Happy Halloween!

Where I live we're Trick-or-Treating tonight, on Saturday.  

We carved SEVEN pumpkins.  The girls each had three, and Hubby had his usual big pumpkin chewing on the little pumpkin.  I like the roasted seeds, my recipe calls for two cups. This year I had to 5x the recipe for all of our seeds.  Thing 1 helped me pull them out and she did a very good job.  There are only six of the seven carved pumpkins in the photo, one is on the other side of the porch.

It's raining like crazy.  I expect to have tons of candy left over.
I hope some more kids come tomorrow night.  I'll be ready for them.

I am manning the door, Hubby bought a costume this afternoon to go around with the kids.  This is just fine except he bought a blow-up bronc rider, and the chest of the bull is around his knees.  So he's forced into a mincing little geisha walk.  He's holding an umbrella for himself, and Thing 1's umbrella and candy basket, as she refuses to hold it herself and is carrying her handful of candy from the door to her basket each time.  

Thing 2's costume we bought online, but enhanced it. She has a patch but refuses to wear it. The parrot came from Hubby's recent trip to Sri Lanka. He bought each of the girls one, without knowing she'd decided to be a pirate.  These pictures were taken last night before the school carnival.

Thing 1's costume we made. She wanted to be a werewolf but I couldn't figure out how to do that without using a mask, or at least some fake fur glued to her face, neither of which would she tolerate. We were at the fabric store for something else and she saw the pattern for the wizard, and decided that would be okay.  Whew!  A wizard I can do.  The dragon on her shoulder is a puppet she got for Christmas a couple of years ago.  There is a slit in the shoulder of her cape where his controller goes down her back.  The strings to make him talk are broken, but she can make his head move and his tail hanging down her back can twitch a little.

We had decided that I'd keep the dog here as he sniffs at everyone he passes... but he is in AGONY.  His little people have left, and he knew SOMETHING was up... he's been pacing and barking incessantly since they left.   My family went up our street and when they were coming back down the other side I went out with the dog, to hand him off to my husband.  But Hubby's hands are already full.  So Barking Boy gets to come back with me.

I am manning the door.  I have five bags of candy.  Four were on purpose, one was an accident that I was going to donate to the school carnival last night but didn't get over to them in time.  Two are the mongo Costco bags.  I'm going to be lucky to get through one.  The kids reach in and politely take a piece or two.  I say, "No, that's not enough!" and I give them as full a handful as I can hold.  A couple of the little kids have had these petite little bags, I've nearly filled them up with just the one stop.

The kids are back, they had a lot of fun.  I wrung a good cup of water out of Thing 1's cloak, which drags on the ground.  They're in the candy exchange now. It appears to have been a good Halloween.