Hallo-whee!

I've been surprisingly enthusiastic about Hallowe'en this year, and now it's nearly here!  Matt and I realized last night that we have yet to carve our pumpkins -- time slips away so fast.  We decided we'd try to carve them tonight, and if we ran out of time, we could finish up tomorrow.

That'll be something for Penny to do tomorrow, anyway.  She was pretty nonplussed this morning when I told her she would have to wait until after dinner to go trick-or-treating.

I might even manage to slip out of work a little bit early today, if everything stays quiet.  There aren't any deliveries due out, so once I'm done with all the piled-up administrivia, I might just take off.  We'll see, I guess.  I can only hope!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  My dad is down in Atlanta, so Mom said she might come up for the evening, to see the kids in their costumes and help me hand out candy to the ravening hordes.  (Seriously, we get a gajillion kids in our neighborhood.  We buy two five-pound bags of candy every year, and give out no more than 2-3 pieces per kid, and it's usually all gone by 8.)

I'm going to hand out candy (it's Matt's turn to escort the kids around).  I expect Alex to go to about three houses and be done, and to go to bed more or less on time, but we'll probably let Penny stay up a bit late to play with Ray and eat some of her candy.

There will be pictures taken, of course.  If nothing else, I'll take pictures of Penny and Alex in their costumes, and possibly Ray as well, if he's willing to stand still for it.  I might get someone to take a picture of me in my costume, too.  If I get a chance, I want to wander around and experiment with taking pictures in the dark -- some of our neighbors put up fantastic decorations and displays that could be fun to shoot.  (Though I don't have a tripod mount for long exposures, yet.  Need to put that on my list!)

I might roast pumpkin seeds from our jack-o-lanterns.  (I need to look up the calories and carbs on those, first.)  On Sunday, I'm going to bake the little pie-pumpkin we got and have Penny help me make pumpkin muffins out of it.

All in all, I expect it to be a really fantastic weekend, and I'm looking forward to it immensely.  There will probably be pictures on Monday.  And then I'll need to start working on plans for Christmas!