Halloween

Pre Trick-or-Treating

At Jen's Halloween Party

Enjoying pumpkin cake

The spread

Annika the tiger with Logan in the background

Halloween has come and gone. I discussed this with several people yesterday: Halloween is just not my thing. I find it very hard to get excited about Halloween. Give me Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter. You can keep Halloween.

We had a party at Jen's from 3:00-4:00 with cake, dancing and music. That helped to get me a little more excited to get out and trick-or-treat.

At 6:00 p.m. the residents of our entire building, three stairwells worth, set up tables out front, pooled our piles of candy and had a potluck for the building. I made a tatertot hotdish, which went over like gangbusters. My standard potluck dish is usually pasta bake, but I happened to have the makings for tatertot hotdish around and so made that. I thought people would turn up their noses at it, but they cleaned up my dish. Usually I'm lugging pasta bake home. Guess I learned a lesson.

Hans took Josiah and Annika trick-or-treating. They got one bucket of candy. For some reason we have just one bucket...grandmas, be on the lookout for a felt Halloween bucket at the post-Halloween sale at Target, OK? I got a cute pumpkin one last year and for some reason, realized at the 11th hour that I had only one. I guess a pillowcase would have worked. Whatever. I'm rambling. Josiah and Annika were out for about 45 minutes. There was plenty of candy just on our street with our six big apartment buildings.

Lucky me got to sit at the buffet table and eat while the kids were gone and chat uninteruptedly with Jen and the folks from our building and drink a little gluhwein, which is warm spiced wine. We all broke camp when it started to rain, then Jen convinced me and another friend to go up to a Halloween party at the Swabian Inn, one of our hotels/restaurants on post.

Did I mention that I was wearing my gandl (Jen, correct me if my spelling is wrong on that one!) and Jen, at the last minute after being both a witch and Sarah Palin (please no jokes), changed into Deb's husband's lederhosen? We were Hansel and Gretel. I wore my long blonde wig made into braids that I pinned on top of my head. I don't know why we didn't win the costume contest because we were totally adorable, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, we danced a lot and had a couple of Halloween-themed drinks. I cannot believe that I stayed out until almost 1:00 a.m. This could explain the rambling-ness of this post.

I'm glad that I had an opportunity to shake my booty with Jen one last time. She leaves on November 20th, so next week is the last we'll have.

Sorry that I suck at the electric slide Jen!