Baby of Mine

Wow, who knew Halloween could be so crazy? Fall here is a BIG deal, and we've just been overwhelmed with "stuff" to go do. The Saturday before Halloween we went to the Pumpkin Festival in downtown Historic Franklin, TN. Historic downtown Franklin surrounds the square, which has a series of seasonal festivals. All the shops there are very trendy and cute (and usually expensive!) There are also a ton of good eateries as well. All the shop owners were dressed up and handed out candy. The festival has a giant pumpkin (and I mean BIG!) that you could guess its weight for $1 and win $100 with the winning guess. All the kids and some parents, and lots of dogs were dressed up. There was pumpkin anything-you-could-think-of to eat and drink....but the highlight of my day was a place called the Cocoa Tree. All you chocoholics, this is a good reason to come visit me in Tennessee. See, Jason and I started the South Beach Diet on Tuesday Nov. 1. , so the weekend before was all bets off. Y'know - sugar binging at its finest!

So the Cocoa tree - the name alone had my attention. We walked in and I was in heaven (please Lord let there be some of this in actual Heaven!) The whole place just smelled awesome, not too sugary-sweet, but perfect - chocolate. They serve basically one thing - yup - chocolate. The real stuff; we're not talking Hershey's kisses here - I mean like from the movie "Chocolat" (a fav of mine!) Truffles, cake, and REAL hot chocolate. Even "Mayan" hot chocolate - hot chocolate with chili pepper in it. So I decided to be brave and try the Mayan stuff. WOW! I know it sounds crazy, but it was just perfect. Not too sweet, really bold, and spicy when it hits the back of your throat. Okay I sound like a commercial, but it was such a treat! So now we're on the South Beach deal getting healthier and trying to survive the sugar detoxification process. :( Thank you Lord for sugar-free candy and Diet Dr. Pepper. At least I can pretend to eat sugar.

Okay so back to the Halloween stuff. Sunday was positive costume night for the AWANA program at church. Jason does the voice of the Cubbie Bear puppet - so I talked him into dressing as "Chubbie Bear" - Cubbie's Loving father! He let me paint his face brown and I even made him some felt ears. He said he looked like a dirty mouse that crawled out of a trash can, but the kids thought he was cool! Oh well! Jason is a good sport! I was a toddler . . . pig-tails, ribbons, a pink paci with paci clip, plus my lovey -a plush pink hippo. I told Jason if anyone was confused about my costume I'd cry or steal something out of their hand or push someone down for no reason and THEN they'd go, "Oh! She must be a toddler!"

On Monday - Jonah wore the costume one more time. I got my money's worth outta that thing! He went as Dumbo. Yep - he will be really mad when he sees that later, but it was cute! The costume was alright as long as the weather was pretty cool, but as soon as it got warm, it had to come off. At our church's Harvest Festival - Jason used Jonah's pumpkin to load up on candy that we can't eat, so Jason took it to his new job to make some more buddies. I, on the other hand, am not taking it to work b/c it will create enemies! Several of us ladies are trying to lose some weight!