Swebit Travel And Vacation: List of Ten Tuesday

While deciding on the topic for this week's List of Ten Tuesday post, I debated heavily between writing something inspirational and relatable or something completely random and entirely self-indulgent.

Ultimately I decided to go with latter. There's just no way around these types of posts every now and then! I did things this weekend, pictures were taken while said things were being done, and it would just be a shame not to share.

Feel free to join me and write your own list of ten (or five or eight or a hundred) today, and don't be shy - share your link in the comments!!! I'd LOVE to read what you have to say! :) (You're welcome to use my L.O.T.T. picture too!)

Let's get started....

Ten Random Things Pertaining to my Halloween Weekend and/or My Unneighborly Neighbors

1. Friday Pumpkin Carving Festivities

This Friday I was determined to carve our pumpkin even though my poor husband was grumpy from a long day of work - yeah, I was pretty much like "Matthew-I-don't-care-if-we-have-a-terrible-time-doing-it-but-we-will-carve-this-damn-pumpkin-and we-will-act-like-we're-having-fun-even-if-we're-not-and-we'll-take-MANY-pictures-of-ourselves-in-the-process-because-I-need-them-for-my-BLOG."

And in the end? We DID end up having fun!

Just what the hubby needed to relieve some of that stress!

2. Then we roasted the pumpkin seeds.

It was completely anticlimactic and they weren't at all how I remembered them tasting when I was little.

Oh well. A word from the wise?

Salt the seeds before you roast them.

I put the salt on after they came out of the oven, and it didn't stick. You live you, you learn, I suppose.

3. I went to a Halloween/Housewarming/Birthday party

with my mother-in-law, and I was Cat Woman. Sort of. I had the mask anyway.

4. And my mother-in-law? Cutest little Bavarian woman EVER.

5. Oh, and I held a precious little baby!

This was the sweetest, quietest, and best baby of all time.

She barely made a peep throughout the entire party!! My kinda kid.

I also got to talk to Amy, the baby's mother, for quite a while.

She was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer just days before giving birth to this little one (her second child), and she HAS to be the bravest woman I know.

I can only pray that I would have the same strength and poise if something like this were to happen to me.

Be SO grateful, ya'll.

You never know what you have until you realize you just might lose it.

6. I wrote my very first guest post!

Head over to Lauren's Life with a Lab (when you're done reading this list, of course) to check it out!

7. I handed out candy to all the little goblins and ghosts...

and bums with cardboard signs that read "will work for candy."

True story.

That was an actual costume a kid was wearing!

And if you live in Austin, you know how funny that is.

The bums are everywhere!

Here I am waiting for the trick or treaters (this was towards the end of the evening - that basket was FULL when we started!)...

8. I met my neighbor across the street for the FIRST TIME.

Ok, so this is a bone of contention with me.

We have lived in our new house NINE MONTHS now, and I had only met ONE of our neighbors up until yesterday. And that first neighbor I met was only by default, because Cooper bulldozed through two fence pickets and into the yard next door - so I HAD to go meet the neighbor.

And I KNOW I should have done a better job these last nine months of, oh, I don't know, maybe just KNOCKING ON SOME DOORS AND INTRODUCING MYSELF, but I really thought the neighbors are supposed to come to YOU when you're the new one. Like, "welcome to the neighborhood?" But no. Not a single person has introduced themself to me (although Matthew has had words with two of our neighbors in passing).

So picture this. Our neighbor across the street comes trick-or-treating with her husband and three small kids, and finally introduces herself. And when she asks if I'm liking the neighborhood? Naturally, I start rambling on about how I'm-only-23-and-I-feel-a-little-out-of-place-and-I-should-be-reaching-out-more-but-I-probably-need-to-have-a-baby-so-I-can-befriend-the-other-moms, or something.

God, I wish I could just direct people to my blog before I ever open my mouth. I'm much cooler on the Internet.

9. So I decided to make them all cookies.