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Zombie Kitten
Undead Cheerleader
This house sets up a cotton candy machine on the porch every year and hands out bags of cotton candy.
Someone else's pumpkin display
Not our house. Brian took the girls trick or treating while I handed out candy, so I don't know where this is.
Our pumpkins
Little altar thing I set up on the porch.
When we adopted Chestnut last March, one of the first things Ivy and Miranda said was "now we can march in the Spooky Pooch Parade!"
We put a lot of thought into his costume--should we exploit the congenital deformity that causes him to hop and dress him as a rabbit or frog? Or would that be rude?We decided to go with exploitation. Especially after finding out there would be prizes for best kid and pooch costume
The frog and the princesses. You can tell how much Chestnut is loving his costume. I paid more for that than I ever did for any costume I ever bought for my kids.
There were a lot of clever dog costumes. This Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
We marched up one side of the street and down the other. We were gratified to hear quite a few people recognize what Chestnut was supposed to be--despite the fact that he kept shaking his hood off--but I started to get a little concerned that maybe people thought we were jerks for making our poor crippled puppy struggle through the parade.
And then I realized the judges were up ahead and we had to walk by single file and at that point as I was trying to adjust Chestnut's costume and get him to walk next to Ivy I realized I'd become the equivalent of moms who force their toddlers to perform in beauty pageants. So I calmed down a bit and assured Ivy (and myself) that it didn't matter if we won a prize or not, we'd had fun in the parade.
We stood around waiting for them to announce the winners and third prize for best Child and Pooch costume went to The Princess and the Frog!
We are currently fostering a puppy, and bottle-feeding an orphaned pup is kind of beyond my capabilities anyway. Today when Miranda and I went in for our dog walking shift, we were able to see how they had successfully managed to get a nursing cat to allow the puppy to feed along with her own kittens
The mostly white one is the puppy, there's a black kitten on either side. Mom cat, her kittens and the pup are going to their foster home today--not us, another volunteer, although I think it would be pretty amazing to look after this family!
The trees are just starting to change color.
Practicing rolling a toy hoop. I'm not sure we were doing it exactly right.
This was supposed to be a Native American campground. You can see the structure for a wigwam to the side.
Why didn't I take more pictures of the buildings? This appears to be the only one, and I didn't take any pictures of the interiors. I always forget I have the camera, I'm a terrible picture-taker.
A rare occurrence of me in a photo, even rarer--I'm smiling.
One of the historic houses in the neighborhood. On the tree lawn in the lower left corner you can see a hitch for a carriage horse
I can't remember the name of this woman, but in the early 1900's she was having trouble with mischievous boys stealing her milk early in the morning, right after the milkman delivered it. To teach them a lesson, she put a bit of rat poison in the milk, hoping they'd get sick. Unfortunately, one of the boys died and she served prison time for man slaughter.
This was from a story one of the residents claimed was a family tale her relatives told her. Apparently a long ago relative was drinking at a bar, met a stranger who invited him to come share a bottle of booze, and murdered him instead, cutting off his head. His body was found, but the whereabouts of the head remain unknown. Behind the talking head, you can faintly see his body, with a scarf wrapped around the neck.
So, not really all that scary, but it was interesting and the girls were good sports about it. And we finished up with cookies, which is always good.
