Happy Halloween!

Well....another Halloween has come and gone. We were SLAMMED with kids last night (I counted roughly 160...including some large groups of rather LARGE kids....guess this is a new thing? People in their 30's (just guessing) going Trick-or-Treating? I gave them candy...what are you going to do otherwise? I don't care to de-TP my house...or worse. I had bought enough candy for two pieces each for around 140 kids. Had to start rationing to 1 piece each about 7:30, and at just before 7:45 after an extremely large group left me with about 5 pieces I quickly blew out the pumpkins, turned out the lights and pulled the curtains. We still had a few knocks at the door and doorbells...guess they don't get it that when there are NO outside lights, that means no. Stubborn I guess.

Anyway...here's some pics from the night.

 Jeannie dressed Sophie up in Sweet Pea's first Halloween costume...a pumpkin. I'd say she was ambivalent about the entire costume thing. NEXT YEAR I hope to do my pirate costume for the gang....with PG as their Captain (peg leg and all). This year I've just been too busy....work has been stupid. They laid off too many workers (and keep hiring higher level people..not really understanding this formula...we don't have enough workers to do the WORK nearly every day, but seems like every week we welcome another engineer or above to our fold). OK...enough moaning about the way of the world. Back to Halloween!

 A diff shot of Sophie and our pumpkins...(Jeannie and I carve them every year). Isn't Sophie darling? We sure miss Sydney though!

 A closeup of our ambivalent monster. We didn't bother to dress the other 2 up...PG would be fine, Sweet Pea would HATE IT! We figured this was Sophies 1st Halloween after all...make it a good one!

 Sophie spent the entire night glued to the door. She is typically pretty friendly but wasn't too sure about all the kids in costumes. But she only barked once...that was a lady with her kid in a little car (had a T-handle that she pushed it from behind). Looked kind of similar to a bumper-car. Cool ride for the kid...Sophie wasn't impressed in the least!

 Sydney was with us in spirit...she LOVED Halloween and also would hang out at the door all night, hoping the kids would pet her. That's her ashes in the wooden box and her picture by the lamp. A lot of the kids recognized her picture and didn't know she had passed earlier this year....everybody loved Syd! 

A kid's view of Sophie, waiting patiently by the door. You can see PG behind her...she loves being at the door for attention, but doesn't stand there waiting...she just runs up when the kids walk up. After the first arrivals I typically leave the door open and use the doggie-gate....much easier and we don't get all the knocks and/or a doorbells.

 And here's Sweet Pea in HER usual Halloween position...about as far away from the door as she can be. She is standing beside the brown chair WAY back across the house. She is SO not impressed w/ Halloween.

 Jeannie took this shot unbeknownst to me....as I was handing out candy...w/ Sophie right by my side just observing. 

 

Another Sophie shot...her pumpkin hat had slipped down and I left it...she seemed to like her ears out.  

And last but not least...a slightly blurry shot of our pumpkins....I did something new this year and cut the orange skin off my pumpkins teeth....I think it's my best one yet! (VERY SCARY!) And Jeannie's turned out great too....though with the glare of the candles it's hard to see. She thought it was her best too. I had to run out and snap this shot between kids...it was a busy night! 

Hope your Halloween was as successful as ours! It was a nice night and LOTS of great costumes...and even though we had a larger than usual number of older 'kids', there was the typical ton of kids in strollers or barely walking. Just an awesome night for sure, and our weather was PERFECT for it.

I'm off to Colorado Springs for two (or three?) weeks tomorrow....hopefully we get decent weather as I'm SO not a cold-weather guy anymore. No snow or rain would be nice (just what we get here in CA). The forecast is for temps in the 50's mostly, with some 60's. That's fine by me...I can live with that. Didn't bother shipping my Mt bike....though I though long and hard on the subject. IF it does only go 2 weeks then there will only be the one weekend, and with the time-change last night I likely wouldn't get any rides in during the week anyway. So doing without it for all of this last week, and usually 2 to 3 weeks after isn't very worth-it. Plus, there might already be snow up higher in the mtns where I like to play anyway. So I'll just live without and hope I made the right call. Have a great week and I'll be back to yak more later.

Cheers!