October

October was a fabulous month for us as far as Halloween and the welcoming of Autumn went. The house was hosed down with spider web and there were pumpkins and skulls on every shelf by the ending of the first week. And, boy, did we pack in the fun!!

Our first official Fall outing was to Sweet Berry Farm. It's a great pumpkin patch (or "punkin catch," as Mr.P affectionately calls it) which had loads of fun things for us to do. We saw a goat in a tree at their little petting zoo, went on a hay rack ride, had some faces painted, ate some of the most delicious homemade frozen treats ever (I went for the pumpkin ice cream while everyone else ate strawberry popsicles), and Camri and my nephew went through a 3 acre maze which took them over an hour. Wow, I know!

The weekdays were filled with things like cookie baking and jello making. We made gingerbread men that were supposed to be dressed with icing to look like mummies. We didn't quite get to the icing part. We'll have to try that again next year. We also made sugar cookie ghosts which I covered with white icing and sprinkled with large sugar crystals. I'm sorry to report that after tasting one, I had to get those out of the house. The neighbors and my nephews enjoyed them though. I just knew they were 5 pounds staring back at me after we finished them, so I gave them the boot. Don't worry, our kids got their share of them also. Did I mention that we made the gooiest caramel apples ever at my brother's house just last weekend? They were creamy and shiny and smooth and just gorgeous brown and sticking wonderfully to the most perfectly ripe, crisp Gala apples. Oh you should have been there, Mom! My mom and I never let a Halloween go by without having a caramel apple made from Kraft caramels. They're our weak spot. Actually, you can forget the apple. It's the caramels that we can't say no to, but they have to be Kraft. And after we cover the apples, we (and don't judge us!) chew on the wax paper to get the caramel off of that too. lol Hmmm...I wonder if she had one this year.

Last Sunday we carved pumpkins at my brother's house. I love the smell of a freshly opened pumpkin. I don't think I've ever missed my dad so much. He can carve a pumpkin from vine picked to a hollow happy face in under 3 minutes...well, maybe not 3, but he's pretty fast. We often tease him about that during this time of the year. We opened and scooped and carved and lit. Camri did me a great favor by becoming absorbed in saving the seeds so in a couple of days we had lots of salty pumpkin seeds to crunch on.

And now for the big day, Halloween, that is. Camri had a half day, so when Vanessa got home from school, we all jumped in the car and headed to Daddy's work. Families of the employees were able to come and trick or treat from desk to desk for a couple of hours in the afternoon. So we all arrived, Mr.P the dark Spiderman, Sabrina the princess, Vanessa the nurse, Camri the anime character, with candy buckets in hand. Keep in mind that this was just a little taste of trick or treating before we got down to business for real in the evening, or so I thought. Well, it turns out that our taste left us with approximately 20 pounds of candy! Can you believe that?! I thought, gosh that looks like a lot of candy so I weighed each bag to see. Each one was either just over or just under 5 pounds. Holy cow, no wonder Mr.P didn't want to hold his during that last lap! My mom found that to be a pretty funny story. The evening trick or treating was pretty normal. Ding dong, knock knock, trick or treat, wow you guys look cute, there you go, thank you! blah blah blah Afterwards we came home and watched Monster House, although I'm not sure how much of it we actually heard with all of the rustling and crunching going on. It was a nice sweet ending to October.