Halloween weekend

Halloween used to be the weekend I knew Stacey was going to get drool on herself drunk and I'd have to drive home. That's before kids time of course. These days of course it's all about the kids. And me. The kids costumes were a little tricky this year. Mara wanted to be a dragon but a dragon costume was nowhere to be found so we settled on a lion. And Ellen of course was a princess. A snow princess as it would turn out. She didn't really care as long as it was a princess. Stacey and I went to the girls's school and daycare to watch them do little parades and fun Halloween stuff. It was really cool this year because they totally get the whole this is pretend thing. It's good stuff.

Saturday we didn't have much going on. We spent most of the day playing outside and just kinda hanging out. I had a LAMBA thing planned for the evening, a night halloween ride that I was really looking forward to. I left the house at around 3:3opm to get to the trails to get things ready. The leaves are almost all off of the trees now which means they are all on the trails. Our club owns the leaf blower of all leaf blowers that I got out with to clean up the trails a little. I made quite a dent until I ran out of gas. I took a costume with me that wasn't much of a costume at all really. It was some spandex fruity bike shorts and a white wife beater. Based on the temps last night, that didn't last long. Another thing I did before anybody got there last night was I took a bunch of beers and stashed them near an old barn foundation buried in the middle of the trail system. Made for a good stopping point to enjoy some refreshments.

Sunday was just plain awesome. The girls and Stacey went to church in the morning. While they were gone, after I got out of my first shower since Thursday I decided I'd take my Accounting book and head to HyVee for breakfast. When I was there, Stacey sent me a text telling me they were headed my way. We had a great breakfast together at HyVee and were ready for the Halloween festivities.

So after naps, we headed to an assisted living home near our house where we had been invited to trick or treat. Mara and Ellen were super excited to get into their costumes.

Ellen the Snow Princess:

Mara the Lion:

Stacey the Zoo Keeper:

We really had a nice time talking to the nice people there. They had trick or treating, games, activities, snacks and even a little hay ride:

After that we headed back home to do some trick or treating around our neighborhood. It was a lot of fun even though our neighborhood was kind of lame. The girls got lots of candy. I hauled them around in our wagon in my costume with Stacey tagging along:

We hit every house we could until the girs started to get really cold. Then we went home to hand out candy to the older kids. I had a fire going in the driveway with a cooler out there for adult trick or treating, but nobody took me up on it until my neighbor Chad and his family came by. I even had Michael Jackson Thriller playing on my stereo that I brought outside, but it didn't seem to interest most people and even bewildered a few. I hope to take things up a notch next year and try to bring our block together a little bit. All in all we had a great day and my Cousin Eddie costume was a hit. It took me all of about 3 minutes to think it up and put it together.

Hope y'all had a Happy Halloween!!