Happy Halloween

Since Halloween was on a Sunday this year, we enjoed a nice, relaxing day as a family after church, before all the trick or treating hub-bub began. After some lucious pumpkin pancakes----it has been our custom over the past few months to have pancakes every Sunday after church. I add some sort of "secret ingredient" each time, and the kids have to try to guess what it is. We have had lemon, coconut, apple cinnamon, chocolate-almond-coconut, and whipped cream, to name just a few-----we spent the afternoon carving our pumpkins.Pulling out the goo, scraping out and saving the seeds for later. The kids spent hours on this. Bethany enjoyed snacking on raw pumpkin seeds.It was the first year in a very long time that I only carved one all by myself....Thomas's. All the others were carved by the kids themselves.

The kids were quite pleased with their creations. Bob lit up the neighborhood with our house, using strobe lights, color-changing theater lights, and many inflatables, dancing in tune to "Monster Mash". Now a legend, We had a steady stream of cars drive by to let their kids run up to the door, get some candy from Mr. Incredible, and watch the light show. Such a mild preview of what is to come over the Christmas season!The kids enjoyed trick or treating on this mild night....a much more pleasant evening than in year's past. Bethany walked up with the kids, and didn't quite get the whole idea of what was going on, but was happy to have her very own bag of candy. Thomas ran with the big kids, and all of them developed a system for taking turns to ring the doorbell. Grandma ? and Lyle brought Barb and Alan out for the night to enjoy the kids and their costumes. Poor Barb is only able to lie on the couch, and getting her from the couch to the car was so tough to watch. Poor Aunt Barb. It is so hard to see a once very energetic lady so physically frail and falling apart more and more by the day. I hope they were able to have a little bit of fun and a few smiles this evening!