Stephanie is making me write this. She is also making me write that I have only one more year until I am over the hill. Yay.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, we had some Halloween fun outside of making fun of my age. We only carved 8 pumpkins this year, they seemed to be hard to come by, and expensive (thanks, Adam Smith). We did get one free thanks to Sarah’s fine performance in the 5th grade pumpkin run (she got 2nd place). But the kids had fun nonetheless. Everyone but Chris and Claire went out trick-or-treating.

Chris sat motionless on the front porch with a bucket of candy in his lap and waited for unsuspecting suckers. They would come up in groups and he’d let a couple of them get candy, then scare them. They would all debate if he was real or a dummy (we have our own opinion some days), and some even poked him. In the end, he was the winner and scared everyone. One lady wouldn’t even come back up on the porch to get candy for her kid. She made her husband go up.  (Click the photo to embiggen)

Kate had a blast. She walked the whole way, and everyone loves to give more candy to a cute little witch. So it worked out good for me. And she is Daddy’s girl, so she likes Reese’s as much as I do. They all came home with tons of candy, and Mason had a fit when we had everyone put their candy into the community bucket. Now he can explain socialism to his social studies class.

I treated everyone to a birthday prime rib that I grilled, along with some twice-baked potatoes and Gulliver’s creamed corn. Stephanie even made me my favorite 12-layer cookie cake. I scared the kids with my hillbilly costume. Mainly with the teeth. Kate wouldn’t let me kiss her with them in. We had a fun Halloween.

Click here for the whole set of Halloween and birthday pictures up on our Flickr site.

It is hard to believe how time flies. If I have my way it will be more like 5 weeks. It has taken me 6 kids to let Chris take a picture of me pregnant some where other then at the hospital. I regret this, especially when the other kids want to see pictures of me when I was pregnant with them. We all know you look your best while you are in labor. I was trying to get a picture of Kate feeling the baby, which usually involves her sticking her face right into my belly. She would not cooperate, which is pretty normal for her when the camera is out. We can’t wait for Claire to come! (I think everyone here is tired of me being pregnant!) March is such a busy month it should help us all pass the time.

Stephanie finally went and did it! After much nagging, she took the plunge and got her hair cut! What was almost certain to be a traumatic experience was snatched from the jaws of defeat and lo and behold, she got a good haircut. Much relief on the part of everyone here.

You may ask, why is this such a big deal? Why all of the melodrama? Let’s say we have learned the consequences of bad haircuts for Stephanie through some other experiences. Not good. It has taken Stephanie a year to find someone she would trust with her hair. I think she was tired of ponytails and having her headbands made fun of. 

Yes, we’re all much happier with the new look, Stephanie included. She liked it so much, she even made an appointment in 8 weeks to get a tune-up or whatever it is women do every so often at the hair salon.