Since the day we picked pumpkins at Fall City Farms Clara's been stuck on Pumpkin Time. Her fascination was reinforced when we introduced her to a bumblebee costume and then went to the Jubilee Farm with her class. She used to be proud to declare she was a big girl. Now she only says, "I'm a bumblebee," before tearing off around the house.
So the big weekend finally arrived. Amy had set it aside on the calendar for a combination of mantel making, partying with the mommy group, and trick-or-treating. Since we were going to be in Kirkland every day anyway we packed bags and moved back in with Amy's parents.
We got to Kirkland late on Saturday, but went straight to work on the mantel. We bought the wood and figured out what we would do in the vaguest sense. Then we started cutting. We used the famed Ryobi BT 3000 as well as a bundle of lesser known tools. We didn't watch the entertaining "how not to cut your fingers off with the Ryobi BT 3000 table saw" video, but nonetheless exited the garage a few hours later with five fingers on each hand.
Typically, just as we got into the groove I had to go get ready for dinner. We were heading out with the Lymans and Benedeks to celebrate Daryl and Michelle's birthdays. Somehow we wound up getting into a limo (only the second time for me ever and it was only a glorified taxi in Vegas last time) and heading downtown.
The Lyman's had planned the entire event and even provided fake eyelashes for the girls and fake vampire teeth for the guys. It appears Daryl got a little confused as he had eyeliner on, making him look like Robert Smith though with substantially less hair, but I guess it was Halloween so a little experimentation was in order.
They scored a big hit with the choice of Marco's Supper Club in Belltown. I was a bit skeptical of fried sage leaves, but it was Halloween so I gave it a shot. Not bad. I still ordered a steak, though. Excellent, excellent.
The rest of the night got a little sketchy because of the funny tasting orange juice in the car. Nothing really embarassing happened, but it's probably a good thing the digital camera was left at home. We did buy a disposable camera so I'm sure something bad will come out of it, but I'm not sure what.
When Amy and I had mostly recovered from the late night and... overindulgence we got back to work on the mantel. By the time Sunday was done we had the basic shape of the mantel done and Amy was looking for the critical top piece of wood. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself, but I've decided finish carpentry is for chumps. (Plus I'm no good at it.)
But enough of all this! You thought you'd be able to read about the girls going trick-or-treating. Well, sad part is it's not that exciting.
Clara did carve or at least design her own jack-o-lantern which Tokul pretty quickly made a mess of by eating the top. Amy covered it up by creating some sweet "hair" from pipe cleaners distracting Clara enough to forget about the top that used to be there.
Lilly accepted her plight as the motionless ladybug and was pretty content. While Clara had nearly refused to wear the headband that went with the ladybug costume two years ago Lilly had no issues with it. This is probably because we almost always have something trying to tame Lilly's hair, usually with little success.
After dinner we headed out into the light rain and did the loop around the Boruck's neighborhood. There were fewer people than in the last couple of years, probably due to the increase in "safe" trick-or-treating at malls not to mention the rain. We tried to stop at many of houses that knew us, but they were all dark except a couple. Oh well, their loss.
Clara was more confident and proudly declared she was a bumblebee, that bumblebees said, "Buzz, buzz!" and that she needed candy for her sister, too. (Yes, she's well trained.)
Back at the house we let Clara play with her candy and even eat a piece. Lilly had no such luck, though she did enjoy the crinkly wrappers on a bag of cookies. Between the tired jollies and a chocolate buzz Clara hardly stopped the rest of the night until it was time to climb into the car and head home.
The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful until about 2:30am the next morning when the freakin' power went out and stayed out until 6:30am. Luckily, our cordless phones complain when they can't talk to the base station and that woke Amy enough to have me set a battery-powered alarm (aka the crackberry) so I wasn't late for work, but I did miss my coffee.
With the power back on and the costumes put away things are slowly returning to normal... or at least as normal as it ever is.
