Halloween!

(Bruce carved the pumpkin on the left, Erik the middle, and Barb the right. These were pumpkins we grew ourselves.)

I agree with Barbie: I like Halloween! Halloween's actually been one of my favorite holidays ever since I discovered Ray Bradbury when I was a teen-ager. (Every October is "Ray Bradbury Month" and I have to read something new (for me) or re-read an old favorite, like "Something Wicked This Way Comes" or "Martian Chronicles") I always loved taking the kids trick-or-treating, watching the clouds whisp by the moon, smell the crushed, dry leaves on the wind, or taste the wonderful hot spiced, apple cider one of our neighbors always had out - just for the adults! (They've moved, dangit!) This year Erik hosted a party at our house for a lot of his "band friends" - and he had >14 over: eating pizza, rummaging through our container of old costumes to create some crazy costume to go trick-or-treating in (high school seniors going trick-or-treating?!? At least I think they behaved themselves), watching a movie, playing fussball, and playing a big game of "4 men on a couch". (I was invited to join the girls' team to even out the numbers - and we won! :-) We bought a fire-bowl for the patio, but they never got around to starting a fire to make s'mores over. Oh well, at least we had home-made root beer.
The Curren's came up the next day and the grandkids dressed up in their costumes for Barb and me. I'm getting really sold on this "grandparents" thing! Rachel went as the "Fairy Princess", wearing the same costume that she wore at Josh's and Barbie's wedding reception. Andrew was a parrot; Sam dressed up as a pirate and went around with Andrew on his shoulder!
More pictures on our flickr site.

(BTW, it snowed in SLC last night and today; we have ~6 inches on the ground (the news said it snowed 12" in Sandy)! It should warm up over the next couple of days and the snow will most likely melt away soon.)