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Journal Key:

Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black

10/29/09-11/4/09

After a very long hiatus, the journal is back online! We missed this entire week keeping the journal, including Halloween. I'll try to do a recap, at least of Halloween.

It was on a Saturday! We decided to finally paint pumpkins early in the day, something we'd been meaning to do with the Loefflers for a while. Grandmama and Grandpapa came up also! Doing it on Halloween might not have been the best thing to do, as it turned out; the kids were very excited about going trick-or-treating and didn't spend much time messing with their pumpkins. Cara thoroughly drenched her tiny pumpkin in pink and green paint (mixed together it looked sort of...brownish) and then wandered off. PJ made a few strokes of black on his own giant pumpkin (grown in his backyard!) and then turned to the toys in the house, running around and yelling "trick or treat!" over and over. Occasionally he would open the door and yell it outside, in a sort of role reversal.

Instead of the kids painting the pumpkins or the masks, the grownups spent a lot of time doing it. But eventually we realized what was up and went off to get into our costumes. This year Cara was a pink princess fairy. She wore a lovely and incredibly fancy dress that her Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jim bought for her for her birthday, and fancied it up with wings, a crown, a wand, some jewelry, and makeup (the same makeup Mommy bought for her last dance recital). It was a great outfit. After fantasizing for months of being a stormtrooper from Star Wars, PJ backed out of the idea at the last minute and instead decided to be a sort of skeleton knight. Casey wore Sleeping Beauty princess dress, but we all understood that she was actually Princess Leia.

We started out with good will, but the skies looked very uncertain. Grandmama led the way, wearing a rented full medieval gown. Grandpapa and I were each wearing small masks and cowboy hats loaned by Juliana. The big excitement for our Halloween was the prospect of visiting our local haunted house--a house around the corner that always builds a big one in their driveway. When we arrived in the early afternoon, however, we were told that the house would not be open until 8 that night ("so it will be scarier"), and it was fairly clear that, despite Cara's protests of bravery, this was not the place for us.

We managed a few more houses, but soon went back to our home, with a pretty good haul of candy. The Loefflers carried on and did quite a few more houses without us, but it was time for Grandmama and Grandpapa to go home. Mommy soon drove off to the grocery store and Cara and I stayed inside. Cara was determined to wait for trick-or-treaters and hand out candy. She got her little wooden chair from the play room, stationed herself right in front of our front door, and essentially sat there until Evie came back from the store. It was a little sad, and very cute. We did not get many kids at that time, but we did get a few groups in the evening and Cara got to "help."

After dinner, Cara was determined to return to the haunted house. Mommy agreed to the compromise of going to "see" the outside of the house. She got out a lot of glowy sticks she had bought on sale after the 4th of July, and the two girls went back out into the night. While they were out, the rain we had managed to avoid in the afternoon started coming down--when they came back, they were drenched but happy.

So that was our Halloween! And it's about all I can remember from this week, so I'll stop with that.

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