Annual Vong Halloween Party

The Sunday before last was the annual Halloween party hosted by our good friends Phil & Tara, who gave up their house and moved to Towson so we'd have a place to live when we moved here. There are always pumpkin crafts and/or carvings--this year Aiden (read: Mommy) fashioned a little pumpkin into a mummy--a costume photo-op, and dinner exclusively featuring menu items that include pumpkin squash as an ingredient, from beer right down to dessert. Amazingly, Tara manages to devise an entirely novel menu each year. Last year was a Mexican theme which blew us all away; this year she again outdid herself with Italian-inspired dishes.

Aiden dressed up as a monkey this year (I call him "my little monkey"....sometimes this morphs into "my little monster", depending on what he's up to at the moment) and, although it ended up that some other poor parents drew the metaphorical short straw for the toddler displaying the worst meltdown, Aiden simply could not be bothered to stay in one spot for the pictures. Each time one of us set him down, he began to chase us. Finally Phil suggested that Brent exit in the direction of his camera, in the hopes that he might be able to get at least one shot where Aiden was looking at the lens. I don't think it ever worked out quite right, but we had fun trying, as you can see in this post's album. When we get a link to Phil's photos, we'll post those too.

Also included in this post's album are a few pics we snapped during the short visit we were lucky enough to have from my cousin Megan and her boyfriend Anthony, on their way from a wedding in the Blue Ridge back home to Brooklyn. We loved seeing them (thanks for coming, guys!), especially since they won't be able to make it to the Turner family reunion next month. It was Megan's first time meeting Aiden; unfortunately he was uncharacteristically moody since he's cutting his first year molars (holy crap those suckers are huge!).

Click on any of the photos below to view the entire album. As a special treat, we've embedded a couple videos in the album which should run right out of PICASA with no extra effort on your part. And look out for the next blog post of trick-or-treat photos; we're going to unleash the little guy on the neighborhood Friday night!