"I'll Trade Three Kit Kats for One Hershey Bar"

One of my strongest memories of Halloween is when we'd get home and dump all the loot out and begin trading. Usually it was me and my sister, since we stopped Trick-er-Treating earlier than my two older brothers. While they were still out gathering goodies from the far reaches of our neighborhood, Jean and I would be safe at home going through our haul and dividing it up. So it was fun to overhear Paul and his friends doing the same last night.



Paul's wizard costume turned out great, though I thought his friend Evan's chef's outfit was pretty cool.....



....as was Tommy's Luke Skywalker and Alex's Headless Horseman costumes.



The big Halloween party was lots of fun. It stopped raining just long to get some decorations up outside and actually have the party, though I realized later that several cool props never made it outside. We just ran out of time. The rain started up again the next day and it's still raining now. What a wet October it's been! Hard to do pumpkin patches and corn mazes in the rain.

I was so busy during the party that I didn't take any photos, except for this fabulous skeleton cake which my mom decorated. Isn't it great?


We had a Nerf gun "Battle of the Ghosts," the usual spooky "Halloween Trail" and cozy campfire. Remembering last year, the kids kept expecting Ben to leap out at them in the woods masked as a ogre, but instead they were surprised by a monster man laid out on the work table in the shed, converted for the night into a laboratory. I guess the lighting and other effects were successful since hardly any of them were brave enough to feel the monster's body parts (actually various vegetables and such) through the slits in the thin paper that covered the monster's body.

When I was a teenager I used to love the thrill of being scared by even the thought of going into the "Spook Alley" at church which always featured touching the icky parts of a scary monster.

Recalling these childhood memories is a nice side effect of creating the opportunity for Paul to have his own childhood memories. Another welcome surprise of motherhood.