No Scaredy!

Halloween is now history for 2009. Although, judging by the amount of candy stashed in bowls atop the freezer (and the refrigerator too) it looks like we will be enjoying the fruits of this event for quite some time though. Lots and lots -and did I say -LOTS of candy to be had here! (Now, keep me away from it, will ya please?)

Just thought I'd give you a bit of the highlights from the past couple of days.

Here's Kurtis on Thursday (Oct 29th) showing off his new "big boy" haircut. He still has a goodly amount of waves in his hair but the curls -not so much. So as a result, he doesn't look like the same little toddler he was early Thursday afternoon when Mandy left to take him up to Nila's hair salon to get a trip job on his hair. Here he is after the shearing!

Sure he's still a handsome little dude, alright -but darn it, I miss that curly little head full of hair!





Friday, Mandy and I went up to the school to watch the elementary children with their Halloween parade. We found seats in the middle section of the auditorium and were down front -in the middle part -hopefully thinking we would get a better view from there of the kids and that I could get some decent pictures too. But that didn't work quite the way we wanted it to go as there was a guy about 4 rows in front of us with this big bald head that kept getting in the way of just about every darned picture I tried to take -or so it seemed.

Click the photos to make them a bit larger and more viewable -okay? Here's the beginning of the parade -led by the kindergarten class of Sue Lawrence. Sue is pushing a wheelchair with student, Ana Diviney, in it as Ana had injured her foot about a week or so ago during soccer practice.
Here's Maya's class -or part of it anyway. She is the little purple fairy princess right in the middle of the line on the stage.
From the Second Grade class, the one in the middle (again) in the blue wizard costume is Rachel, daughter of my son's girlfriend. (She's a fairly frequent visitor these days to our house and gets along quite well with Maya although her mother keeps telling me she is bringing the kitten she took earlier this summer from Nina's earlier litter back to us. I keep telling her we have a very strict "no returns" policy though! LOL
The punk rocker, fourth from the right (with the green hair) is Bill's other son, Shane -a sixth grader this year.
This is a rather (understatement there!) blurry picture of the one that I thought was the best costume -bar none. The one on the very far left of this shot is the "Headless Horseman" and the costume included a horse of the stick variety but all trimmed up that the child was holding. No one that I've talked to who was at the parade seemed to know who this child was -not even if it was a boy or a girl (and I can't recall what grade class this was either -but anyway, you'll have to take my word for it that it was most definitely an excellent costume!

Saturday night -Mandy and Bill -of course -took the two little ones out to do some trick or treating along our street and then, across town to the home of a lady who cooks at Kurt's school and after that, on up so that Jim and Charmaine (Mandy's former bosses at the old restaurant here) could see the kids too!
Here's Mary Poppins (Mandy) with her little brood -Elmo (Kurtis) and Purple fairy princess (Maya) all ready to leave to go trick or treating!

Mandy said when they got home that when they stopped at the house where the cook from Kurt's school lives, Jackie (the cook) loves to pull pranks on the kids who come by her house on halloween and this year was no different. She was dressed as a ghost -white sheet over her and had a mask on, and carried a big old bell in her hand. And she was hiding behind their pickup truck when the kids arrived. So she started walking towards the kids, shaking this bell and Kurtis wigged out -totally! Screaming! Terrified! So Jackie then removed her mask and walked over to him, talking softly to him and telling him to look to see who it really was. Which, surprisingly enough, he did look up at her and when he realized it was "Miss Jackie" -he reached out and touched her and said "Is okay. No scaredy, Miss Jackie. I Okay!" Just too darned cute!

The dog greeted every single kid that came to our house Saturday night with a very loud serenade -barking his fool head off -but made no attempt to go outside and pretty much stood either beside me or behind me while making all the racket he possibly could manage! I needed ear plugs by the time it was all said and done.

Near as I could calculate -as I was trying to keep a running tally in my head of how many kids we had this year -I think we had between 48-50 folks show up here. And of that number, only about 2-3 of the kids were known to me. A heck of a lot different from when I was a kid as we only went to houses where the people knew us and then, the game was whether or not they could then guess who we were beneath those costumes. That was the fun part of trick or treating back then!

How times have changed, huh?

Well, I think I will go to bed a lot earlier than my usual retirement time tonight. It's been a very long day here as I woke up about 4 a.m. today and didn't go back to bed and to sleep then till well after I got home from church and had supper started! Then I snuck in a nap in the chair for about an hour and fell asleep there again tonight too -after supper for yet another little cat nap! But I 'm still really tired from being up that early -and so were the kids tonight too as Maya also got up early (around 5:30 a.m.) and Kurtis was up and awake around 7:30 a.m. too! So see, I couldn't have gone back to sleep then even if I'd tried to!

Hope Halloween was as much fun for you and yours as it was here for ours -and for us!

Looking forward already now to next year's event!

Happy Halloween (a day late)- but better late than never, right?