Thursday, October 30, 2008

Halloween Fun

Somehow this year Halloween has come stealthily. I mean, I knew it was coming. We went on that trip to the farm and had the hay ride, went in the corn maze and picked pumpkins. We bought mums and gourds and put up the decorations. We went and bought Halloween costumes and planned our activities for Halloween night. Rachel's friend Chloe and her parents, Dan and Trisha, are coming over for dinner. Trisha is bringing us peppers carved like jack o'lanterns stuffed with spaghetti (think guts) and I am making salad, garlic bread and chocolate cake because Trisha's birthday was Tuesday. They may even stay overnight, because Trisha is bringing some tequila along....

However, we had the wedding to go to, and then when we returned we got sick. Emma was the first; she threw up at 6 am on Monday (we'd gotten home around midnight Sunday) and was feeling poorly all day. Ben got sick around 3 in the afternoon, and when he got sick in bed at midnight, I thought, this is going to be a long night....made longer by the fact that I was getting a sore throat. I woke up on Tuesday feeling horrible--but thankfully the stomach virus was gone. Ben and Emma were back to their old selves and nobody else had it. Which left me with a terrible cold, flu-like aches and almost no voice. I was sick for the rest of that week, so we laid low, canceling all our activities except those on Friday and letting me rest as much as possible. The weekend was busy, and this week was spent getting back into the groove of school work and regular life...and last night I realized that we'd done nothing about a jack o'lantern!

When we first has small kids, we used to try to carve the pumpkins two weeks in advance. We wanted to be able to light them every night; what fun was Halloween if we couldn't enjoy the fun of a jack o'lantern? However, unlike when we were kids, October was too warm for carved pumpkins, and inevitably they would end up black and rotted, staved in at one side, with some form of repulsive fly or bug attracted to the rotting flesh. So gradually we shortened the time before carving and Halloween night so the poor pumpkin would stay fresh, eventually settling on 3-4 days before the holiday. We make sure to light it every evening at dusk and let it burn till midnight or so before Matt and I head for bed.

This year, however, I simply forgot. We were going along with our week. I knew Friday was Halloween. We had some lousy weather, though, and I just didn't get out to get a pumpkin. I had a moment of panic last night, but Matt reassured me that he'd pick one up on his way home from work and we'd carve it after dinner. So that's what we did--Julia drew her idea for a great pumpkin face and everyone agreed to it. Matt opened the pumpkin and the kids scooped out the guts, and then Matt prepared the seeds for roasting and did the carving. Meanwhile, Rachel and I were in the bathroom, putting red Kool Aid streaks in her hair---please send good thoughts that it won't permanently affect her hair! She insists that it won't..but some of the googling we did suggested that naturally blond hair can be affected adversely! So we shall see about that...

I'll post the photos tomorrow. Right now it's late and I'm in no mood. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

--Jen

2 comments:

Kelly said...

Well if it makes you feel better, I wasn't even planning on getting a pumkin this year.

We left for vacation in Singapore last Saturday. We got back Wednesday night. We had no food so I had to hit the commissary. They had a few pumpkins left and they were on sale for only .25 cents a pound. I was feeling guilty so I bought one.

However that was mid Thursday afternoon. I still had to go home and start Collin's costume. He switched costumes from the already made a long time ago Harry Potter robe to wanting to be Davy Crockette. How do you say no to a kid wanting something like that? Especially since he wanted it after reading about it in a book? Well, you don't. So I spent yesterday afternoon/ eveing sewing that (with no patter of course! Had to figure one out on my own. Errr!) Pictures to follow on my blog soon.

Friday comes. We have errands and stuff to do. Friends come and have dinner. We trick or treat. We hand out candy.

Were is the pumpkin? Still sitting on top of the washing machine. It didn't even make it outside to be decorative!

Now I guess I'll have to cook it or something.

The funny thing is, Collin could care less. Of course part of that could be that for his whole life we've lived places where it's still so warm at Halloween we're lucky if the pumpkin makes it till the 31st. And we've had some that haven't.

Off to google pumpkin recipes!

Nan Patience said...

I find that I'm getting laxer as the kids get older. I guess I'm trying to slowly transition away from the quintessential joys and experiences of childhood to the cold hard realities and essential necessities of existence.

On the way home from a Halloween party last night, we saw that kids had placed pumpkins on Peconic Bay Boulevard. I pictured children crouching in the bushes waiting for big guzzlers like ours to run them over and smash them to bits and send their seeds and guts splattering on the roads like roadkill. Damn, I wish now that I'd had my camera for my roadkill series that only consists of one raccoon so far. It coulda been one raccoon and one pumpkin!