A Very Scary Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays in the US, and since Europe doesn’t really celebrate the Day of the Dead, I was excited to be back in California for the party this year. To properly celebrate the night of fright, I participated in one of the scariest things imaginable…a weekend long baby shower for two of my best friends. And while it might not be fair to call a baby shower scary, if you knew these girls in their former, non-married, pre-baby lives, you too would be somewhat alarmed at where life’s paths have led us and therefore afraid of the one question that begged to be asked (i.e. if they are mature enough to have babies, does that mean I need to grow up as well? – in case you were curious, the answer to that question was apparently NO, as the events of the weekend proved).

The Itsy Bitsy Spider weekend was hosted by Anjulee at her “ranch” house in Soledad, CA (I woke up Friday morning to the view of tractors and the bleating of her pet goat, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). With no plans on Friday, Dana and I drove down to Soledad on Thursday night to help set up and prepare for the weekend. We spent approximately 2 hours on Friday preparing the house and food, followed by three hours of wine tasting at the local wineries and a case of bud light at one of her neighbor’s house…in true form, we were good and drunk when the ladies of honor showed up (and we were lucky that they even found us at all, considering we forgot to put out signs indicating the way to the well hidden house).

To continue with my current trend of hangovers and baby showers, I was appropriately weathered on Saturday morning for the baby shower brunch and full day of baby shower activities including: carving pumpkins, sitting around the table catching up, watching the show “I didn’t know I was pregnant” (which is clearly a great idea for a baby shower) and opening baby presents, during which Neff and I made up the drinking game “drink every time someone says ‘cute’”…mature? probably not, but at least it got rid of my hang over.

We cooked dinner in Saturday night and welcomed a total of two trick-or-treaters for free candy. And to wrap up the Halloween night, we watched the classic scary movie – Scream. In truth, was this the Halloween experience I had been looking forward to during the past two years in Europe? Not really. But would I change anything about the weekend and opt for a crazy night out with a bunch of scantily clad, slightly intoxicated strangers? Definitely not.