This is Halloween

Halloween morning started with Fresh & Easy croissants purchased the night before and cantaloupe jack-o-lantern inspired smiley faces.  Both children were incredibly appreciative and totally thanked me for my creativity and effort.  They did not, by any means, just eat the cantaloupe without a word spoken about the design.

Ginger was curious about something.  I love her curious face.

As the day went on the kids played one of their favorite games- hide under the blanket and scream for mom and dad to find you and then giggle loudly as mom and dad pretend they have no idea where you are.

In the afternoon, just randomly, we hung these birds out in the entry way by the front door.  They used to be in my parent's dining room but have been passed on to us.  They've been sitting in the garage for a month when I decided it was time to bite the bullet and drill the wall.

Elliott specifically requested chocolate chip pancakes for dinner.  I obliged.

And added Halloween sprinkles.

Before we knew it, it was time for trick-or-treating.  We considered wearing our R2D2 and Chewbacca costumes, but mine is short and kind of see through (I wore a slip underneath it for the party) and Michael's is furry and hot, so we both settled on non-costume, but still festive, clothes.

Our next door neighbors, Joann and Jesus always make soup on Halloween and set up tables in their driveway and invite a lot of people over to eat and hand out candy.  We always give them our bowl and leave a note on our door to see the neighbors for our candy.

Their bowl is on the left.  I think they were trying to win a competition we didn't know we were having.

Their grandson (who is only about 18 or 19 month old) was scared of the kids in their masks.  He refused to be photographed with them.

We have quite a few houses in our neighborhood that go all out with their decorations.  I decided to get pictures of some of them.  Most of these are on our street and close to our house on our street.

Joann and Jesus' house

The first house.  It's the same first house every year.

Our neighbors across the street and one house over.

These are two different houses.  Both on our street.

This house was a few blocks away.  It was spectacular.

This thing scared me.

We trick-or-treated for about 90 minutes.  Then we went back to Joann and Jesus' for soup (Michael and Spencer) and cupcakes (Michael and Elliott) and water (all of us.  We were dangerously dehydrated and the kids wanted to know if we could trick or treat for bottles of water).

It seemed like there were fewer kids out and about than the last two years we've been in this neighborhood.  Joann's friend told us they had 49 kids, which means our bowl also had 49 kids.  Last year we gave away all of our candy and were still answering the door at 9:00.  This year we got nobody after 8 and we had a lot of candy left.

So, our leftover candy combined with the new candy equals diabetes.

It will take us until next October to eat all of this.

Yes.  This is the appropriate reaction.

The kids went to bed and then Michael and I watched stupid TV.  Ginger heard fireworks outside (there is a wedding place close by that does fireworks shows about once a month) so she was on high alert.  

She's cute when she's on high alert.

And then, Halloween was over.  And the really good time of year begins.  It's all sunshine and roses (and crippling debt) from now until January.