Halloween at the Happiest Place On Earth

MOMD, my brother-in-law (Trace), sister-in-law (Juanita), and I were lucky enough (blessed) to go to Disneyland over Halloween. Oh my heck! You know how much I love anything Disney! You should see it at Halloween time. Amazing! We had an incredible time. MOMD and I flew in on Thursday a.m. and spent the entire day in the parks. Juanita and Trace had their original flight canceled (they found out on the way to the airport), so they didn't get to California until Thursday evening. We spent Friday and Saturday together in the parks riding the rides, shopping, and watching the people. We returned to real life and home on Sunday afternoon. It was a great weekend! I don't have words for how much fun it was.

We were lucky enough to stay at the Grand Californian Hotel (beautiful, incredible; they made ghosts out of our wash cloths on Halloween - how's that for fun?), so we were close enough to walk to the parks everyday. The balcony of our room overlooked Downtown Disney. It was like living "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". Trace and Juanita had a room right next to us. Here is the view from our balcony.

We ate incredible food at every meal - MOMD and I are kind of food slackers - give us a drive through window any day, but Trace and Juanita know where to go for the good stuff. (We need to hang out with them more often.)

Check out the pictures below ... We were hanging out one day in Disneyland waiting for a parade when some Disney "Cast Members" (that's what the employees are called) were standing near us. I started talking to them. I asked if I could get a picture of them since they were my "peeps". (That's what us cool people call our friends.) They were good sports because they agreed to the picture (but I know in their heart of hearts they yearn to be included in my group of peeps).

After the picture taking love-fest, they told me that since we were all peeps, they wanted to give me this:

I know you can't read it, but it says that I'm an HONORARY CITIZEN OF DISNEYLAND! Can you believe it? How did they know that in my wildest dreams I could not have asked for anything more? (With the possible exception of winning the showcase showdown on the Price Is Right ...) Life is good!

One of the funnest parts of the entire trip was watching the people. I know, I know - I could stay home and do that BUT have you ever watched people in Downtown Disney on Halloween while listening to live music with the love of your life? Life doesn't get much better than that.

Let me explain just a bit about the people we were watching. Since it was Halloween, we had a lot of folks dressed up (in costume). I think they were going the House of Blues or some place fancy because none of my friends look like that on Halloween. Anyway, we had two different types of women in costume. We had the young, curvaceous gals thinking that this would be a good opportunity to show some skin and be sexy in their little witch/nurse/school girl costume and we also had the above 50 crowd that thought they were the part of the young and curvaceous crowd. (Picture me in a slinky gold Cleopatra outfit - I'm not kidding.) It was a hoot. My favorite costumes though were the families dressed as the "Incredibles". Can you picture your husband or boyfriend wearing the red Incredible tights outfit with the fake muscles? I especially liked the drawn on masks. It was a crack-up!

Here's a few pictures to show more of the fun.

Make a Smilebox scrap pages

Tradition!

My family is big on tradition. We eat the same thing every 24th of July (Fishing Fiestas). We say the same words every Memorial Day ("Now who does this baby belong to?"). We all sing "Happy Birthday" at different tempos and in our worst voices. (We can make babies cry!) One of our big traditions is the Deer Hunt. The tradition of the deer hunt began when my Grandpa Noble was a young man. He and his friend (Mr Fisher) went to an area called Willow Creek (pronounced "Crik") down near Gunnison and Salina. As they continued hunting this area they named the landmarks (The Dry Lake, the Gammon Rock, Jack's Flat, etc.). After a while Grandpa and Mr Fisher both got married, had families, and continued to go to Willow Creek to hunt.

Grandpa Noble and Grandma Julie have been gone since 1995, but the Deer Hunt lives on. No one hunts anymore, but none of us would ever dream of missing the Deer Hunt. We have to do the EXACT things that Grandpa Noble did, such as:

* Arrange all the trailers and motor homes in a circle (picture circling the wagon train),

* Rake all the stickers from the ground from inside the camp circle,

* Lay down canvas tarps (who still has canvas tarps - aren't they all that blue plastic stuff?) inside the camp circle so the dust doesn't get kicked up,

* Dig a hole for the outhouse. (Everyone has bathrooms in their trailers but remember, it's TRADITION!),

* Talk about those old landmarks and how they appear this year,

* Try to remember where we hid the fire grate from the previous year.

Those are just a FEW of the things that we need to do to complete the deer hunt experience. (Does it sound like the entire family is a little obsessive-compulsive? We are.) We have added things over the years such as 4-wheelers, paint ball guns and occasionally a craft or two (for a few of us). We have always had snacks but now we have reached the ridiculous stage. We had 24 people in our group and we had one ENTIRE church banquet table plus the half-size banquet table FILLED with candy, popcorn balls, candy, cheese and crackers, candy, cookies, and anything else you can think of. It was as if I had died and gone to heaven!

Each night we all sit around the fire and talk about farting. This year I shared with some of my younger boy cousins (ages 10 & 12) how cool my scrapping friends were because we've been involved with "blue darts". That really moved me up on the coolness ladder!

Here's some pictures of the traditional deer hunt (if you want to use it as a pattern for planning your own outing):

The king and queen of the camp - my Mom and Dad


Here I am with FOS (why does he always make the stupid face when we are getting our pictures taken?)


The picture below is me sitting on the toilet in the outhouse tent ... You didn't believe me, did you?

Since I don't have a trailer, this was my campsite. Every evening after the fire we would drive a few minutes to Salina and our "camp". Imagine having a hot shower whenever I wanted on! Hee hee hee ...

The Deer Hunt - It's the same every year. Life doesn't get much better than this!