Happy Halloween!

We had our third annual Halloween party on Saturday. This year was 'fancy dress' as opposed to Halloween theme, so people could wear any sort of costume as long as it wasn't a typical Halloween one (i.e. witches, devils, monsters, etc were not an option).

We spent the day Saturday preparing for the party. Spent a long time in the store deciding on food. At home we cleaned and got the food ready, which took most of the day it seemed. I made guacamole from scratch. It had a bit of a kick to it; I think I'll use fewer chilis in the future! I also made some taco dip and brownies. John was in charge of all the other food like chicken, sausage rolls, pasta, mini quiches, etc.

We got a load of trick-or-treaters about 7:00. Shortly after, our guests started to arrive. There were some fantastic costumes. (There's a link to the pictures at the bottom of this entry.) The night seemed to go really quickly, although the last ones standing -- me, John, Steve Jackson, Jon Salmon, and John Martin -- didn't go to bed until 4.

As more people arrived it became harder and harder to hear the doorbell, so unfortunately Martin, Caroline, Rob, Jason, Dave, Ruth, and Steve got left outside at the front door for quite some time. Sorry guys! Almost as bad as leaving them out there for ages is the fact that our doorbell is wireless and picks up 2 or 3 other neighbors doorbells, so when someone rings their doorbell it makes ours go off. Well, it only stands to reason that the same happens at their houses, so I'm sure they were getting multiple doorbell rings on Saturday!

It was a really fun night and I had so much fun catching up with everyone.

The next morning everyone felt a little rough. Our cat Abbey kept dry heaving, and I looked in her mouth and saw that she had helped herself to some chicken scraps and had a bit of bone caught in the roof of her mouth. John and I tried to get the bone out ourselves, but she was having none of that so we had to take an emergency trip to the vet. The vet was so nice, especially considering how we were interrupting her day off with a call out. She tried to get it out three times before we decided to sedate Abbey because she was so stressed at that point. It didn't take long for her to zonk out after the sedative was given. The splint of bone was extracted successfully and she was brought back around with an antidote, which caused her to act like a zombie for the rest of the day. It was really weird. She would just sit there in a doorway and stare into space, and then go somewhere else and sit there for a long time and stare at nothing. She would have fit in at any given Phish concert quite easily. Click the picture above to see more Halloween photos.