We had a wonderful Halloween season. Yes, it's become a season at our house — what, with the costume planning, decorating, baking, trip to the pumpkin farm, school parties... There's far too much to write about, so I'm going to let pictures tell some of the story.
Here we are ready to embark on a hay ride at the pumpkin farm. You can't see the hay or the ride in this pic, but you can see my stylin' family sporting their cool shades. Thank goodness it didn't rain that day; it was the last day we were available to get our pumpkins!
This was the first year we felt the kids were up for the challenge of the corn maze — why don't they call it a "maize maze?" Just a thought. Anyway... the kids had a blast! T loves to solve mazes, so the chance to actually be inside a maze was a big thrill for him.
And here's the money shot...
To pass out to our trick-or-treating friends, we baked chocolate cream cheese cut-out cookies with almond icing. Deee-lish! This batch was decorated by Miss Oo. The cookie in the center was her experiment to see what would happen to candy corn in the oven.
This next batch was decorated by T, with a little help. Notice the ghosts... it was important to T that he make each one say something different.
Costumes! Oo was a black and white kitty, and T went as a little monkey. Oo originally wanted to be an alligator, but she decided instead to be a cat when the only alligator costumes I could find were for infants. And T had wanted to be a gorilla, but he was happy when we found a monkey costume. They went easy on me — they know I can't sew.
The kids picked out the designs for their pumpkins from a carving-idea book and the Internet. Adrian carved his and Oo's pumpkins: R2D2 and a kitty-bat.
I carved "The Scream" for me and a skull face for T. He doesn't usually like scary things, but he said his pumpkin HAD TO be scary for Halloween.
Adrian took the kids around trick-or-treating while I stayed home and manned the fort... and the candy bowls. Oo covered four blocks — double the territory she covered last year. T only lasted for one and a half blocks before calling it quits because he was tired. After he dumped out his candy bag on the porch to peruse his spoils, we cuddled, passed out candy, and watched a couple of raccoons climb out of and around a hole in our front yard's tree. Here is a picture of us snuggling. (He's pretending to be asleep.)
...by Wednesday morning, the raccoons had eaten R2D2 and kicked Oo's pumpkin off the steps. After I took this picture I noticed the look of horror on my pumpkin's face.
Even funnier was T's reaction... holy cow!... he was majorly PO'd!! I tried to get some video of his ranting and stomping, but he caught me doing it and gave me a look that could kill.
