Our Halloween

We had a very busy October. There wasn't a good time to go pick out pumpkins together until this past weekend, so we decided we'd go after church and lunch on Sunday. Even that didn't work out, though. Danielle ended up with what we suspect was food poisoning Saturday and spent Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday morning in between the bathroom and her bed. The three of us stopped by the grocery store after lunch on Sunday and picked out pumpkins. Thankfully Danielle was feeling better Sunday evening so we did get to carve them together.

Some things never change - Tyler still doesn't want to touch the guts. Ron saw someone online use a drill to clean out their pumpkin last year, so he thought he'd try it. He and Tyler cleaned theirs out that way. Danielle and I did it the old fashion way, and I think our way was just as fast and thorough. The drill was amusing, though. Every once in awhile a pumpkin seed flew out of the pumpkin and across the room.

 

Danielle started with one concept but decided it was too ambitious once she started cutting and quickly changed directions. Ron's and Tyler's both look similar to pumpkins past. Mine probably does, too. I like how they turned out this year, though, and I'm thankful we found the time to carve them together.

 

This was the first time in 17 years we haven't had our own trick-or-treater. Both kids decided they wanted to have friends over instead. Danielle wanted to have friends over to watch a movie, and Tyler wanted to have friends over to hang out and help pass out candy. I ran across a couple recipes I'd been wanting to try and was excited for the chance to make goodies, so I may have gone a little overboard. We had slow cooker hot chocolate with a variety of toppings, 4 different types of cookies, 2 different types of brownies, rice krispie treats, chips of various sorts, and homemade Halloween chex mix. Everything was wonderful, but of course there was way too much of it. I took some in to my coworkers today and Danielle took a big pan of leftovers to Bible study tonight. Danielle's friends didn't make it very far into the movie, and Tyler and his friends lasted about an hour into passing out candy. At that point Ron and I took over candy duty and both groups of kids decided to play board games together. I feel so fortunate that both Tyler and Danielle have good friend groups. The kids they surround themselves with are good people with good morals from good homes. Out of all the parenting worries I have, thankfully wondering if their friends will be bad influences is not one of them.

Ron and I enjoyed our evening, too. We went for a walk around the neighborhood to see all the cute costumes and get a little exercise while Tyler's gang was passing out candy. When they were done, we sat in the garage and passed out candy together. Once we ran out of candy, we watched a movie in the bedroom while we listened to the kids laughing downstairs. It wasn't our traditional Halloween, but it was a good one.