Evening Fun

Two days this past week our family had some late-in-the-day fun. Halloween, obviously, was one of them. All three kids went out and brought in a good haul of sugar. Raia had two costumes this year, a "Butterfly Ballarina Fairy Princess" costume that she wore to all of the indoor (and one outdoor) Halloween festivities, and her "Spooky Witch" costume that she wore for actual Halloween night. Errol was a dinosaur, and Patrick was Winnie the Pooh (a costume which all 3 of my kids have worn. It's gotten a lot of use in the past 5 years!)

We went to the older part of our town to trick-or-treat. Only about a third of our street passes out candy, but this neighborhood had just about every house particpating, and some of them with some pretty awesome decorations! (like the music video to Thriller projected onto the side of a house!) I love taking the kids there. :) Patrick ran from house to house collecting his candy, and practicing his "Twick-a-teet!" and "Tank-oo!" What finally had us calling it a night wasn't the heaviness of the candy bags, but the chill in the air. It was COLD! Preferable to rain, though.

On Saturday we made an impromptu decision to enjoy the beautiful sunshine that had finally decided to come out after a mid-day rain and have a picnic dinner. We got some fried chicken and jo jo's and headed for the park. We were there just before sunset, and stayed until the light ran out. It reminded me of evenings spent at my cousins' ranch, climbing trees, running between the grape vines, playing in the soft dirt, and running back into the house when it was too dark to see, hot, sweaty, and in no way ready for bed! I never seemed to play as hard as I did there. My house also had big fields to run in, and a trampoline and crazy tire swing, but the sun going down meant an end to playing, and taking up our seats on the corral gate and watching the bats fly out of the tumble-down barn. There were no bats at the park Saturday night, or rows of grape vines, but there were other kids with energy levels to match those of my own brood, and they feed off eachother and giggled and screamed as they chaced after eachother. Patrick climbed anything climbable, Raia practiced her monkey-bar skills, and Errol was the dinosaur invading the park, roaring and chasing after anyone who got too close to his claws. It was just a wonderful evening. :)