WHAT I DID THIS AFTERNOON

There was a dinner at the parish hall tonight after Mass in honor of the musical group who came to play and sing for the vigil Mass. So I finally got around to cooking the three largest pumpkins that Reagan gave us. I made two really large pans of sweet pumpkin and froze about 5 quarts of plain mashed pumpkin.


This is what one pan of sweet pumpkin looked like at the dinner. That's Bruno and Emma's famous rice next to it. Isn't it beautiful! I love rice with lots of fresh peppers, tomatoes, onions and cilantro. It looks like a work of art!

After the meal and the parish council meeting which followed that, I came home and finished getting some more of the pumpkin seeds out of the stringy pulp. Mathieu had started doing that earlier when I was cooking and peeling and mashing pumpkin. We didn't save all the seeds, but we got enough to make a nice roasted pumpkin seed snack tomorrow. The rest went to the chickens and just tossed out in the dirt where I am hoping some volunteer pumpkins will eventually come up.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Okay, you KNEW I'd have to show another photo of Coconut in her new Halloween costume, right?

Halloween is over for another year. Sadly, I only had 3 (3!!!!) trick-or-treaters this year, down from 95 last year, and 137 the year before that. Can you believe it?! *sigh* Actually, it's not surprising since we moved from the middle of town, on a fairly busy street, to the back edge of town near the end of a dead-end road. Chuck went to the school to pick up Zach at what should have been the prime trick-or-treat time, and said that he saw NO kids out and only one street where some houses had their lights on. The kids from the family who always goes all out with a haunted house each year were on their porch waving to try to attract people to stop.

I only made two dishes this year - baked buffalo chicken dip and pretzel logs covered with caramel and purple sprinkles. Both were good, but the dip was REALLY good. It was just Chuck and I, Stewart, Reagan, Amy, Zachary, Mathieu and Seanna for 'dinner' tonight.

These were our first two trick-or-treaters - Mathieu (a pit crew member) and his cousin, Seanna (an angel). The third one came quite a while later - Maura S. who was a fairy. I wish I would have thought to get her photo too.
But we had a good time, overall, despite the low numbers.

DEFECTIVE COMPASS

These two pirates showed up at my door tonight. The wench was disgusted with the wobbley pirate for his defective compass, but he insisted it worked fine...
but finally conceeded that there was no understanding the ways of the compass.
Well, they pulled themselves together and presented their most respectable visage...
and so I invited them inside.
Later, they had to say good-bye and set sail for town to bedevil the good citizens downtown. I hope that compass got them there safely.

MORE TREEHOUSE PHOTOS

I got home Saturday, and Mathieu wanted me to come over and look at the treehouse progress. He is thrilled with it, and he's having a ball constructing features inside it. So I went and got these photos. It's a good thing I took them when I did, because we have had another deluge since then. There is water everywhere. I went to Corpus Christi this evening to pick Stewart up from the airport. When I got home, I had to hang my jeans and socks to dry before I could put them in the laundry hamper. Ick!

GETTING READY...

slowly for Halloween. I've kind of lost my steam for the holiday this year. Just too much going on and too scattered with other things. Now it's less than a week until Halloween and no way do I want to drag all the scarecrow frames down from the attic at the other house and construct and dress them for just one week - and all the rain, as well... But I did manage to snap this photo of Barbara, Marlene, Violette Spice-Blythe and Falba the little witch girl the other day between rainfalls.

Currently, I am nursing a horrible sunburn I got from helping my friend, Annie, sell flowers by the highway yesterday. Ouch!

TREEHOUSE

There's been a lot of hammering next door where Mathieu is getting a treehouse (without the tree) built onto the end of the swings. I should have waited to take a photo when it's finished, but I didn't. I'll get that photo and post it another day.

FASHION EXPERT STAMP OF APPROVAL

I told Zach he looked nice when he came home from school a day or two ago. He said he was wearing his new favorite outfit, so I took a photo of him. "Even a cheerleader said I looked good!" he said.