Fall Fun

This year's Halloween was busy! Helena was a firefighter, Aidan (my nephew) was Elmo, and Hunter was a monkey. We had fun carving pumpkins (well, Dan carved them, let's be honest here) and went trick-or-treating twice: once at my mom's office, cubicle to cubicle, and then around the neighborhood and to our family's homes later on. Actually, Helena refused to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood because our across-the-street neighbor is entirely lacking in good sense and has an absolutely TERRIFYING Halloween display. It's loud, it's dark, it features a scary mask and strobe lights. Everybody was scared of him.

But this fall we've had lots of fun just being outside, too, in the leaves mostly. I had Tanner and Aidan over (along with Hunter) while Helena was at Caity's for preschool, and they had a blast. Then Saturday we were all outside, either raking leaves (me) or jumping in them (everybody else.) I think that sort of weather is gone. Today we had snow, rain, hail, and more or less constant wind at various times. In a way it's kind of exciting: time for sweaters, gloves, hot chocolate, blankets, and figuring out how to skimp on that home heating bill! This morning our power even went out. It was timely, in a way, because we'd just had a family home evening last night about Emergency Preparedness. Although the power went out at about 9am, and it was already light out, Helena's reaction was to tear downstairs and find a flashlight immediately. "Come on, Mom, we have to get the candles!" Maybe something sunk in last night!