October Highlights...the California Avocado Festival, Disneyland, and Halloween

October zipped by and Brandon was gone most of the month so my writing time was limited.  That is not to say that we didn't do fun things all month.

We kicked the month off with a short drive up the 101 to Carpinteria, (recently featured here- check it out, their photos are much better than mine!), for the California Avocado Festival.  We walked into Carpinteria's downtown with visions of guacamole in our heads.  Brandon and I are obsessed with guac and avocados in general.  We got in line with everyone else for guacamole nachos and then quickly ate them walking down the street.  We also had the festival's avocado ice cream, which I don't recommend.  I've had avocado ice cream in Mexico that was very sweet and lemony, but this ice cream tasted buttery with a vegetal whiff.  It needed a lot more sugar.  So, that's the gouge on that.  We also looked for, but did not find, the avocado honey beer that we had read might be on tap.  However, look what we found in one of the festival stalls:

As you can see, we have been eating it with gusto.  It's very strong, almost like molasses.  But back to the festival.  We strolled the stalls, bought some avocado bread, and listened to some live music before we loaded our sleepy girls in the car and headed home.  It was nice way to cap summer and spend a Friday night.

Our next adventure was Disneyland and California Adventure.

Here we are at Big Thunder Ranch.  I think that cowboy may have been trying to get fresh with Brandon.

I like the cat on the right.  Yikes!  What is that cowboy doing?  And why is he winking?

Here we are at California Adventure:

Disneyland was a lot of fun.  Although Brandon and I get bad-parent awards for terrifying both our daughters by taking them on Snow White's Scary Adventures.  Paige was quiet and visibly shaken for a full half hour afterwards and Jules cried with fright the entire ride.  We felt terrible.  And we didn't learn our lesson - we later took them on Pirates of the Caribbean.

So, back at the ranch.  One highlight this month was that Jules' hair grew long enough to be styled.

John and Monique also visited us this month.  We went out to dinner, checked out the pumpkin festival at the Farmer's Market, and had an enormous lunch.  Good times!

We wrapped up the month with pumpkin carving, costumes, and trick-or-treating.  Paige was Snow White and Jules was a cute pink cat.

Our neighborhood is a destination for trick-or-treaters - lots of people drive over, park, and walk our narrow beach side streets.  A lot of the houses here have garages on the first floor, large driveways, and obscured front doors. So people bring beach chairs and card tables down to their driveways to hand out candy.  After we took Page and Jules trick or treating (we only went a few blocks) we got out our beach chairs and a glass of wine and handed out candy.   We went though six bags of candy in one hour.  Lesson learned: buy more candy next year!