~ Happy Halloween ~

Ghostly Greetings:

I’m a little behind with the Halloween post. My dad was very quick to remind me of the fact that he was missing out on pictures of his grandchildren dressed in their “spooktakular” costumes :-)

We weren’t quite sure how Halloween was going to go this year. After all, this is our first trick-or-treating experience outside the great state of California.

This year we decided to have some extra family fun. We spent our Halloween eve cutting, scooping, and carving. Actually, Jason and the kids took over the pumpkin carving festivities while I cleaned the seeds and got them ready for roasting in the oven. The kids decided that they wanted to make their own creations this year. Instead of using stencils from a book, they decided to draw their own "made-up" faces on their pumpkins. I was pretty impressed with their art skills.

Bryanna and I unwrapped two bags of caramels. After whisking together our secret recipe and dipping several apples, we decided that we made the best caramel apples in town. We even came up with our own unique name.

"Mall-icious'' Caramel Apples

I have to say, I was really looking forward to taking the kids trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. One of the things Jason and I love about this community is the fact that it feels like home. We both feel safe and secure in our surroundings. I love the fact that we are in a community with a lot of families. Everyone is so friendly and the kids in the neighborhood will make their way around to meet new friends to play with. Whenever we are out for our evening walks, we are always running into other families that are out and about with their children. Needless to say, I was excited to be able to see those same friendly faces and possibly some new faces too on Halloween. Well, things didn’t exactly work out that way. I was quite shocked I take that back, we were both quite shocked to see the amount of traffic on the streets. Let me clarify that most families weren’t in their cars. We saw so many families driving their kids around in ATV’s or golf carts. Some of them actually had trailers attached to them. I think we were both shocked because the houses here don’t exactly sit on 2 or 3 acres of land. Most of the houses are relatively close to one another. It was a site to see that’s for sure. Of course our children thought it was the greatest thing in the world because “our feet get so tired by the end of the night” Ok really? One of my favorite things about Halloween has always been to walk to as many houses as possible. The children have now decided to put one of those “fancy” little cars on their wish list for next year. I guess it’s too bad for them that their mom actually enjoys walking around the neighborhood :-)

All and all, I think we would all agree that our first Halloween as Louisianans was fang-tastic. We ended up with more candy than we started out with, the kids enjoyed dressing up and meeting up with their friends on the streets, and mom and dad even had the chance to meet a few new friendly faces along the way.

Boo to you from our crew.