Chapter 160
Carving Cats

Popcorn in hand, it was time for us to head over to the Haunted Mansion.

Here’s our Hatbox Mickey with his hat on.

Even though we’d just come from the Ranch, we headed back there after the ride because we wanted to see if we could catch Mickey and Minnie before their next rotation was done.

We got distracted en route because Clarabelle was out in the horse pen and we got to pet her while asking the cast member about her. We found out that she was about 15 months old at the time and was still not quite done growing.

After bidding farewell to our cow friend, we went back to the Jamboree right as Minnie was about to leave AGAIN—talk about bad timing. Apparently Mickey hadn’t even come out for this set anyway, so we hadn’t really missed our opportunity to get a picture with the duo.

We went over to the picnic tables where Donald was sitting and coloring.

Tracy had a little chat with him because he was coloring in a picture of Mickey even though he is, of course, number one. We had to make sure that was all clarified.

Minnie circled back around as she made her way toward the gates leading backstage, and I once again got a terrible quality picture of her.

Disneyland itself was getting a little crowded at this point, so we started walking toward the exit.

Hopping over to DCA, we walked back to Cars Land so that we could check out Luigi’s Flying Tires, which had recently become one of the first major attractions of the year to get decked out in Christmas regalia.

Our plan for dinner was to get a loaf of bread from Pacific Wharf and then bring it home and make our own bread bowl. As we waited in line, however, we saw that the soup of the day was Baked Potato, which looked and smelled delicious. I asked whether it had celery in it, and when I found out it was allergy-free we decided to just get a bread bowl to eat there.

It certainly tasted as good as it looked, and we were glad to get dinner now instead of having to wait until we got home.

As dusk started to fall, Tracy started getting really cold, so we decided to head toward the exit. She had such a chill, in fact, that we had to stop into Elias and Co. before leaving the park so that she could try on a sweatshirt and quickly warm up for a few minutes.

Once we made it home, we decided that we should really carve our pumpkin tonight if we wanted to have a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween. We’d bought a carving kit and had chosen a pattern. Now we just had to get it all ready.

After my least favorite part of the pumpkin experience—taking out all the seeds—we moved on to outlining the design with the little poker.

Next came the actual carving.

Sort of starting to come together.

Ta da!!

We also bought an electric candle for the pumpkin, so here it is all lit up.

We were honestly very proud of our handiwork (especially considering how difficult it is to maneuver those tricky little saws that come in the carving kits). Now it was time to pack it in for the night because tomorrow was my birthday and we had some big plans!

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