Ben's First Halloween

Tonight was Ben's first Halloween and it was a big night for the little guy. I dressed him up as Spiderman, and luckily the weather was just right - not to hot and not too cold- for him to wear the costume in comfort (and without the socks that he kept pulling off!).

We headed over to Tracy and Parker's place around 5pm and helped Parker finish up his "Jack Sparrow" makeup, and then the four of us headed to the Collierville Town Square to take some pictures with the fall decorations. Parker ran into a few "Ninja" friends from school and the boys were thrilled to be able to use their swords for a "real" fight. I like how they all held on to their trick-or-treat bags the whole time - very authentic.

Then we made a brief stop at Central Church's Trunk-or-Treat for Parker to do the moonbounce and play a few games before heading over to Jenny, Megan and Brandon's house for the "real deal" trick-or-treating. Megan and her friends were 60's hippies, Brandon and his friend were some sort of zombie/ghoul/grim reaper and of course, Parker was Jack Sparrow and Ben was his super-Spidy self! Jenny, Tracy and I decided to take advantage of the fun as well and were a go-go girl, an airline stewardess and a German girl. Parker and the boys and Megan and her friends flew around the neighborhood and filled up their bags and buckets in no time flat. Ben and I walked along with Tracy and Jenny at a MUCH slower pace and got a few pictures of Ben's first time trick-or-treating. Jenny's neighborhood was the perfect Halloween neighborhood - almost every house had amazing decorations and there was even a hayride for the kids to take around the block run by one of her neighbors. We even got to trick-or-treat at Spongebob Squarepant's house!

It was a very late night for Ben - we didn't finish trick-or-treating until an hour after his normal bedtime, but luckily he had taken 2 2+ hour naps earlier in the day and so he was quite interested, if a little confused, about all of the Halloween festivities. It was a great Halloween and we can't wait to do it again next year!

Getting started

I am finally getting caught up with the modern age as a means of keeping in touch with all of our friends and family out there, so here goes.

Our posting title, "The Adventures of Ironman, Diabetic Girl and SuperBen," perhaps deserves some explanation. I created the title without having consulted Chris, since he is currently up to his eyeballs in EDO School out in Los Angeles, but I sincerely hope he appreciates the time and thought I put into thinking up a creative and unique blog title.

I was going to go with something simple like, The Clotfelters or The Clotfelter Family, but (and no offense to my wonderful in-laws) I wanted something with a little more zing and "Clotfelter" doesn't exactly scream "ZING!" I would have liked to have made our url theadventuresofironmandiabeticgirlandsuperben also, but it contained too many letters for a url, which is probably best considering a) people could develop severe cramps trying to type it in and b) we would have to change it when we got around to having our next child or else risk offending our 2nd born forever by having him/her excluded from our blogspot address. So I decided to go with the basic and not quite so zingy theadventuresofchrisandjody for the url and save the zinginess for the blogspot title.

"Ironman" is Chris, and it is a name he gave himself while we were living in Spain - I will write more on this if and when he agrees to me divulging the background on its creation.

Of course, "Diabetic Girl" is me, since I have Type 1 Diabetes, and making it sound like I am a superhero instead of just a person whose pancreas kicked the bucket almost 10 years ago is a lot more fun. I do have to give credit to my 6 year old nephew, Parker, for giving me the inspiration for the name, as he (as his mom and he were patiently waiting for me to pick them up at the San Francisco airport last March, and I was extremely late) exclaimed, "Just where is that diabetic girl?" Thus, the name was born.

And finally, our dear little 10 1/2 month old, Benjamin, who my sister has taken to calling "SuperBen," is both super and may someday end up having superpowers such as flying and x-ray vision, but who for now is working on making the transition from crawling to walking.

I am looking forward to keeping everyone informed of our "adventures" from here on out. We are in the process of buying our first home outside of Charleston, South Carolina and plan to do some renovations over the next few months. I will assuredly be posting lots of pictures of our progress on the house as well as relating the many joys and pains of being first time home owners. I also plan to use this blogspot to keep Chris (and the rest of you) inundated with tons and tons of pictures of Ben while he is away on his 6 month deployment to Afghanistan (Chris, not Ben :)), and to keep our friends and family around the country and around the world informed on a more regular basis than our yearly Christmas card (well, ok, most years we get one out).

Hopefully you guys enjoy getting a little inside take on our goings-on and I am on top of this new creation enough to keep in current and at least moderately entertaining.