Spooky and Lucky

I’m feeling that after Halloween sluggishness, the kind that comes from eating enough sugar to put at least 40 small countries, or 20 large ones into sugar coma.

Which means that our holiday was a complete success!!!

We started celebrating on Saturday, Jake and I got up early to do some shopping, and make our bi-monthly trip to the library for books, CD’s, audio books and movies. Rob stayed home to do some work around the house, and rest. He's feeling well, but having surgery, esp. under general anathesia always tends to catch up with you a few days later. Jake and I then headed home for cookie festival 2007. I made three batches of sugar cookie dough when I got home from work on Friday (Jake had the pre-school version of a slumber party with his friend Milo- a play date from 4:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. to watch movies). We made close to 200 hundred Halloween themed sugar cookies, for our holiday, and for friends and family. We gave away about 11 dozen cookies and still had some leftover for us.

We then headed up to Nikki and Clint's house for Cade’s Harry Potter birthday party. Jake was very excited to go as Ron Weasley, and he makes a pretty obvious Ron. With his red hair, we just had to get him a stripped tie, and fashion a cape (with my fabulous sewing skills that would involve a yard of black fabric tied around his neck). Nikki did a fabulous job with the party, the kids arrived and were immediately taken to Gringots for money so they could go to Diagon Alley to buy cauldrons, wands, and capes (Jake already had one) for their Hogwart adventure. Then they arrived at Hogwarts and were sorted into houses, by family (it would take too long to do individuals) we ended up with a Ravenclaw house and a Grifindor. We then went to the first day feast of pizza, salad, and butter beer (or Root Beer as the Muggles call it). Afterwards Professor Snape and McGonagal gave us lessons (how well can we identify the flavors of Bernie Botts Every Flavor Bean), and we decorated very scary pumpkins for Care of Magical Creatures. It was a lot of fun, and I’m convinced that Nikki should be a party planner. I’m definitely going to enlist her help for some ideas as Jake wants a “Willy Wonka” party this year.

After the party some of us more persistent party animals then headed to the pumpkin walk in Syracuse. The city gives well over 1000 pumpkins for people to decorate, and then has a huge pumpkin walk. The pumpkins were really neat, Jake really liked the one that matched his CTR ring and he took his job of being a good example for his cousin Cade and helping him around the walk VERY seriously (so seriously he tackled Cade when he tried to escape, but luckily no injuries). Jake ended up falling asleep about a block from Grandma and Grandpa’s house on our way home after a fun day.

Sunday Jake woke up with a bad cough, and a slight fever, so we were a bit concerned he would be sick for Halloween (I suppose we should have been concerned that he would have to miss church as well). Rob stayed home from church with Jake so I could go teach my Sunday School class, and we tried to keep Jake in Monday (no pre-school for UEA) and Tuesday.

Tuesday night we had our ward/neighborhood Harvest Carnival. I made some white bean chicken chili and some rice crispy treats to take with us after work on Monday. They served chili, breadsticks and homemade root beer, which was very good. Then there was a fish pond, a rice crispy treat walk (like a cake walk), and a festive circus complete with balloons. We then all headed out to our cars for the annual trunk-or-treat.

Wednesday morning Jake had a party at pre-school, and I took a half day off. Rob was in charge of getting Jake to the morning festivities and I was in charge of the afternoon, and then we would spend the evening together. I came home and threw some fixings for fire roasted tomato and basil soup (one of my favorite open cans and dump soups that tastes like you spend all day making it when you actually spend about 10 minutes) for Halloween dinner. Then Jake and I headed to Circe and Scott’s for their annual Halloween party. Circe does such a fabulous job having these parties and making sure all the kids feel welcome. I bet there were 200 kids there, and they had pizza for everyone, as well as fun activities to go with the Halloween theme (decorating cookies, searching the field for treasures, going to the witch cave, etc.). The whole thing ends with a HUGE tub of treats being throw to the little trick or treaters in the back yard from the balcony. It harks back to the original Halloween celebration when peasants would ask for food from the aristocracy or otherwise they would perform malicious “tricks” on them. Jake literally go enough candy that trick-or-treating was kind of beside the point. Big thanks to Scott and Circe for their fun parties (mostly Circe) Halloween and Easter would not be the same without their wonderful party traditions, that they let us participate in.

We then headed up to mom and dad’s for trick-or-treating. I should have known that making dinner was unnecessary as mom had made dinner for all of us. So we put the soup on low in the crock pot, and had dinner at mom and dad’s (which means we were set for lunch and dinner today thanks to Grandma). The kids sat on Grandma’s porch in their costumes with the Halloween candy yelling at all passerby’s “hey, we have free candy”, while the adults ate (the kids were a bit to excited to focus on dinner). I think Jake was pretty impressed with the whole “free” part of the candy evening, because when we left to go trick-or-treating he yelled at his cousins “hurry we need to go fast they are giving out free candy”, as if the adults would come to their senses and stop this madness. On the way to Grandma's he had asked me if he could have a treat, and I told him "this is the one day a year you can eat as many treats as you want". He ate one, and then started to open another and then said "mom were you just kidding about the treats". I assured him I wasnt.

Nikki and Clint, Ryan and Jennie, Jeremy and Jennie, and Rob and I all took the kids trick-or-treating and they had a fun time going with their cousins. As is usually the case Jake and I were the last ones home, he’s a pretty tireless trick-or-treater, and he remembered the lady that was dressed as a witch and was making cotton candy on her front porch last year. So while everyone else headed back to Grandma’s for hot cider and pumpkin cake, Jake and I went looking for the cotton candy lady. Luckily she was pretty easy to find, you could hear the cotton candy machine from a street away.

When we got home we dumped all the candy/treats Jake collected the last three days into one bag and when he saw it his reaction was "HOLY COW". Holy cow indeed!

Basically a fabulous holiday! We are so blessed to live where we do, and have the wonderful activities available to us to help Jake create happy childhood memories. We are also very blessed to have such a wonderful family to create the memories with.

As I was laying with Jake last night to tuck him in and read him a story before bed, I asked him if he had a fun day. He replied yes, and I told him he was a very lucky little boy, and asked him if he had any idea how many people loved him? He immediately replied “Circe, Nikki, Grandma, Collin’s Jennie, Neeley’s Jennie, Richelle, Grandpa, Ryan, Scott, Jeremy, Jeff, Clint, mommy, daddy, Jesus, and Heavenly Father”. How blessed he is to fall asleep at night counting all the people that love him...

How I wish that all children in this world were just as lucky.

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween, and that’s all for this week from the Cranes.