... that I LOOOOVE HALLOWEEN?!?!?!

I'll say it again:  I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is something about costumes that I absolutely love.  I will take any excuse I can to get dressed up!  So naturally Halloween is my favorite holiday!!!  Proof:

Our Ninja Turtle costumes turned out so epic last year, I was not sure we'd be able to top it.  I had an idea a few months ago to make us Transformers costumes that actually transformed, and even started collecting all the cardboard we could find.  But a couple weeks before Halloween, I started to not be too excited about that idea.  So I started racking my brain for something else, and decided that I wanted to be Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas!  I was especially excited because I knew that this costume would take a lot of sewing, which I could do on my new sewing machine that I got last Christmas from my mother in law (Thanks Tanya!!!!).
So Matt and I went to Savers and bought me two dresses, and a skirt:

and we bought Matt a cheap suit.  I also used some khaki material that Matt had cut off of some pants.  A couple of days with my sewing machine, and we had a dress!  Matt cut off the bottom of his coat and made some tails, and I used the extra pieces to make his collar.  Then we used some fabric paint to make the pinstripes, throw in a pair of white tights and some face paint, and voila!

We ended up using all the cardboard after all:

And decorated the house a little as well:

Then we were ready for our party!!!!!!!!!

I wanted to be super awesome and come up with all sorts of "spooky" foods with labels and stuff,

but this is as far as I got:

Eyeballs

Bones

We also had chili, meatballs, guac, chips, and some limeade.  None of which got cute labels.  Fail.

We decided to put Hocus Pocus (my FAVORITE Halloween movie) on for the kids, then started some party games!  We got the idea to do a "Minute to Win It" party from a friend of ours, and it was totally fun!

Move an oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands:

Stack three golf balls on top of each other:

Blow a stack of cards off the top of a bottle, leaving the least amount of cards on top:

And the winner's board:

It was pretty fun!  After the games, we busted out the millions of sugar cookies Cait had made earlier and let the kids have a field day!

A few "kids" even made some monsters on the old family "Monster Maker"

And of course everyone wanted to take pictures in the coffin

Chad showed up at the last minute in a costume too:

Oh you can't tell what he is?  He's Donald Trump.  Lame.  But our party was awesome, and a good time was had by all.

I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...that my family came to visit?

So continuing on with my family visiting...

After Kell, Mom, and Babes showed up on Wednesday, Jer, Dad and Cutter showed up on Thursday.  We all met at City Creek, where we went to dinner and had fun walking around.  We even took a short walk to Temple Square.  Well, everyone else did-- Matt and I were too busy buying caramel apples.  But when they're buy two get one free, we can't pass that up!  (Yes... we did buy three :)

Cutter and Babes had a great time playing in the fountain, and except for a little regurgitation incident, the evening was very pleasant.

Kar and Zach flew in Friday morning, then Matt and I picked up Jacob from the airport Friday night and brought him down to Provo to complete the reunion.  The Wingers were nice enough to let our family crash their Provo house, so we were chillin in style!  But then we all got hungry, and nothing quite says "visiting Provo" like a late-night family trip to the Creamery :)

Saturday afternoon was the BYU Homecoming game against Oregon State.  It was a tad chilly, and it might have rained just a titch, and we might have lost at the very end, but all in all it was a good game.

Afterwards, we met up with Matt's brother in law and nephew for a little pre-dinner snack at Kneaders:

Then headed back to the Winger's for some more relaxing.  We ordered some pretty awesome takeout from a place called Spicy Thai:

And may have had a little too much fun entertaining ourselves in the restaurant while we waited.  Still can't figure out why I am the one on the bottom of this pile here.

Just as we were about to leave, Jake had the genius idea of running over to Blickenstaff's for some late night snacks.  Oh, you haven't heard of Blickenstaff's?  It's only a super cool old fashioned toy and candy store in the Riverwoods and Gateway malls named after my cousin.  Pretty awesome, right?  We grabbed some bulk candy and sodas to finish off our night of family fun with a sugar high.

Everyone left the next day except for my parents, who decided to take a little trip down to Blanding: the birthplace of all things Blickenstaff.  They went down to do a little hiking, then came back up to spend one more fun night with us before heading home.  We met in Provo and went to PF Chang's for dinner, super yummy.  Then mom HAD to go to the creamery one last time (she is obsessed with their Graham Canyon ice cream) and Cait did a little grocery shopping.

Did I say grocery shopping?  I meant Halloween shopping.

Mom and dad spent the night at our house so I could take them to the airport in the morning, and us Harrisons know how to entertain:  mom and dad got to see all three snakes eat!  Dad already loved LJ (he played with him last time he visited) but they hadn't seen the baby snakes yet.  And it was the perfect night to feed all three of them.  Needless to say, mom and dad were very impressed.  Or they acted like it, at least.  It's high quality entertainment over here!

The next morning, it was off to the airport.  But not before mom could indulge in one last treat:  authentic Belgian waffles.  A bunch of them had all gone on a Europe vacay this summer, and mom had discovered the best Belgian waffle in the world.  Long story short, she found a place in Salt lake that made them the same way and she was dying to try it.  So this morning, we had breakfast at Bruges Waffles and Frites in Salt Lake.  Pretty good!

That's a cinnamon waffle with Belgian chocolate and creme fraiche on top.  WAY delicious!

And so ended the week long visit from my family.  Good times, good people, good food.  I love my family!

... that my niece is adorable???

My WHOLE family is coming up this weekend 1) to visit me 2) to visit Cait and 3) to go to the BYU Homecoming game.  YAY!!!!!  But Kell and my mom came up early and brought Babes (AKA Finley) with them!  She is the cutest!  So I couldn't resist starting the weekend blogging a little early.

They all visited me at work on their way to Provo.  Fin looked a little out of it and was being really quiet, looking around very warily... until she saw the dancing flower on my desk and gave a little "Hi!" and a wave!!  And she didn't stop waving at it the whole time she was in the office!  It was sooo cute!

Then someone from my office gave her a rubber ducky and she thought life couldn't get any better...

Until she came to Aunt Krissy's house, Fin's dream playhouse!

Exhibit 1: Eye-level microwave so mommy doesn't have to lift her up to play with it.

Exhibit 2:  The world's nicest dog to play with!  Fin loves Xena!  And Xena... is warming up to Fin.

Fin was having the time of her life!  As long as Grandma and her blankie were there to keep her safe, everything was peachy :)

Fin was loving Matt too!  She scarfed down a couple bowls of his bottled pears:

And even gave him lots of high fives!  That was after he successfully channeled her desire to hit him into his hand.  Alas for me, my efforts to get her to stop hitting me only ended up in me getting pinched.  Oh well.  At least she likes one of us.

The happiest Fin was to see me was when I was leaving for work this morning.  As I was saying goodbye to Kell, she looked up at me with angel eyes and gave me a very cheery "Bye bye!"  She even gave me a kiss too!!!!!  If she hadn't been so happy to see me go, I would have been elated.  I guess I'll take whatever I can get from that little stinker.  Love my niece!

... that we know how to party?

This weekend was crazy.

It started off with picking up my baby sis from the airport on Thursday night after her trip home for the JB concert (color me jealous).  Then we dropped her off at the bus station Friday morning, only to pick her right back up that night so that she could spend the weekend watching General Conference with us.  She even brought me cookies from Diddy Riese.  Love this girl :)

Cait was not the only one visiting us for conference.  Her roommate Lori joined us, as did Matt's sister (Renee), his cousin (Becca), her fiance (Quentin), and at various times, 2-4 of their friends.  We had a full house!  I loved it!  But alas... I am my mother's daughter: all I could think about was what we were going to eat and would there be enough food for everyone???

I started out with an extra large batch of enchiladas (Matt's favorite) on Friday, which was good cause our guests showed up hungry.  Then for the Saturday morning session I made the traditional Breakfast Casserole, the go-to breakfast at the Blickenstaff house when a lot of people show up.  It turned out pretty good for my first attempt!  Eeeeexcept for the fact that it didn't quite get done until 11:30... I was really just trying to get out of making everyone lunch.  That night, it was meatballs and rice, nice and easy.  I had gotten a big bag of meatballs at Costco and thrown them in the crock pot, only to start freaking out when none of our guests returned from the conference center to eat them.  Luckily for me, they showed up later that night and ate them all, so I did not end up having to eat the whole Costco bag myself.

Next morning was my very first attempt at my mother's cinnamon rolls!!!  I have always wanted to make them and I was super nervous.  I am NOT a baker.  But I really wanted them!  Unfortunately for me, the problems started right away.  First was the yeast: What if the water was too hot?  What if the water was too cold?  What if it didn't "activate?"  What does "activate" even mean?  What if I "killed" it after it "activated?"  I was a basket case.  And then I ran out of flour, of which I knew we didn't have any more.  So what did we do?  Oh, my husband just ground some wheat for me.  Seriously.  My MIL had some wheat and a grinder downstairs and my sweet husband had some fresh flour for me in three minutes.  Who does that?  My husband and the pioneers, that's who.  And maybe some Native Americans.  Anyway, I finally got the dough made and waited not-so-patiently for it to rise.  Matt even tried to hurry the process up with his body heat:

What a great husband.

After it finally rose, it was time to roll!

Cut with thread, just like Mama taught me.

Waiting for them to rise AGAIN.

Maybe a taaaaad too golden brown...

But still pretty delicious!  Topped with homemade frosting, with a tiny extra crunch from the fresh ground wheat.  Not the light, fluffy, soft rolls of pillowy goodness that my mom has perfected, but pretty good for my first attempt.  She probably would have been proud of the ground wheat too.  Unfortunately these too were not done until 12:30, so strike 2 for my breakfast attempts.  Oh well, they still got eaten.

Cait's roommate really wanted to go to go to the Conference Center for a session, and lucky for us Becca gave us 4 tickets to the Sunday afternoon session!  So we took our cinnamon rolls in the car and raced up to Salt Lake.

We attempted to get Renee a ticket too, but unfortunately that didn't work out (sorry Renee!) so she watched with the Nuttalls instead.  I was afraid we weren't even going to get in cause it was seriously PACKED.  But miracle of miracles, we got seats and Lori got to watch Conference live for the first time.

That's the face of a dream coming true.

And of course, the obligatory pic of the temple after the session.  Good times.

Afterward, we raced back home for a pot roast dinner, just the way my mama makes it: served over rice with lots of gravy.  Who eats their roast with rice, you might ask?  Asians, that's who.  What can I say, this weekend's food was a tribute to my mother.  She is the one who taught me to cook, after all.  And I haven't had any complaints yet.  Love you Mom!  And I love Conference!

... that we are a little obsessed? (And by "we" I mean "Matt")

Matt and I got our baby ball python, LJ, a few months ago, when Matt told me that I could get a hamster, Tina, if he could get a snake.

Remember this picture?

Yes, we love Tina and LJ.  And Matt has been OBSESSED with reptiles ever since we got them.  He has read every snake book he could get his hands on, watched every YouTube video about snakes there is, and wants to build his own terrarium display case.  I mean, we're talking Mariah Carey "Why you so obsessed with me?" obsessed.  Seriously.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to go to the Utah State Fair.  Matt told me that we could go, if I promised to go to the Reptile Expo with him.  I should have seen that one coming.  But truth be told, I would have gone with him anyway; snakes are definitely growing on me.  But I was determined that we would not come home with anything new; we were just going to look.

So last Saturday, we drove down to the Utah State Fairgrounds and attended the Reptile Expo.  It was pretty fun!  Just a big exposition building filled with tons of tables of anything a herpetologist could ever want.

Look how happy he is!

Each vendor had a big display with every reptile you can imagine:  snakes, turtles, frogs, tarantulas, scorpions, lizards, EVERYTHING!

Yes, that is a crocodile.  A FREAKING CROCODILE.  They were letting people hold it for a $5 donation.  Insane.  But not as crazy as the guy who picked up a scorpion WITH HIS BARE HAND.  I was freaking out.  But I did hang a 7 foot Burmese Python around my neck, which was severely cool.

A crested gecko: very cool animal.

My favorite thing might have been this little tupperware filled with hatching snake eggs.  It was so disgusting I could not stop looking and so crazily awesome I could not get over it.  If you look closely, you can see 7 little snake heads poking out!

We spent hours looking at all the booths and holding all the animals they would let us hold.  We especially spent a lot of time looking at the different cornsnakes.  Matt has been trying to talk me into "getting another snake for you!" ever since we got LJ, and I had decided that cornsnakes were my favorite.  He even went out to DI one day and came home with a giant terrarium because "it was on sale and we might get another snake someday!"

We were getting ready to leave the expo when I looked at Matt and knew that he really really really wanted to get some more snakes.  And how could I deny the world's best husband of something that would make him so happy??  So we decided that we would get two baby cornsnakes- one for me and one for him :)

Meet Lucille and Ricardo.  Lucille, the redhead, is mine and Ricardo is the dark charcoal that Matt picked out.  We already love them!

Yes I'll admit it:  We are crazy snake people.  It's a good thing Matt's parents like snakes too, otherwise they might not be too happy with how we redecorated their guest room:

That's Lucille and Ricardo's cage on the left and LJ's cage on the right.  My own mother would never allow such a thing in her home.  Love my in-laws!  And we love our snakes!