It’s Halloween time again, which means enjoying plenty of fall food such as acorn squash and Halloween-themed pasta (which I call “Spook-Ghetti“) — along with all the usual Halloween sweets, of course.

Aaron has a few days off of school (thanks to some parent/teacher conferences), so Vivian took him to BSF on Thursday. Afterward I biked on up to join them for lunch at Chick-Fil-A, something I’d done this a number of times with Vivian and Hannah, but never with Aaron. It was nice to spend a little time with our son having some chicken sandwiches — and an ice cream cone we got for free. He even spent a few minutes in the play area before we went home. Likely, he’ll have outgrown it the next time we come by.

We had some beautiful weather on Saturday for Hannah to sell chocolate bars with the girls from AHG outside Sam’s Club. Then in the afternoon, I dragged the kids to my parents’ house to help rake up some of the leaves that had fallen in their backyard. Naturally, they got to play in them a bit as well, but we wound up bagging five giant bags of leaves before we were done. There are more than enough leaves to have to do this again soon. Hopefully when they all fall down it will still be warm enough to rake them up without jackets.

Then on Sunday, Vivian and I wore orange and black to church for Halloween eve. Then that afternoon, we took the kids out for for a couple Trunk or Treat events. The first was down at Wildewood, where we met up with the Campbells and the Lenarts to get candy from a handful of our friends from church. We saw some creative trunks decorated with themes such as Pac-Man, Monsters Inc., and even Insurance mascots. One had a quiz on the Ten Commandments, which I think had approval from Farmer/Pastor Ron. The kids got to play a few carnival-style games afterward and have some hot dogs and cotton candy before we headed on.

Then on the way home, we stopped by Heritage Hill Church of the Nazarene for their Trunk or Treat event immediately afterward (where we coincidentally bumped into our friend Debby, with Emily in tow). There were some swings and a bounce house for the kids to play in, along with a hayrack ride where they got to “pick” a few pumpkins from the bottom of the hill. Hannah jumped into a haystack, swung around with Aaron, and somehow lost a tooth. We got some chili for dinner before collecting some more candy and chucking a few pumpkins. and then the kids got to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown as the sun went down.

Then at long last came Halloween night! We had some pizza for dinner before Grammy came by with Bella to watch the door at our house, and then we took our kids for a long evening of trick-or-treating. We started off at my parents’ house and then walked their neighborhood as the sun went down. Then we drove up the street to visit a few neighbors by Grammy’s house, specifically Tom and Toni next door. Then we finished off with our own neighborhood, including a handful of nicely decorated houses just down the street.

I probably had more than my fill of candy throughout the (including some the treats left at work), but I hope the nice, long walk did a bit to offset it. Happy Halloween, everybody!