Weekend recap– now with COSTUMES!
Why, hello there! How’ve you been? Let’s catch up, shall we?
OK, let’s see…
Yesterday was the 34th Halloversary of my blessed union to gospel singer extraordinaire and all around nice guy Russ Taff– thanks so much to all of you who Tweeted and FaceBooked to send us Happy Anniversary messages! (And if you’re wondering why in the wide world of sports my Anniversaween is on Oct. 31, I explained it all last year, right here.) Anyway, once again Russ was out on the road, but he did make it in late last night. I picked him up at the airport around 11 still wearing my costume, but I think he was too exhausted to fully appreciate it. In fact I’m not sure he even noticed … Probably because I had to take my wings off and put them in the back seat. It’s hard to drive with those suckers on.
We won’t celebrate until tomorrow night– we always give Russ a 24 hour grace period after he comes home to fully recover and rejoin the family, because the girls and I are all compassionate like that. The poor guy gets a little discombobulated when he’s gone for more than a few days, what with all of the meeting new people and the getting up at the buttcrack of dawn to catch planes and the sleeping in hotel beds and the airport food and did I mention the meeting new people part?! So by the time he gets home, he’s just a wee bit of a zombie for a while– I believe the technical term is “doesn’t transition easily.” If he can just veg out that first 24 hours and watch something mindless on TV and not be expected to do much of anything he can basically regroup– and then when he wakes up on the second day, he’s suddenly all, “Hi! I’m home!” So tomorrow night we’ll go out for a nice dinner somewhere.
The girls and I stuck to our Halloween tradition and went over to my brother Matt’s house. Carol made a big pot of chili and we got to hang out a little with my nephew Josh, his wife Sarah and their darling Anna Rose, which is always so much fun. We also enjoyed visiting with Sarah’s parents Peg and ‘Pa’ again– I swear, that woman is so creative and energetic, I feel like an absolute garden slug next to her! Luckily for Peg, she is also so sweet you just wanna dunk her in your coffee, which totally helps keep me from resenting the fact that she does EVERYTHING really really well. *sigh*
We did break from tradition a little bit– this year, Madi carved the pumpkin all by herself, with the help of some very interested dogs…
Her finished product:
Sadly, this year we had to retire a hallmark Taff family tradition: Charlotte finally outgrew the famous shark-eating-a-kid costume. It dang near killed us. Fare thee well, shark-eating-a-kid costume… Please join me in a brief moment of silence while we remember its unparalleled awesomeness and bad taste… (Meeeeeeeeeemries, light the corners of my mind….. misty, water-colored meeeeeeemries…)
Fast-forward to this year:
Madi, fresh from her triumphant rendition of Dog the Bounty Hunter’s buxom wife Beth last year…
…decided to follow that up with an homage to Antoine Dodson.
For those of you who don’t spend your lives on YouTube and have no idea who I am referring to, here’s a clip that tells the whole story…
And heeeeeere’s Madi!
And as for me? Well, I kinda ran out of time this year but ever the good sport, I managed to throw this together:
I know. I have no idea either.
I was bringing flowers for my hostess, so maybe I was portraying some kind of demented Welcome Wagon Butterfly from Hell. Or a surprisingly cheerful Dark Angel of… Gospel Music? I give up.
Anybody out there care to hazard a guess as to what the heck this costume is?!
