Oct 15-Oct 31st!

     One of my favorite months has come to an end on Halloween Night! We have been having such beautiful weather, we thought it would be nice to sit outside with our new fire pit to pass out candy and watch the kids trick or treating. Unfortunately, a chilly wind kicked up during the afternoon and we opted to stay indoors. We also had an incredible amount of rain during the week and all our wood was soaked too. I did pick up a small bundle of logs from Lowes just in case. I will have to save it for later. I was a bit disappointed however in my new fire pit I ordered last year during the pandemic. You could not find one at the stores, but I got this one for a good price. Problem is, it is just a bit smaller than my last fire pit. It may be going with Allison! The old one had quite a bit of use and finally rusted out. It's nice to sit out around the fire with friends on the driveway and cook some marshmallows or watch a movie on the garage door. When the weather cooperates. 

Instead we hosted dinner for our friends inside the house while passing out candy. I managed to get the last of our Halloween decorations out, although I could not open the dining room windows to place Alexa and our spooky music. It would appear that Tom managed to paint them shut from last year! No matter, we had lots of spooky items all over the yard and in the house. And Scott was home (briefly) over his Fall Break from school, so he helped my hang a stick figure from "The Blair Witch" movie in the cherry tree out front. I also decided to make life easy for cooking and tried crock pot ziti for the first time. It was very good and made even better by a batch of sausage that Tom cooked up. Along with plenty of appetizers and brownies for dessert. We all enjoyed our dinner and watching the kids arrive at the house with some terrific costumes. Tom and neighbor Dan passed out the candy. The boys  were funny-very business like. And Tom likes to pass out large candy bars. The kids were so excited! And very polite. We figured we passed out around 100 candy bars. Tom took the leftovers to work to bribe his staff. Unfortunately a few teenagers decided to run around the neighborhood and steal all the candy bowls that were left out along with a camp chair or two. Not cool. At least they left a pile of empty bowls at the end of one of the streets. Also glad our house did not get "egged" or cars broken into which has happened in the past. (Remember Devil's Night in Detroit?). 

I also stopped into Mom B's place in the afternoon to drop off supplies. I was going to sit with her and carve my pumpkin but they still will not allow gatherings in public places in her building and it was just too hard to set up in her apt, so I quickly carved it up at home before the guests arrived. Mom and I did get to share some Halloween candy though!

At least I had a bit of a break from working long hours.  I am still scheduled for every other Saturday, but I was able to take a day off work on Friday over Scott's break. I actually didn't have to go in until Sunday. We had been running low on patients since we were shut down for a few weeks with COVID. Still getting tested every week-now we just test ourselves. Even if you are vaccinated. And still wearing masks and face shields. Since I wear them all day I usually don't wear anything when I go outside or to the stores. Especially since I know I'm COVID free from all the testing and triple protected with my booster and flu shot.  It's nice to be able to start getting back to doing all the enjoyable activities we did before the pandemic. Like having trick or treaters come to the door! Tom refused to pass out candy last year with the risk of COVID spread. 

Some activities remain online however. Our Girl Scout committee had our first online zoom meeting since our live camping event last May. We have a smaller planning group this time around-some staff had to drop out, but we managed to decide on next year's theme along with several activities in less than an hour(looking like a Space Theme this year). Unfortunately our GS Program Director just informed us that she is leaving and will be moving to the UK for another position. Not sure who is going to take her place-she was responsible for running all the summer camp programs and specialty camps!

Scott had his Fall Break from Oct 20-23. He and Allison plotted back in July to travel down to Orlando to celebrate Disney's 50th Anniversary. They also wanted to visit the park during Halloween and experience the new Star Wars ride "Rise of the Resistance" at Disney Studios. We tried to fly Scott home on a Tuesday afternoon before his break,  but he had a midterm during the day and could not make the one non stop flight scheduled early in the morning. He was really looking forward to this break since he has been working so hard with a rather challenging semester. He had two midterms scheduled before his break and two when he returned. Instead we flew him home early on Weds with a brief visit at home, and he and Allison both flew out on Weds night to Orlando when she got out of work. They took a Lyft to their hotel from the Orlando airport-Tom set them up in a Hampton Inn near the parks. On Thursday they took the Lyft over to Disney Studios and had an incredible time visiting the park and seeing all the new Star Wars display and Toy Story world. The park has put a hold on some of the big shows, so they finished all the rides and shopping fairly early and headed over to Disney Springs for some shopping, bar and restaurant hopping before calling it a day. On Friday they were up early and visiting Disney World. Disney has just discontinued their fast passes and is trying a new system(pay for Fast Passes on a limited basis), but no set times like before. The kids said it was a mess, but they opted to stand in line for their favorite rides, fortunately for just about 45 mins. And they discovered a few new places in the park-an Adventurers restaurant near the Pirates of the Caribbean where they managed to have a splendid lunch. After the Disney Pyrotechniques show and fireworks,  they headed over to the Polynesian Hotel for dinner and also enjoyed a Rum Punch drink in a huge tiki cup, complete with fire! Scott certainly enjoyed visiting Disney as a legal 21 year old to sample some of their drink creations. And both kids found out the Dole Pineapple Whip ice cream is even better with a shot of rum also served at the Polynesian Hotel. They ended the day sitting on the beach with the tiki lights at the restaurant watching the fireworks shows at the other parks. I think they especially enjoyed all the food and drink specials in the park, as well as the new bucket ride between the parks. If they had another day I am sure they would have loved a visit to Epcot, although that park is going through quite a bit of renovations with new rides. They both flew home early on Saturday. That gave us another day visiting with Scott, catching a movie and dinner before he left back to school on Sunday.  So I was glad to have had Friday and Saturday off to visit with the kids and get my errands run. And Saturday night Allison went off to dinner with Gabe and his family at a Korean Steak restaurant to celebrate Gabe's birthday. Afterwards we invited them over for homemade apple crisp to wish Gabe Happy Birthday. 

Allison, Tom and I also took Gabe to his first Hershey Hockey game. I think it was his first hockey game as well! before the game we stopped at the brewery for a beer and big pretzel. We also had to stop into Hershey's candy land so Gabe could stock up on candy for his neighborhood. It was just one week before Halloween and most of their specialty candy was already gone! The game was a lot of fun, although we were a bit shocked by the half time entertainment. They decided to play Dodge Ball on the ice. Tom immediately said it looked like a terrible idea. Sure enough, before they could start playing, the guys ran out on the ice and a big guy fell backwards, his helmet flew off and he cracked his head open. Nothing like a front row seat to ER as they carried him off on a stretcher and cleaned up the blood with a squirt from a water bottle and the zamboni. Lovely intro to hockey.  

And since the October weather was so nice, Tom and I met with some of his coworkers for Happy Hour after work on that Thursday when the kids were in Orlando. One of Tom's previous bosses wrote a book based on the ghost stories of  Ellicott City. She used her grandmother's name since she previously lived in the area(an in case the story was bad!). Plus she apparently based some of her characters on people she knew but did not want them to know! Anyway, she had a small book signing while we enjoyed some Guinness beer and food. It was also nice to chat with some of the Northrop staff-both new and quite seasoned like Tom.

As a matter of fact, Tom just celebrated his 35th year with Northrop! He was a bit surprised to see his name on a banner in the cafeteria at work. He also received a free gift. He picked out a copper patio heater from the gift catalog which already arrived and he set up-can't wait to try it out! He didn't have an extensive number of choices (we already have several work clocks!). 

Other exciting accomplishments to celebrate in the Seitz family-Kudos go to Mark Seitz who hiked across the Grand Canyon at the end of October! He started at the North side of the Canyon-Dad Seitz dropped him off and then took the 5 hour drive around to the south side to pick him up the same day. Mark did the hike in an incredible 8 hours, starting early in the morning around 4pm in the dark. Sounded a bit scary making his way down the winding trails to the bottom, crossing the Colorado River and back up the other side. He did run into a few other hikers and even took time to mail off some post cards from the bottom of the canyon! Congrats Mark! We are all just glad you made the trek safely and successfully! (We heard some people don't make it!)

And we'd like to send Happy Birthday Wishes to Emma Seitz who turned 1 on Oct 28th! Also to welcome into the world Gracie Augrain Hudson(ne Bozyk) born on the same day, Oct 28th to parents Sarah and Patrick in New Orleans. Mom B's first Great Grandchild!