Happy Halloween

We had a beautiful sunny and warm day today..... no trick-or-treating kids out here in the hills, but it's Halloween just the same.  So Boo! to all of you.

Our Halloween party was last night.... friends from the community here came in costumes.... a fabric-wrapped mummy (who spent the night unraveling), a fortune teller, a lei-covered Hawaiian tourist, an IRS agent (the scariest one of all), a white-faced French mime, and two friends who switched identities for the night (am I you? are you me?).  My husband was a very handsome Phantom of The Opera, and I was a City-Minnie Mouse (very little country girl in this chick).  Other friends came dressed in Halloween colors.

We played Charades after dinner, and after the costume prizes were given out. Charades is always the great equalizer at a party..... and no matter how good you are at Charades, or how bad you are, the fun is just there in the middle of it all, and we end up just laughing at every little gesture and guess.

As we all sat down to dinner, one of our friends took a moment to remember the tradegy of the hurricane along the east coast, and everyone gave an "Amen" to the people in the cities ravaged by that storm.  For the second year in a row, Halloween was wiped out by a freak weather system..... this year's hurricane worse than the blizzard of last year.

Since there are no trick-or-treaters here today, I spent the entire morning taking down all the Halloween decorations.  I piled everything up on the dining room table, then got out the storage boxes and started putting little pumpkins and black cats inside bigger pumpkins.  All of the costumes are back in the costume boxes...... every black cat and witch's hat has been packed away till next year. I'll give myself a decorating rest for a day or two, and then get out the Christmas boxes.  By the time Thanksgiving comes, everything in this big old house will be all Christmas-ed up and ready for Santa.

I've stopped watching the news reports about Hurricane Sandy..... the pictures are heart-breaking.... the damage is unbelievable...... and you just have to wonder how long it will take New York and New Jersey to pick themselves up and dust themselves off after those weather systems blasted through.