Trick-or-Treat

Halloween started off with a very interesting start. The picture above is what I was very shocked to see when I opened up the kitchen sink cabinet to get a bottle of glass cleaner. YIKES! (Yes, this is the actual spider. Yes, we spent quite some time taking pictures of it. Is you skin crawling yet?) I could tell it was dead right off so it didn't freak me out too much, but it was huge! I snapped a picture of it and sent it out to Dennis and my friends. A few folks thought that it might be a fake spider. I assure you it was not! Dennis and I spent a little time doing some Arachnid research and were able to determine by the number of and rows of eyes (3 rows with a total of 8 eyes) that it is a Wolf spider. They are actually venomous and if bitten you should seek medical attention. That is a little intimidating especially since we've now killed at least 3 more Wolf spiders of that size. I know it's not easy to really get a sense of how large it is from the picture. It's body is about 1 1/2 inches and probably a good 3 to 4 inches with it's legs extended. BIG!

We purchased our pumpkins early, but were late to get them decorated. The large pumpkin sat in our garage for too long and developed a bad spot on the back of it so we really couldn't carve it. All of us were sad about that. Elizabeth as usual wanted a cat on the pumpkin. I got the idea for the face from a very cute picture on a calendar. The girls painted their pumpkins and then I drew thew faces on them. Elizabeth's pumpkin cat face is, of course, the red one. I had fun drawing the faces on the pumpkins.

It was very chilly out, so we decided to head out around 6:30pm this year. I was surprised that it was still fairly light outside. We brought the umbrella stroller stacked with jackets, drinks, and snacks (also, just in case the little strawberry fairy decided she was done walking). Elizabeth got a great kick out of ringing the door bells and Katherine would have gladly invited herself into each house. Both loved saying "Trick-or-treat" and "Thank you!" Katherine would not hold her onto pink pumpkin for anything. After about the 3rd house she demanded to have her coat on. Our little black kitty cat had a blast! By the time we were half way down our street, Katherine was done and Elizabeth had been hitching a ride in the stroller for several houses, so we headed home. I think that next year they'll be begging us to walk the entire neighborhood.

This was the first year that we have not handed out candy. By the time we got home from our own trick-or-treating most of the kids in the neighborhood were done, too.