Our new Halloween Family Tradition

I got this idea from my sister Holly. We made dinner in a pumpkin and we've decided it is going to be our new family tradition on Halloween. You basically make a rice dish, then put it in a hollowed out pumpkin and bake it in the oven. Yes, you do eat the pumpkin. It was quite tasty!

The finished product. Here's the little face that Suzy drew on the pumpkin (a little hard to see in this pic)

I drew a face on the other side, this was my lame design :)

I took the girls out trick-or-treating. The weather was fantastic - 67 degrees at 9 PM! I had a jacket and Suzy had a sweat shirt and we were both roasting. It was the warmest Halloween I can ever remember.

After getting the goods we hung out at the neighbors house who have a fire and hot chocolate every year. It was wonderful seeing so many of our neighbors and after three years of living here finally feeling like we've gotten to know some people.

Here is Jer drinking some hot chocolate and holding who everyone was calling "Sumo Cow". Can you see her little tail sticking straight out the back? Jer was recounting his scary story of the day. That morning, Halloween morning, he rode his bike to work. I'm going to paste the story told in his words from an email he sent me that morning:

"SO GET THIS!! Today - on Halloween morning - while it was still pitch black out (the new moon was 2 days ago) - I was riding through Davidson's neighborhood going up this slight hill - in the dark. And suddenly I hear this growling and paws running on pavement (fast!) behind me. I look back it's just black. I pick up the pace up the hill and the growling is getting closer! My heart is racing and I'm putting everything into the pedals I get it up to a 30mph sprint up the hill! And the growling and sounds of claws running on pavement are still there! I glance back and it's still just blackness. Finally after like a few hundred meters, I break free of the pursuer and am alone again - just riding my bike to work, except just a little extra winded. Totally dead serious!!!! It was the weirdest scariest (in an exhilarating way) thing that's happened in a looong time. Like a block later while I was still recovering from the effort, the wind blew some leaves on the side of the road which sounded faintly like the growling sound and my heart easily jumped 20 bpm. I was totally freaked out. Really really weird. How CRAZY is that???"