Weekend Wrap-up

We ended the month in a very busy way. After trick-or-treating downtown on Friday night, the festivities continued on Saturday. We woke up and decorated Halloween cookies, a tradition my mom did with us my whole life. Then, after story time at the library, we picked up Aude, Anne-Helene, and Arnaud and bought some pumpkins to go carve with the Fulcos. We had a great time scooping the guts and seeds out and playing with their new kitty Sophia. Beatrice was more interested in playing with the fish food, but it's all good. We had a yummy lunch, then headed home for a nap. In the evening we went to my dad's house where we met up with my brother and friends Martha & Erik. Beatrice only went to one house to trick-or-treat since many house lights were off. After watching for a brief time, she joined Uncle Paul and had a blast handing candy out to others. She was very grown up, placing one candy in each bag/bucket carefully, then waving goodbye to each of the kids. I can't even articulate how "old" my baby has been acting lately. It's just little ways, but it's her expressions, her communications, everything, but I'll save that for a separate post. We said goodbye to Aude and family on Sunday. Tonight we had a wonderful gathering at Pho Evergreen with Quynh, a Hanoian exchange student at Woodstock Academy. It was great to see our friends Mr. & Mrs. Vo and Cindy and we had a feast which included cabbage salad, shrimp chips, spring rolls, scallion pancakes, pho, pork tenderloin with rice and egg, tofu curry, and fried bananas. Beatrice had so much fun eating a little bit of everything (except the curry was too spicy for her and she held her tongue out and panted like a dog in summer), trying really hard to use chopsticks, and running around the restaurant like she owned the place. It was interesting though, she calmed down and carefully examined the Buddhist shrine they have outside the kitchen. We are hopeful that we can spend much more time with Quynh, a brilliant, articulate, and beautiful Vietnamese young woman. She is planning on going to college here in the states so hopefully this will be the start of a new friendship.