Holy Catch Up Batman!

In the post previous to this I was talking about how true friends can pick up where they left off no matter how much time passes... my friend Geoffrey surprised me with a visit a few days after I posted that and took me out to an early birthday dinner. We played bar trivia and laughed and carried on like we see each other all the time. It breaks my heart that he's a distance away and my kids have only met one of my best friends in the world maybe 3 times... but we make it work in our own dysfunctional way. We text and stuff all the time and keep in touch but we actually come face to face usually about once a year. Lots of rambling... but just wanted to follow up on the previous post about friendship. I've been having issues with certain people that were in my life and aren't so much anymore. Learning to focus on the people that want to be here in my life and not on those who apparently don't...
but anyways I have a lot of catching up to do on here.

 Josh's birthday/Halloween party

 pumpkin picking and fall fun with another best friend Trina. The kids love Aunt Trina

 we went in the bouncy house with the kids, it was fun!

 this Obama mask in the haunted house was offensive in my opinion... I almost wanted to leave, and would have, if the kids weren't having such a blast

 then the Hurricane Sandy hit and we were without power for 6 days, well we got power back on the 6th day. The first night was amusing to us. The kids went to bed and we lit candles and drank and played board games by candlelight...

 the winds were so strong, it was scary. It blew the kids playhouse right over but thankfully we put almost everything in our shed that survived the storm. The neighbors swingset was destroyed and the slide was in the stream by our house. I am so thankful that ours survived. the kids would have been heartbroken.

 the power outage left us with a below 40 degree house and no running water so we camped out at Jim's parents house. The kiddos were happy to have cable lights and water.

 The Halloween came and Maris had school (one of the only schools in the area still in session due to the hurricane and power outages) and I volunteered for the school class party by donating my photo taking :)

 after she was out of school, we got dressed up and ready to go trick or treating. Due to mass power outages in the area, there wasn't much of a choice in where we could go so we headed to the indoor mall - o - ween and what an ordeal...

 this picture was early on when I could sill move around! it was shoulder to shoulder people. Horrible.

 then the gas outages started and we saw a lot of this happening. It took me 2 hours of driving around the county before I could fill up.

Jackson didn't have school until the following Monday but they still held Halloween and he opted for his Buzz dress up outfit I got at a yard sale last year. It fit him well and he had a great time :)

On the 6th morning of no power, I got a glorious text from my friend/neighbor that said we had power back so we finally got to head home and air out the house and throw away a lot of spoiled food. Other people had it far worse, just happy to be home and warm and safe. We will be eating a lot of ramen and cereal etc until I pick up more hours since I missed a lot of work from the storms.