Happy Halloween, friends!

We've been trying to scope out how many kids live in our neighborhood. Which sounds creepy. But we just want to know how many trick-or-treaters to expect. It's a fairly new subdivision, and I think this will be the first year that there are more houses than empty lots, so it's hard to know whether parents are accustomed to taking their kids to church or grandma's, or whether they'll trapse them through the neighborhood in their light up sneakers wearing sweatshirts under their costumes thanks to the glorious 45 degree Fall weather we've been having, braving the construction debris in hopes of neighbors who buy the good candy. Raisins may be nature's candy but this is Industrialized Civilization, people, and the children want their processed sugars. So the cone of uncertainty persists. Will we get trick-or-treaters? Or can we eat all the candy we bought? Mike seems to be banking on a low turnout, as evidenced by the reeses wrappers in the trash.

Tonight we're having a few friends over to carve pumpkins and eat tacos. Mike and I are fairly laid-back, and one of the friends who's coming tonight is a bit of a Party Controller, so she's taken the reins and mandated that we all wear costumes. My sister and her friend (who's flying in tonight from Virginia) have come up with a stellar costume idea, further proving to me that she got all the genes that make you clever and hilarious. They're going as passengers from the Titanic: fancy gowns, pearls, and pincurls, topped with life jackets. Pretty dang clever, right?

So we're all going to go pick up the friend at the airport. In our costumes. Which are the same as disguises. To mask our real identities.

It promises to be a real Homeland Security Hootenanny.