Hallowe'en

You may have noticed my slightly different header... hopefully it isn't too distracting in its spectacular Halloween-ness.

Though Halloween isn't actually until Wednesday (which is of course the scariest day of the week, made more so this year by it being the celebration of All Hallow's Eve), we are having our Halloween party tonight.

Our Halloween parties started a few years ago. My brother Nate felt sorry for our neighbors, who couldn't go trick-or-treating, so he started up a big fire in the back yard, carved five jack-o-lanterns in about twenty minutes, and got out an array of food including marshmallows and apple cider. We sat around the fire, burning our tongues on hot apple cider and catching marshmallow after marshmallow on fire.

We did that for a few years, the parties slowly getting more and more extravagant (I remember, the year before last we made cupcakes and decorated them to look like monsters, using sliced almonds for facial features... that was a lot of fun). Until last year, when it became, not so much a gathering to eat food and talk, but a party of people eating food and talking and wearing costumes. There were also a lot more people; still just the neighbors, but there were also a few guests; my sister's husband (who was just her boyfriend at that point), said sister's best friend, my oldest brother's wife and her daughter, etc. There were over a dozen things you didn't see on normal occasions: a couple hippies, a gypsy, a puppy, some Disney characters, and Darth Vader being among them.

Now I have to go and make some finishing touches to my costume (I'm one of the few people who actually knows what they're dressing up as)! Happy Halloween!