Halloween

Another successful year of trick-or-treating. Milena was a frog. A decision that was easy to make because we had a frog snowsuit in her size. She was warm and happy the entire time.

Claire decided to be a doorbell. A little less obvious than the frog, but a much higher creativity score. We even rigged it up with an actual doorbell, so she rang if you pushed the lit up button. Lots of people on our candy route really liked this, and I think Claire got someone to 'ring' her at each house we stopped at. We even found a house that has their doorbell set up on the same frequency as this one, which might be fun for walks in the future.

Carving the Pumpkins

Wednesday night is Trick-or-Treating night, and we have our pumpkins carved and ready. I didn't buy any candy, though. Claire will be out begging for the stuff herself (as Diego), and really I think one or less people will ring our doorbell. When I was younger we were never home to answer the door for the trick-or-treaters, so we'd put a big bowl of candy out with a "Happy Halloween, Take Some" sign. It was always empty when we got home, the entire thing dumped into the bag of the first kid to come by without supervision, I'm sure. We lived in a pretty rural area, with maybe eight kids to the neighborhood. Maybe I should just set out an empty bowl and tape a "Please Take One" sign to it. Just kidding. Kind of.

Anyway, the pumpkins. Claire was very excited about carving pumpkins all day. Then when we finally got down to business, she discovered that the process was messy, and by the look on her face, downright disgusting.










































That scoop was as close as she got to touching any of the insides. So she compromised by just drawing what she wanted carved right on the pumpkin, and then supervised Mike and I. They turned out pretty well. Mine is the traditional Jack-o-lantern, Claire's is the 'guy with glasses', and Mike's is the tree and bird.














Then I roasted the seeds. I've never done it before, and it turned out to be pretty easy. I'll definitely buy a few more pumpkins just for the seeds next time around. The three we got this year didn't have very many, and I think they will be gone as soon as Mike discovers them.