I confess, it has its good parts, too

We had three pumpkin plants in the garden this year. In years past we have always chosen one or two pumpkins from each plant to allow to grow, and we prune all the other ones off as soon as they appear in order to allow the chosen ones to get nice and big. Metaphors welcome.

This year, we let them all grow. We ended up with 28 soccer ball sized pumpkins. 

Twenty Eight. 

The kids put all of them on the front steps, which only allowed for a very small path to the front door. Then when it started freezing at night we had to bring them inside so they wouldn't go to mush. 

My living room was very full to the brim with all these silly orange orbs festive! 

We did manage to pawn a bunch of them off. But eventually, the inevitable family pumpkin carving night came. 

Which means the kids put in their requests and Caleb carved four pumpkins.

This one is Claire's. She requested a Piglet pumpkin, and I  personally think the likeness is startling.

 Jonah requested an Angry Monster. Check.

Our porch was looking spooky!

I decided to not think about Halloween for one microsecond before I had to, and that 'had to' happened on the day before halloween. When that day came, I really had my work cut out for me. Jonah wanted a Yoda costume. Hmm.

 I can do that. The three fingered gloves were Jonah's favorite part. In fact, he's still wearing them.
The hat? With the yoda ears? Never again will I sew one of those.

Fleece is a very forgiving sewing medium, I found, which is very good. With all the transgressions I made it had to be forgiving.

 I love this photo so much. And the little boy in it, too!

 Emmy wanted to be a pink flower. She had a very specific idea in mind for her costume, and this is it! All she required of me was a skirt of petals. Check.

And Claire, because she's two and that meant it was her turn, was the Giraffe. It's looking like every child of mine will experience these chubby buns.

Jonah was the sweetest little yoda I had ever seen. Every single house they went to, we heard him say "And here we have Claire!" "We have a little Claire coming, too" "Little Claire would also like a treat, please."

Looks like he's taking this big brother stuff pretty seriously.

Whenever my kids would talk about trick or treating, they always talked about trick or treating at this house specifically. We're big fans of the occupants.

And see the rest of the family who also came out to see us? We're friends. There's a lot of mutual admiration going on.

I didn't grow up in a neighborhood, and when I was little I didn't understand why people would want to live in one. I loved me some wide open space! But now I get it.

I still love me some wide open space, but I also love having the closeness of people who care about me and how I'm doing even though they're not related to me and they technically don't have to care. Plus trick or treating is SO much easier.

It was great to be out with all of my neighbors and all of our kids last night, enjoying the incredibly beautiful fall weather.

Sewing (eek!), candy, and freaky deadish monsters aside, I really like Halloween.