Ready for Halloween, 2021

October has already been a great month for us, on multiple levels, and we haven’t even gotten to Halloween yet. Halloween is big for us this year; it’s my Mom’s birthday, and the first one since we moved here. Plus our neighborhood goes big for Halloween with tons of decorations. Apparently we can expect hundreds of kids roaming our streets, meaning we need to make sure someone is always at our door to hand out candy, even if the rest of us are out trick or treating. 

We’re turning this into a family event by having my Mom, Bob, Sandy and Terry out to the house to hang out that afternoon for dinner before we hit the streets. Then afterwards we can have birthday cake with Nana. Luckily all of our local friends are able to come over and join us for trick or treating as well. We’re going to have a big group and I’m expecting a fun night. My Mom will be staying a night with us for the first time as well, so we get to host her for her birthday. Looking forward to sharing more about it next month.

In the meantime the kids have been staying busy, mostly with Nana, doing all kinds of Halloween activities. There’s been a variety of Halloween-themed attractions they’ve been going to on the weekends. Last Sunday we picked them up early from Nana’s and met our friends at Gilcrease Orchard. We got a box of donuts, picked out our perfect pumpkins in the patch, made our way through a corn maze, and got to check out some live animals.

We’ve also got a couple neighborhood Halloween events coming up this week. There’s going to be an outdoor movie night with drinks and snacks, which is for the whole family. Then on Friday night Jessica and I were invited to the adults only neighborhood Halloween party. We thought that would be a fun way to get to know our neighbors a bit more so the kids will be with Nana that night.

Now that the weather has cooled down we’re seeing people out so much more in the neighborhood, and suddenly the kids find themselves with way more kids to play with than we ever had at our last house. There’s definitely no replacing our good friend Avery from Washington, but there’s about a dozen kids near us that are frequently outside now. I always expected it would be in Fall that we would start meeting a lot more neighbors because people aren’t out and about here in the Summer. Fall here is like Summer in Seattle – sunny everyday with temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s.

Once Halloween is behind us we’ve got a lot to look forward to in November. For the first time in her life, Ava’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day, and it just so happens to be her 10th birthday, so it’s a big one. Luckily we’ve got Kristy, Beto, and Madi coming out to spend the long holiday weekend with us! We’re really looking forward to having them out and still finalizing plans on how to coordinate birthday and holiday celebrations.

Speaking of family visitors, we just had our first visitors staying at our house. Dana and Brad did a road trip from their place in Fallbrook, CA to come and see us. It was only a 24 hour visit because they had plans for their anniversary, but we packed a lot in while they were here and it was a blast. It was so nice seeing them and we look forward to paying the visit back on the CA side via a road trip of our own sometime soon.

One thing that’s really cool about living in the Las Vegas / Henderson area is that you never know who it’s going to be, but there’s pretty much always someone in town. It was never like that in Seattle but Vegas is so much more of a travel destination. Last weekend, for example, we were out Friday night for dinner with my good friend Shawn, whom I became friends with 20 years ago when we were busboys at El Gaucho, and stayed close with ever since. He and his wife live in Nashville but came to Vegas for his birthday weekend. Then the very next night on Saturday we met up with Jessica’s good friend Summer, whom she met 20 years ago working in a restaurant in Cedar Rapids. She was in town with family celebrating a 21st birthday. Strange coincidence that they were both friends of ours made in restaurants 20 years ago, who both happened to be in Vegas for a birthday on the same weekend, but the point remains, someone is always in Vegas for the weekend. The best part to go along with that is suddenly now we have a full-time babysitter! It’s been really cool catching up with friends from all over the place, and you never know who’s going to be next.

Beyond all the Halloween stuff everything has been great. School is going well for the kids, and they recently started riding bikes to school. It’s not a daily thing, and Jessica or myself needs to be with them, but we’ve started doing that a bit and they love it. We’ve been doing regular family bike rides on various trails near the house, and getting out for some hiking in nearby desert mountains. These are the kinds of activities we were looking forward to doing once it cooled down.

Ava was able to join the 4th grade robotics club and has been attending those sessions before school on Tuesdays. She is also playing hockey twice a week after school, so she is definitely the most busy of the kids at the moment. She also lost a tooth this week, which hasn’t happened in a long time for her, so that was exciting. Elise and Enzo are both doing great. We’re working on getting activities sorted out for them, and not surprisingly, there are so many options here. I’ve been meaning to take Enzo to the BMX track here in Henderson but we haven’t made it happen quite yet. Elise has made a good friend in our new neighborhood so they have been spending a lot of time together.

Now that we’re totally settled into the new house Jessica is focusing on her next step. She’s considering a job but also considering starting her own business, so it will be fun to see how it turns out.

Railing update

I feel like until this project is 100% done I need to give updates on it. It’s been in progress since July, so I can barely imagine what life will be like once the railing project is no longer a part of it. Since my last post I finished installing all the iron bars below the railing, stained the rail, and finished it with a heavy gloss. We’re really happy with how it looks, and it means our project is down to the painting work that needs to be done on the exposed wood parts. Here’s a recent pic:

I was supposed to have a painter out this past week to estimate on it, but he no-showed twice, so it’s back to square one. We’ve thought about doing the painting but considering this is the main entry of our house, we want it to look as good as possible. I’m planning on doing another video tour of the house but I’m not doing it until this paint work is complete. Hopefully we can wrap it up soon.

That’s about it for now. We’ve got a lot of new photos to share. Happy Halloween!