Papa Tom is Fancy, Halloween Hijinks, Art Critics and Yup, You Guessed It... It's That Time of Year

I got such positive feedback about posting the worst photo of Mr. Smith ever it got me to thinking about horrible photos. I dug out this little baby just last night to share with you:

here you have clay, me and my sweet mama at the grand canyon. clay has this photography captioned "white trash mama and her two adorable children." it really cracks me up every time i look at it... mama, you're welcome.

This week was NON-STOP action. Last Wednesday night, Mr. Smith and I loaded up in the car and drove out to Gatlinburg to see Papa Tom get an award for being the Family Physician of the Year! It was super fancy; we got to sit at the head table and everything.

here we have tom getting his award from the current president of the tennessee family physician's association

and here we have him getting a standing ovation! well... this is sort of post-standing ovation, but still.

After the awards supper, I wandered around the convention center. They were having a conference there too, and all sorts of learney things were going on. See?

nerd alert on high! *pushing glasses up nose* "yes, uh.... i'm going to have to ask you to be quiet because uuhhh... there are scientific sessions in progress."

this dude is scary and i can't tell if it's a woman or a man

i make friends with a bear

But despite being man of the hour, Papa Tom gets attacked by a bear!

have you learned nothing from the laurel bear incident?

Congratulations, Papa Tom! We are all proud of you!

Next up: oh boy oh boy oh boy! It's Halloween! Mr. Smith and I load up the car and head to Macon, GA to a Halloween party hosted by one Mr. and Mrs. Tony Harris!

fortunately, we lasted the weekend without having been asked to walk the plank

Upon arrival we took a nice walk around the Harris's fancy neighborhood. On the ground nearby Tommy noticed this crazy volunteer watermelon that sprouted from a weed:

i wanted to take it and cut it up and see what it tasted like, but parking lot watermelon seemed a bit odd, so we just left it.

we wandered through a park and tommy took a picture (in my favorite tube top) of me in a tree. a bum came by 30 seconds after this was taken and told me i was hot. then he asked for $1.25.

and here we have tommy shooting a tommy gun shaped bottle of vodka. that just seems like a bad combo - liquor in a gun shaped bottle? i'm just saying it could lead to bad ideas. or funny photos, either one....

Then, time to get dressed up!

here we have chilean miner tommy (above ground for the first time in months - he was begged for his story but refused to tell without his other 32 compadres around. that and i'm still having to hear "CHI! CHI! CHI! LE! LE! LE!" once about every two minutes) and rainbow brite megan.

Specifically,

rainbow brite's hard-livin' big sis (i forgot to pack a flesh colored bra but i think it totally ties the outfit together, don't you?)

Girl photo!

moi, cheerleader sarena shasteen, candy corn princess mina (sans costume), super-pajama-hero amy mettler, and dora the explorer lucy

And yes you read that right - please say hello to Dora the Explorer Lucy:

hola!

And Dora the Explorer Lucy:

lucy a las dos

Georgia Lucy and I totes bonded this weekend. For those of you who don't know me might not know that I turn into a pumpkin every night. If we're hanging and I hit a wall - watch out. I *will* fall asleep on you. Lucy and I were both put to bed at midnight in the same bed.

i totally liked her style too. here is a sample conversation: l: 'will you play balloon with me?' m: 'no, i'm having grown up talk.' l: 'will you play balloon with me?' m: 'no, lucy, i'm having grown up talk with your mother.' l: 'will you play balloon with me?' m: 'no, i'm talking with the grown ups.' l: 'please?' m: 'no, i'm talking right now.' l: 'pllllleeeeeeeeaaaaasseeee?'

It was totes adorable.

Speaking of adorable:

me loves me some shasteen boys

i walked in and found the children back from trick or treating - this used to be my favorite part of halloween. coming home and dumping the candy out to see what you had gotten - i forgot about that ritual until finding them caught up in the act. good times!

And of course, the ubiquitous self-photo:

this picture makes me laugh. look at everyone's crazy eyes (except me of course)

Tommy almost 86'ed his costume idea when he couldn't get his hands on a Chilean flag. I assured him I could make him one so he bought the material and I sewed it together. I was total attention to detail (non-sewing friends, LOOK AWAY) I sewed it using French seams so there was no real 'back' and 'front' and my only concession to laziness was felt stick-on stars since I didn't want to have to hand applique stars on. The stars fell off at the beginning of the night so I:

sewed them back on real quick! i have to say this flag came in super handy - it got chilly when the sun went down and mr. smith used it as a shawl, and the next day in the car i fell asleep and used it as a blanket. i really would feel bad if some chilean on i-75 looked over and saw me desecrating their flag by using it as a blanket, i just thought of that... hope that didn't happen.

And at breakfast the next morning:

good times all! thank you harrises, laytons, mettlers and shasteens! we don't do this often enough! (says the one who doesn't live in georgia, ahem...) see ya'll again soon! amy sorry i cut you out of this photo... whoopsie - i was trying to take it fast because i was practically standing on that poor couple's table!

A few weeks ago one of my friends asked Tommy to judge a children's art contest! I said he would and secretly planned to do it myself if he was unable. Tee hee! Upon our return to Knoxville, I pulled out all the entries and Mr. Smith and I:

got our inner art critic on

It was separated into two age groups, K-2 and 3-5. We had to pick a first, second and third for each group.

my favorite artist statement was from a second grader and it said "together we can save the world by picking up trash and if someone falls down we should help them up." can't argue with that logic...

Next: OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY!!! My favorite time of the year!

No. Not Halloween.

Growing up, I was fascinated with my grandmother's Santa Claus collection. When she passed away it was given to me and I take it VERY SERIOUSLY. I went into great detail about putting it out in last year's blog post - please feel free to see it here so I don't have to bore you with repeating it all this year. Bottom line - I always feel that Christmas season starts almost immediately after Halloween, so I find nothing wrong about putting the Santas out anytime on our around Halloween. It's my Halloween tradition.

i love it so much i hate it stays in the attic in boxes for months! i want to break it out asap and enjoy my little guys!

Mr. Smith, I assure you, finds the Halloween tradition to be utterly ridiculous and insane. He puts up with it because he's a nice guy and hey, who are we kidding - if I have to have a foible, how adorable is a Santa foible? He is very accepting of this Halloween tradition, but puts up with it only because he loves me dearly and knows how much it means to me.

Which brings me to... he gave me a compliment when I was putting out my Santas yesterday. He had insisted that I not try to do too much what with the staying up late at a Halloween party, driving four hours from Macon home, cleaning up the house a bit, getting packed for work the next day, dinner, etc. etc. etc. PLUS putting out all the Santa Clauses. (It's a huge collection that involves dismantling two bookshelves). I assured him that I could indeed get it done in an evening, and halfway through last night he commented that I was a pro when it comes to organizing this process.

I have it down to a science.

I went over it in last year's post, but basically - I take everything off the bookshelves, stack it in a corner, dust completely, pull out the bins of Santas from the attic, unload the boxes one by one (each time filling the bin with bookshelf items and returning one by one to the attic), arranging Santas on shelves, cleaning the floors from all the foam peanuts and dust, and DONE.

here we have me putting up the hanging clauses

And a mere few hours later we have:

santas shelf one

santas shelf two

Last year's NOLA post you may recall that I finally after YEARS of searching found Santa Claus Mardi Gras beads! I was going to buy one pair and was talked into buying two for good measure since they were so hard to find.

Ahem. For Christmas I was given a third pair by my mother-in-law who had found them before I bought pair one or pair two. So, here we have the first Santa in the collection wearing all the Mardi Gras beads:

i don't wanna know what he did to get all these nice beads

And - I do keep up the integrity of the collection by only allowing myself to purchase one Santa a year (and I haven't bought one yet this year!) and it has to be original or interesting or unique - I don't crap up the collection with junk. But - things happen to make the collection ebb and flow, and upon inspection this year, I deemed these two unworthy (read: melted) and threw them away:

the guy on the left i bought before i had the santa claus collection at a publix supermarket in orlando when i lived there. we called him 'coney claus' because he was shaped like a claus, but tommy said last night he now looked like 'raisin claus.' the other guy was so mashed and melted he almost wouldn't stand up. he's part of the original collection... but he was also mashed and melted when i got him out yesterday.

So ho ho ho! And Merry Christmas!

Lastly, I leave you with this:

little man locisano

Over and out, peeps.