grand total: eight

So far we've had more spooks than ever and we're up to a whopping eight. Wouldn't you want to come to our house? We've got about twenty of these ghost milk cartons in the flower beds.

I was dressed as a cow walking around the front yard. I had a red glow stick around my neck and was wearing a cow bell (circa 1996 for the LCHS - Giles County "cowbell game"). One guy told me he could hear the cow bell a mile away... and I waved at every car I walked by.

Even then, people just walked past us. Seriously?

The Hater, who is way more into this than I am, was posed and ready on the porch:

He really wanted to scare kids. The first two kids who came up just laughed at him. The little girl dressed as a fairy told him, "You're not really that scary." I told him he was, indeed, scary. But, really, after a little girl laughs at you there's really not much redemption to be had.

Although one little boy was too afraid to take the candy from the bowl.

We're glad to have had eight kids... but we're still disappointed. The HOA acted like we should prepare for waves and waves of kids. We were worried that the one bag of candy wouldn't be enough. (So the two additional bags that I bought were pretty much not needed at all. This is best for the kids who have come because they've all gotten huge handfuls of candy.)

Baby slept through all of this fun. She couldn't help it because we've had a huge day. We started out at the zoo. We were adventurous and did parts of the zoo we've not done before... which yielded in getting up close and personal with a white-tail deer, an ostrich, and bears. She loved it and we captured some FANTASTIC pictures, not to mention found a few more areas where we can let her run without worry. Great trip - the family zoo pass really is one of the smartest things we've done.

Oh, let me mention that Baby wore her skeleton sweatsuit to the zoo. I had on my Ghostbuster shirt. We're embracing the holiday spirit.

We came home after the zoo for a much-needed nap, but woke her up a little bit early so we could put the fairy costume on her and take her to the mall to trick-or-treat. She loved it. It didn't take long at all for her to figure out that people were giving her things to put into her plastic jack-o-lantern. She really liked it when they handed her the candy and she put it in the pail herself. We spooked the entire mall and she walked most of it. There were hundreds of kids in costume; all three of us had fun. We took her to the petri dish to play, but there were too many bigger kids playing rough, so we didn't stay long. We did, however, discover the escalators at Macy's and spent about twenty minutes going up and down, up and down, up and down.

She's been in a fabulous mood, despite our all-day adventures. Tomorrow will be easier because our plans focus on going to church, then spending the rest of the day being low key and doing laundry. Good times.

And now I'd like to report that we're up to 10 spooks! Double digits. This is the big time.