the dreaded october holiday, '12

How I feel about Halloween is not a secret. You can flash back to last year's post,

The Halloween Grinch, if you can't remember.

While we skipped the pumpkins (smashed, then replaced last year) this year, we actually attended a Housewarming/Halloween party at the new home of one of K's coworkers, Mandy, and her husband Sam. Kelvin went as Bond, Pepper an Ewok (in a hoodie she actually owns), and I donned some butterfly ears and some bumblebee tights as a "bumble-fly"?

 

Thanks to Elise for capturing these full length/ "lower half" pictures.

The decor was very cool :)

blood spots on the floor...

me, Elise, Lori

 

I must say that I'm impressed by three things about Halloween this year:

1) the Charlie Brown pumpkin carved by Theresa (my sister in law)

2) one Halloween goodie on "limited edition" this year-- Candy Corn Oreos. I am a fan of candy corn and the little candy pumpkins and, while not a huge oreo fan, found these cookies rather tasty (warning: very sweet).

 

3) This "birthing pumpkin" floating around facebook (this definitely made me smile.. what kind of L & D unit has this much time on its hands?!).

Happy (early) Halloween. We'll see if anything else about this year's holiday impresses me.

'A Perfect Pair' (wedding #7)

On Saturday, we celebrated the wedding of Ann-Chi (Kelvin's UCLA friend) and Anthony in Chico, CA. It was a lovely, lovely wedding. I must say that I'm a bit "wedding-ed out"-- this being the seventh wedding that either K or I (or both) has attended in the past four months of 2012 (including our wedding, we attended six weddings in 2011, too! Whew!). However, this was beautifully coordinated, the weather was fabulous, and it really was our pleasure to attend.

The venue for the ceremony & reception was the White Ranch in Chico, a rustic (there really was a cow mooing in the background during the ceremony!) but beautiful setting.

the happy groom & parents

 Isaac and Stacy (best man/matron of honor; I was sad to have missed Stacy/Brian's wedding in August due to the call schedule)

fill-in doggie walked down the aisle as "flower pup"!

The bride, Ann-Chi, was accompanied down the aisle by her mother

the Unity Candle

(Sorry about the glare! It was really sunny!)

happy husband & wife!

Ann-Chi and Anthony are both optometrists, and their "eyeglass" theme was absolutely adorable.

 Their card box was exquisite.

Their cake was FABULOUS!! Can you see the Snellen chart in the background of the cake-topper and the fondant eyeglasses?!

our table cards, up close...

Everyone carried paper eyeglasses for the grand entrance!

They had a photo booth! (we had to do a couple of takes because we have a hard time looking at the camera correctly :))

 We took a few nice "couple" shots...

  

By the way (although you may not be able to see it well from these pics), Kelvin went with the BROWN shoes with his navy suit (a far better choice, I thought, than black. Thanks for all of the FB advice!)

 Stacy ROCKED her speech; in fact, all of the speeches were outstanding.

 cake-cutting

They also had a s'mores bar with differently flavored marshmallows! What a great, delicious idea!

Dancing!

 

Stacy & Brian (married x 2 months)

 

group shot! (us, Anthony/Ann-Chi, Stacy/Brian)

Fun times!  I think that was the last wedding (that we know of!) for some time (and definitely of 2012 unless someone springs one on us).  Now that Ann-Chi and Anthony are the friends physically "closest" to us in location, we will probably be back to Chico sometime soon :)

Getaway to Paradise (well, Chico & Paradise)

This past weekend, we traveled to Butte County for Ann-Chi and Anthony's wedding in Chico (another [!] wedding post forthcoming); this county includes the cute towns of Chico and (yes, there really is a town by this name!) Paradise, which are about four hours (east and south) from Arcata.  While it seems that we have been to almost every corner of California at one time or another, we had never stopped in to visit this county, which is partway between Sacramento and Redding.

On Saturday, we checked out Butte Creek Canyon, or the "little Grand Canyon" between the two towns.  We stopped by the Honey Run Covered Bridge, built in 1894, which is the only three-level covered bridge in the country.

 

We stopped for some peacocks who crossed our way on Honey Run Road....

Once in the actual town of Paradise, we visited Noble Orchards, a family-run business selling (17 varieties of) apples since 1921. Although it wasn't an orchard where we couldn't pick our own apples, we sampled several different varieties and came away with some yummy apple products.

I loved this cutting board!

Bille Park in Paradise was a great place to walk Pep and had some nice canyon views.

On Ann-Chi and Anthony's recommendation, we also tried locally made ice cream at Shubert's in Chico (it was definitely warm enough to enjoy ice cream, a nice sunny "break" [from Humboldt Co weather] for us!); however, we still prefer the delicious ice cream of our local Arcata Scoop.

On Sunday, we checked out Bidwell Park in Chico which, at around 3,600 acres in area, is the third largest urban park in the U.S. It stretched for MILES!

In addition to its millions of trails, it had a very large swimming pool for use in the (hot!!) summer months.

While neither K nor I are beer drinkers, we did also stop at Chico's Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., one of America's first microbreweries (and maker of an award-winning Pale Ale), to do a short self-tour.

We did some quick shopping in Redding (Kelvin found a great snowboard deal and ooooh how we love Trader Joe's!) before returning home. Two thumbs up for Butte County!