Candy construction at its finest

It looks good enough to eat … but I wouldn't, due to that whole "seeing how sausage is made" thing. Carrie and Park whipped up this edible edifice last weekend at the Gingerbread Village fundraiser here in Wichita (I did one too, but they kept it to display).

We were introduced to the event several years ago when we were still relatively young and child-free by our then-neighbors/friends/adopted family the Crowduses, so when we landed some tickets this year we called them up to see if they would want to accompany once us again now that we actually have a reason to be there. When they said yes, we figured we'd probably score just a couple of them due to individual schedules that rival the commander in chief's, however when a caravan of cars pulled up and every last Crowdus poured out—along with a couple of extra friends for good measure (not sure if I need to put Zoe's friend in quotation marks or not) we were shocked.

Once inside we had a great time, especially Park who got to follow around his idol Max and his friend Zach who were both absolutely incredible with him. As for Carrie and I, we had just as much fun hanging out with Erick, Stacey, Wesley, Zoe, Lily and Max. Erick and Stacey kind of took us under their wing when we moved across the street from them as an un-married, new home-owning couple and the kids became our playmates who we have watched grow up and for whom we now kind of feel like a pseudo aunt and uncle. We don't get to see them nearly as much as we'd like (see above scheduling conflicts) so it was great when we got the extra surprise of being able to go to lunch with them. It was probably the first meal in … I can't remember how long, that Carrie and I didn't have to attend to Park. He sat at the far end from us at an 11-person table and couldn't have cared less if we were there at all—at one point I was getting a drink across the crowded restaurant from our table and I could clearly hear him laughing above all of the noise. When all was said and done and it was time to leave, Park, who had a chance to go with them to a basketball game but declined out of "shyness," was pretty upset.

Luckily he's three, so all it took was the sight of a few ducks to make his world right again.

Trust us, Park is smiling on the inside.

Best of Show?

Park's Halloween attire caught the eye of the people over at Ruth's Homeworks who named it their favorite costume of the year and asked to add him to their list of local handymen.

For transparency purposes, it's probably important to note that Carrie used to work with Sarah Gilbert, the woman behind Ruth's Homeworks, but we prefer to think he was selected on his own merits.

Give it a "like" on Facebook.

Nailed it.

It's hard to believe, but last night was Park's fourth Halloween and the first one during which he actually mouthed the words "trick or treat" (although at times there was an uncomfortably long delay between the person opening the door and the actual utterance of the phrase—making us seem more like loiters than Halloween enthusiasts).

Anyway, as hopefully you can tell, Park was a construction worker. While that may seem pretty simple, it took us roughly four months to get there thanks to the attention span of, well … a three year old, that never really allowed us to determine what he was going to be. In fact, as late as two weeks ago when we asked Park what he wanted to be, we were surprised to hear "the Easter Bunny." Luckily, he came back to the construction worker (or as Park calls it "a worker man") idea we were already planning on. 

As far as our route, we decided to stay close to home to check out the new neighborhood and hopefully meet some of our neighbors … and we did, we met the only two other trick or treaters we saw maybe four or five times. Unfortunately there were a lot of unanswered doors, however the ones that did open up were very nice and were more than happy to unload some candy on Park, he even brought home a tube of tooth paste.

All in all, I think he had fun, and to be honest, I don't think he could have handled much more.

Oh, and by the way, Carrie and "the fetus" also dressed up. Here they are with Park.

And if you couldn't tell what's on Park's hat, here it is. He really wanted a construction cone to be part of his costume, so I found a way to give him one.