Joel’s Disneyland souvenir--a TRON “Identity Disc” (basically a Frisbee)--in the backyard. Joel threw it to Abe and hit him directly between the eyes with the hard plastic toy. It immediately swelled up and turned blue, and Abe’s forehead looked more Klingon than human:



If that’s the damage a toy disc can do, imagine what the discs can do in the electronic world of TRON!

Not many days after, Abe was complaining about something “sharp” on his cheek when he was eating some Skittles. I figured a chunk of candy was stuck on his tooth, scraping against his cheek. I peeked into his mouth and noticed that the back HALF of one of his teeth was COMPLETELY GONE, and the broken remainder of tooth was scraping against his cheek.

Amanda took him to the dentist, where it was quickly filled and fixed. However, while Abe’s mouth/cheek was numb with Novocain, he was chewing on his lip, and it got swollen/infected. He wouldn’t let us take a good picture of it—here’s the best we got:



At that point he could’ve gone as Quasimodo for Halloween. Instead, he was Spider-man, Joel was Indiana Jones, and Maddy was Luna Lovegood (from Harry Potter):



Elliott was Dumbo, and wasn’t too thrilled with his costume:



Here he is heading upstairs, embarrassed, to find something else to wear:



Because Halloween was on Sunday this year, we went to the ward’s Trunk-or-Treat party. We’d never done a Trunk-or-Treat before, and Amanda and the kids were not happy with the results. Apparently going car-to-car getting candy is lame compared to running around neighborhoods. Personally, I much preferred standing by the trunk for 15 minutes handing out candy instead of going around to houses for an hour or more, and it was better than getting off the couch every few minutes for an entire evening.

Here’s our decorated trunk, which Amanda and kids were in charge of (though I was asked to draw the monster mouth):



Amanda also made the kids some Halloween pajama shorts:



In other news, Amanda’s clock collection has grown (due to her recent birthday):



The red clock on the lower left was a present from me; the clock in the lower middle was knitted by Amanda’s sister Molly; the tire clock on the bottom right was bought by Amanda at the swap meet, using birthday money from Judy (which I’m sure Judy never expected).

Joel’s birthday was this past weekend.



He chose roast beef, potatoes and gravy, and homemade macaroni and cheese for his birthday dinner (whatever happened to Little Caesar’s Pizza on birthdays?!):



For his cake, he wanted a TRON Light Cycle, but since that would’ve taken more time and talents than Amanda or I possess, Amanda made a TRON Identity Disc cake instead:



We did NOT throw this one at Abe.

We’ve been re-watching all the Harry Potter movies over the last couple weeks in preparation for the new one coming out this weekend. We’ve decided that since bringing Elliott would make it fun for NOBODY, we’re going to see it in shifts—Maddy and I will go see it while Amanda and the boys are at home, then Amanda and the boys will go see it while Maddy and I stay home with Elliott.

We’re also really excited to celebrate Thanksgiving soon—I get 2 days off from work—maybe I can watch some of the 344 movies on our Netflix Queue!!