Halloween Rocks!

Oh, the sweetness of kids and candy! (Seven days & counting, and I'm still hoarding tiny containers of Junior Mints and Milk Duds.)

This Halloween, Miles went trick-or-treating for the first time, using his Darth Vader "light saver" as a flashlight. He learned the rules and now fervently believes that you only go to houses with the lights on, "also with decorations or nice people in the windows." He participated almost un-shyly and sometimes even said thanks to strangers! Meanwhile, it was cold enough for a scarf. But not so cold I was cursing under my breath before the treating ended. (In Colorado once, on a half-hour loop with a co-workers' children, there was cursing.) It drizzled. But not so much my outer fleece got soggy, and just enough to curl my hair. We got to hang out in a wonderful friend's garage, in a wonderfully friendly neighborhood, and meet a few new people. I ate a chili dog. ...It was all good!

With lots of similar garages open, and many grills or fire pits attended by neighborhood moms and dads, the night had a Norman Rockwell feel. It made me think about Halloween when I was a kid, and I started a little (yet unfinished) essay on that topic.

Now, it's a whole week after Halloween and I'm not sure where the time went. We still have lots of pumpkins, uncarved, so we are contemplating making Indian- and Pilgrim-o-Lanterns for the next holiday. (Exactly how would one do this? I cannot say, except that construction paper is probably involved.) Miles was talking to me about carving the pumpkins earlier today, and he said "it is sometimes better to use paper, because cutting is very messy! And you haffa use SHARP knives, also. And that is dangerous." (This he learned from his class unit on pumpkins, in which they cut one open and made art with the seeds. Smelly, smelly seed art.)

In other news, Miles is looking forward to his next birthday, and being 5. I reminded him that he will only be 4 and he said, "yeah, I know. But I will be five AFTER four. And six after that!" And, as he just told me while I type, "when I am 20, I will be bigger than EVERYBODY! We'll prob-bla-ly get a new house, a bigger one, when I am 20, because my head will prob-bla-ly be pokin' out this roof!"

Prob-bla-ly.