Happy Halloween!

We did another haunted house, with a new twist. I cant wait to tell you about this one!



It all started with Katrina installing the front graveyard.



Here she is, dropping body parts and headstones on the grass and dragging the rest of the bones over to the other side.



Guess she doesn't need us to give her a hand, 'cause it looks like she's got all she can 'hand'...dle.



Uhm, did she put her arms somewhere on the ground?



It's beginning to look like the graveyard is getting the best of her.



Alas, poor Youric... Wait! Didn't we meet last year? Click here and see!



Ok, job's all done. Time for a high-five!

Well... It's the best that he can do....



Time to "battery-up"! Gotta make everything flicker and flash, ya know?



Ah, the entrance to the haunted house, just like last year. Katrina and her boyfriend Brad were helping me get it all together before night fall.



It's beginning to take shape. And this time, we decided to put walls up this year.



Not only that, I put together a power point slide show and used a projector to display it on one of the end walls we didn't install in the carport.



Here's the lineup for the team this evening. Brad, Katrina, Me (without a mustache anymore), Melissa and her boyfriend Stephen.



Melissa's mother, Tammy stopped by with little Phillip to see this year's haunted house.



Phillip showed me his 'costume', which is the latest thing. It's a 'hoodie' sweatshirt with a Frankenstein pattern on it. Just zip it up and bingo! You're ready for Trick or Treat.



Since Katrina invited her friends over, we turned it into a mini-Halloween party with snacks and stuff. I wonder what somebody said to Stephen to merit this look.



As we were doing our thing, we were also joined by another friend of Katrina's. This is Rachel in the red Harry Potter quidditch robe.



Ah, another victim attempting to make her way to the candy bowl.



This teenagers kept moving around, trading work zones in an effort to keep things interesting.



This is one of the opening slides, with a spooky voice welcoming you inside.



As this slide was running, we had the Monster Mash song playing on a boombox radio (controlled by the computer).



Arrrgh! The candy be over thar!!!



With this slide, the theme song from the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was playing. It starts with a blank screen and then different characters slowly populated the screen to about this point.



And this one had the intro song for the Addams Family playing in the background.



Well, it's about 10:00, and things are starting to wind down. Time to start packing things up. We had over 200 kids show up and went through over 40 pounds of candy. We even survived the onslaught of a trailer hay ride loaded down with over 40 kids. We pretty much stayed busy the whole evening. I guess it's time to bid you a...

Katrina's Homecoming Dance

Well, it was time again for Katrina's Homecoming dance and this year, I didn't need to take her. She went with her boyfriend, Brad and this is the only picture I have of the event because unfortunately, Katrina forgot to bring a camera. She said that they had a good time.

Geocaching With The In-Laws

Since the In-Laws had bought tickets to the World Series and it just happened to involve the Tampa Bay Rays, they stopped by for a visit. Of course, we just had to go out geocaching.



We took a look off of this bridge to find one of the stages of a multi-cache.



And wouldn't you know it, we had a nice opportunity to get a shot of this great blue heron.



Here is the first geocache they found..



And another photo opportunity presented itself. Lots of deer around here...



And how about a ring-necked snake too? He was so small, he looked like a little worm.



Would you look at the size of that toad? He's a big one. Another clever ceocache concealment technique.



And here's a nice example of a Southern Lubber Grasshopper.



And the final cache of the day, which happened to be one of ours. It turned out to be a nice day to go hunting for geocaches today.

Conni's Pre-Halloween Party

We attended the annual Halloween Party put on by Luann's friend Conni and her husband Steve. This is an affair they typically hold either before or after All-Hallow's Eve.



We arrived about half an hour after it began, and within moments of making it inside, Luann's mother tripped and fell forward onto some of the props and the couch. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt, which is a good thing because that was funny!



The livingroom was loaded full of props too, including a disco ball.



And here is Luann's mom & dad. She dressed up as a 1920's Flapper and he dressed up as Wyatt Earp (I kept calling him "Quiet Burp").



And here are our gracious Hostess (Conni) & Host (Steve), all decked out for the occasion.



I tell ya, when Conni & Steve do this shin-dig, they really put some effort into it.



Ah, time to sit for a bit and catch up on days gone by...



Looks like Luann's getting a beating tonight.



Let's take a tour outside. Not only did they go to the trouble of dressing up the front yard, they even took care of the back yard too.



Every nook and cranny got the Halloween touch.



Nothing like having your own personal graveyard out back...



Hello Domino! Good job with those glowing demon-eyes.



Oops, looks like you really need to pay attention while you're mowin' the lawn back here!



We even met up with Teishalyn and her husband Pat. Hi guys!

Well, it's getting late. Time to get the parents home before they turn into pumpkins...

Happy Birthday To All Six Of Us!

I hope the rest of the family has had better luck with their birthdays this month: Jody, Treesie, Jennifer, Kim and "Uncle Dude". Happy birthday you-all, looks like we're all one year older...

The Van Caught Fire

It seems that I went to back up the van this morning and suddenly, the dashboard display for the back-up camera started flickering, then went out. So I stepped on the brakes and while it was still in reverse, I worked on figuring out what happened to the back-up camera system, when smoke started billowing up from inside the van in the back. I threw it into park, turned off the key, ran around to the back of the van and opened up the rear doors. It turns out the smoke was coming from underneath the carpet on the right-hand side of the door sill plate. After pulling off the sill plate, I traced the burnt wiring down and outside to a pair of power wires that used to go to the backup beeper mounted up under the van.



Further investigation indicates that the wires had shorted out in a slow burn against the hole that was drilled in the body to connect to the backup beeper. After seeing how extensively burnt the wiring was, I decided I needed to drive the truck instead of the van to get to work. The strange thing was, when I went to close the right-hand door, I discovered the missing backup beeper sitting in the First Aid compartment in the right-hand door. It looks like the beeper was simply ripped out of its mounting place under the van and was then thrown into the FA compartment. Such a gentle surgical removal left the bare power wires hanging down against the sheetmetal of the body, so it was just a matter of time before they were going to short out and start a fire. And I was wondering why the backup beeper had stopped working after Mom's funeral...

So, now I have to pull up the carpet completely on the right side of the van and rip out and replace all of the burnt wiring from the rear sill plate all the way up to the driver's footwell to make the reverse lights, back up camera (and replacement back up beeper) work again. Just what I needed, more work on the van and it looks like the In-Laws are coming to town next week and they want to borrow the van...

This sucks!

Watch Out For This Scam

Watch out for a weird charge for a rediculously small amount of money on one of your bank accounts. When I checked out our accounts recently, a fraudulent 7-cent charge was made for a ficticious electronics business with a reference made to an 800-type phone number. So, I put the number into a Google search and whammo, there were a bunch of returns stating that the charge is bogus and is a way for a potential thief to 'ping' your account to see if the information they have to drain your account is valid. After some time has gone by, they will pull some large amounts from your account and it will be too late.

I called our bank and they admitted that this has been happening to a bunch of their accounts, so I locked down the account and ordered a replacement debit card. I strongly advise you to check your banking statement for all of your accounts and go back about 3 months or so and see if there is a small charge from a company you don't recognize on your account. The value has been for a small amount of around 20 cents or less, but in some instances, some people have experienced 'ping' charges as high as 50 dollars. If there is a charge you suspect might be related to this scam, get on the phone and contact your banking institution immediately, because it might be a setup to take significant amounts of money out of your account while you sleep...

Walsingham Park Geo Event

We attended yet another geocaching get-together and had a nice time. There was a bunch of fun (and funny) things we did.



In this picture, there was a cache that had a little camera inside, asking for a us to take a unique and funny picture with it. Hope what we did was what they had in mind.



This was the container. It's always neat to find a fully loaded ammo box in the woods.



As we went hunting for more caches, Captain Biggins joined us. This geocache was a rubber ant hollowed out to hold a tiny container.



We really love when a fellow geocacher takes the extra effort to make a really neat concealment for a geocache. Can you see it?



This is the bottom view of the 'ant pile'. It was made out of wood and fiberglass and looked really realistic. The above picture was actually taken after we re-hid it and worked hard on having it blend in with the surroundings.



A picture of a couple of bugs on a bush. Didn't realize that some wasps are nectar-drinks.



This group always seemed to be around us. We kinda called them 'The Thundering Herd'.



Yet another photo-op for a white heron.



When we found the next geocache, these guys were nearby on a palmetto frond.



And this was the 'next cache'...



I always get a kick out finding a geocache that isn't 'the same old thing'.



We even took some time to get some shots of these turtles resting in the pond. It actually looks like the one on the left is waving to us (click on the images to see a bigger version of them).



And look who was getting such a cool picture. Who's 'zooming' who?



This is what a nano-cache looks like. It takes a steady hand to sign the tiny logsheet in side...



And finally, these doves were on the way back to the car. This was a great way to spend the day.