Halloween Pictures

Kevin, the Mountain Man, ready to escort his two daughters to the Junior High Halloween party. He even bought them roses when he asked them to accompany him--ahhhhh!

Here are our resident tricksters on an absolutely beautiful Halloween Day.

The hug was their idea and I thought it was so cute.

The kids did an unusually good job carving their pumpkins this year and I failed to get the picture. Here's the poor pitiful remains by Halloween--saggy and soft, black and moldy inside, wrinkled up on the outside. A couple had already met the garbage can.

Here we are in the Kmart parking lot--Caleb and Steven getting to ride first class.

We had the nicest Halloween weather that I EVER remember. We actually enjoyed a family picnic and the eight of us played kickball. I even tossed a football with my older sons--I doubt that any sports scouts would worry that I'd missed my true calling but I had a great time.

Then it was FINALLY time to don the costumes (our oldest had been waiting impatiently since he got out of bed)--B, 15, was a Ninja complete with double swords; S, 13, had an adorable Eskimo costume; T, 13,was dressed as an American Indian; J, 11, was Captain Cody from Star Wars; Caleb was delighted to be Buzz Lightyear and Steven was dressed as Woody. We'd heard about this great Trick or Treat opportunity at K-Mart to do Trunk or Treating at all these camper trailers in their parking lot between 4:00 and 6:00. Oh my goodness--that parking lot looked like the day after Thanksgiving. I was ready to turn around and go home when we saw the unbelievably long line but T REALLY wanted lots of candy so . . . we stood in line. We're talking 51 minutes from the time we got in line to the time the first candy was plopped in our sacks. The kids had the great idea of playing the ABC game with costumes--spotting a costume that started with the letter A, the letter B, etc. That took up a lot of time and made the line much more bearable. J of course--being a true Star Wars fanatic--struck up a quick friendship with the kid behind us who was dressed as Captain Somebody-or-Another and they chatted with everyone they passed who was dressed similarly--and pretended war with all Darth Vader's, etc. Early on we grabbed a shopping cart for Caleb and Steven which made everything much easier as well.

Our church did a trunk or treat in the front parking lot and we had nine cars and around 85 or so kids who stopped by for candy, Gospels of John, invitations to various church kid/youth activities, pencils, spiders, key chains, etc. Much better turn-out than last year which was encouraging.