i promise i have more pictures than just of amy and jim…but they looked SO FUNNY! plus they kept dancing around like hillbillies, and amy kept talking with her hillbilly accent.
here is darling Ruth, 91 years young, with her mask. she pushed her walker around the table and loaded her plate with food, setting it on the little seat part of the walker. when she got to the far side of the table she got stuck by the pet fountain blocking her path, so i got some people to help me push the table out. but then she made her way all the way around and got stuck again, so more table pushing. luckily the candles didn’t tip over and ignite anything.
john and katie, justin bieber and…well, a sexy wounded schoolgirl. katie was talking about who she was planning to be, somebody dead, but then it was too much trouble. she’d have given our sexy costume winner a run for the money if she’d gotten to the party a little earlier.
kim and jasmin, who never knows what she’s going to be then always managed to come up with something good.
here’s cute jeromy, randy’s friend, who came despite randy not being there. he did know a couple of people at the party, and somebody said he could have won the chicken prize…
…but then he zipped up his hood and MAN was that effective! he really couldn’t keep it up, though; it was even worse than the big rubber masks that other people wore.
susan was a spectacular aphrodite, with a beaded cap and gold feathers, but by this point in the evening she’d pared it all down.
debi iams wore a funny fat that twitched back and forth when she pressed a button. this year i decided i wanted to announce everybody, so that people could thoroughly look at all the costumes, and she twitched her hat so everybody could see. this was good, but it was a drag doing all that announcing – we used the karoake microphone and it wasn’t loud enough, plus it took too long. next year, no announcements.
we need to do like they did in a recent hilarious episode of “the office” – dwight bellowed the name of each guest as they arrived at a party.
jim patton, looking very dapper as some kind of old-fashioned guy.
fred and jonell baskett, who arrived late – but they had been to another party and were going to another one, plus they haven’t been to one of our parties for a few years. i’m glad they stopped by.
lara, sexiest costume, and her friend gail. how is it possible that lara is single? not only is she beautiful, she’s a smart doctor and a really nice person, plus she always wears fabulous shoes.
on the right is beverly ryan who should have won a prize! i didn’t realize the fabulousness of her costume til later in the night, after the prizes had been awarded.
karen, who was really funny, but once again, a costume that wasn’t so easy to maneuver in.
tim and gena, who arrived kind of late and looked cute as usual. people want him to come back as the pillsbury dough boy again, though…that’s the single only time that there’s been a request for a repeat costume. we might even get aunt sandy to come back to a party if he wears that one again.
two flappers.
this is my absolute favorite picture, and i think i’m going to print it out and hang it up today. that would be quite an achievement, since i just printed a few photos from last year about a week ago and put them up. it looks like lara is the devil mom and amy is her hillbilly daughter.
we always have at least a coupla nuns. jasmin with lenore, both very authentic-looking.
bill castor, who is a TROOPER – he and linda flew in from san francisco and came right to the party! i had told them that they could do it, but i wasn’t sure that they would since it seemed they’d be kinda tired after being in san francisco plus the long flight, but they did come, although not in costume..
katie, john, and jeromy. it was so dark in the house plus i was so distracted, i didn’t even notice that john was wearing a wig! no, his real hair is not that shiny.
shirene is in a play so she came really late…she played a 70 year-old in the play and made a really quick change into her sexy Candy Corn outfit. this is why i usually have two sexiest costume awards.
linda, shirene, and her date, mark, who seemed like a very nice guy. i know this is the only year that linda won’t be in costume! i wanted to get a picture of mark with mollie, who was sitting at his feet for a long time as he tried to eat a little food in peace. at this point most of the eating was over, so mollie was getting desperate to find people who still had food. “I only have a brownie!” he said plaintively to her.
and that’s it…but i know i’m missing photos of a few people, like jim and nan lieneke. we gave nan BEST COSTUME, even though she was just dressed like a cardinal fan – we did it to make a point about how awesome it was that the cards won the series. jim looked really good too; also dressed like some kind of old-timey soldier. damn, maybe somebody else has photos of them. i also didn’t get a picture of grace and pj nanavati, who came to the party for the very first time this year. he was a cowboy and she wore some fancy long dress and a luxurious black velvet cape. plus kevin brown and his lovely wife lola came to the party for the first time, even though they had to have been exhausted from having their own party the night before. she was dressed in a fabulous medieval costume, and i’m sorry i don’t have a photo of her.
we always invite all the neighbors in the lane but only one or two have shown up. this year, in addition to our neighbor chris, mary loken showed up, but only briefly – she’s been to our parties very briefly every year. she comes in, wearing a costume, circles the table and gets lots of food, and then i’m pretty sure she just leaves. so she goes to a lot of trouble getting dressed up to get some of my delicious party food. last year she stayed a while because she knew somebody, but maybe that person hadn’t arrived yet this year when mary showed up.
our neighbors ted and jean smith came for a while – ted had walked by the other day and told kevin they were thinking of coming, and ted says kevin told him that “only diehard people wear costumes.” i thought this was pretty funny. maybe, if we have the party enough years, we can lure more of our neighbors in.
this morning kevin had taken down quite a few decorations, a very good thing to wake up to.
ok then, it’s NOVEMBER already,
mrs. hughes.