Halloween Happenings

It was a busy week here at the Loomis house. Lot's of fun things going on! I already posted about the Pumpkin patch on Monday, well on Tuesday evening we carved our pumpkins. Wednesday night was the annual church Trunk or Treating event with a fair in the church afterwards. Megan and Jeremy brought their kids over to join us. There were lots of games, facepainting, hot dogs and home made root beer. There was also a spook alley which Jake had a large part in. We waiting in line for about 20 minutes, and when they opened the door to let us in, poor little Nate saw the strobe light and would not go in. So Jeremy and I took the girls and Joseph through. They sent word to set the scare factor to low and so it was not too bad. In the last section Jake was sitting under black plastic bags with his head sticking out. It looked like a floating head. He really scared Annalina, but he wasn't trying to. She was just expecting the worst. She cried when we got out and I said jokingly that I was going to ground Jake for scaring her. She said, "no mommy, don't ground Jake, its ok!" So it was a fun filled evening for the most part. Sadly Richard was training at his new second job and was not able to attend with us. Next year!!

Thursday was preschool day for Joseph, he got to wear his costume and they made cookies, then went trick or treating around Glencoe to the classrooms. He had a great time and got to play at Alec's house for an hour after preschool. This was nice since I had my second HUGE test in A&P that night. I studied and studied all week long and once again I got a 92%. This was a good boos for me since on Tuesday we had a quiz and I did NOT do well at all. We get to drop the worst quiz score and that will be the dropped score for me!

It rained most of the day on Friday. I dropped Joseph off with Megan in the morning and went to open lab to study for the practical lab test on Tuesday. It felt good to have a couple solid hours to study on my own. Richard had the day off from Tek and went to Best Buy for more training. With the change in day light savings time, it stayed light much later than usual on Halloween night. It is usually dark by 5:15 or so and that is when we go out trick or treating. Luckily it stopped raining late in the afternoon and was dry by evening. But by 5:30 n0 one was out yet, so we waited until 6PM and off we went. We went to the neighbors houses and then saw daddy come home on his motorcycle and went back to get him. We went through the rest of the neighborhood with him. We went to a house that always goes ALL out with decor, a bit scarier than I prefer with a horror scene and lots of fog. Anyway, the kids were fine with that, but one of their older kids was dressed as a skeleton and as we were leaving he started chasing Joseph, and Joseph really ran, he was terrified and the boy didn't stop. So I had to grab Joseph and say, "that's enough". The rest of the night Joseph was watching for the Skeleton. He was pretty scared until Richard reminded him he was a Viking and had a battle ax. He told Joseph that if he saw that skeleton coming he could wack him with the ax. OK, I don't advocate violence and Joseph could not do any damage with that plastic ax, but it made him feel much better to know he could "protect" himself. After a while, he was asking to go back to look for the skeleton. ::sigh:: Annalina dressed up as Snow White, for which she got many comments. Her hair is dark and short right now, she looked a LOT like Snow White, especially with her pink rosy cheeks!

After a while we caught up with some of my friends from our playgroup. Joseph had fun with Jake and Abe, but shortly thereafter Annalina declared she was done, so we headed home. I asked if she wanted to stop at any houses along the way, but no, she was done and that was that. She has always been like that though. Once she gets tired she is done! When we got home Jake was watching the Blazers game and was glad to be relieved from passing out candy. Joseph decided he would take over and he sat in a chair at the front window with the bowl of candy in his lap. When kids came to the door, he would give them their candy, with me supervising of course. When we turned off the lights at 8pm, he was sad, until we told him it was time to play with his candy! The kids got to bed late that night, but it was a very Happy Halloween!

Every year after carving the pumpkins we sort the seeds and roast them. Richard gets very creative with the seasonings. We always do a batch of garlic flavored, Lawry's seasoning salt, and a lemon pepper flavor. In the past we have also tried wasabi(it turned out really good) and teriyaki flavored. Anyway, at church we have an email group for the women where we can let each other know about good deals, or request something we might be needing, or give away things we don't use anymore. Its a great way to stay connected. So I posted that if anyone had pumpkin seeds they weren't using, to let me know! Well Thursday, Jannamarie stopped by with a huge bag of sorted pumpkin seeds. She had just been to the school and the entire 3rd grade had carved pumpkins that day, so she kept the seeds for me. WOW! There were a ton so Friday and Saturday I roasted seeds! Such fun!