H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N

Ah, Halloween. Here are me and the boy on our porch. No, that isn't a giant flaring torch on the wall next to me, just a porchlight covered with a sack to tone down the glare a little. Made it look appropriately spooky on our porch for the trick-or-treaters. And yes, the boy is dressed as a bumblebee. Complete with stinger on the butt. I actually wheeled him around last night and knocked on doors. I was collecting for UNICEF instead of trick-or-treating, since the boy is too young for candy, but I thought it was pretty funny how many people went right for the candy bowl. I had to repeat, as fast as possible I might add, the following speech about twenty times: "Hi Trick or treat he's actually too young for candy so we're collecting for UNICEF instead do you have any spare change?"

I remember always wondering, as a child, just what kind of an idiot would ever want to collect money for UNICEF rather than get a bunch of free candy. Now I know exactly what kind of idiot. Man, it took all my courage to do this, I'll tell ya. I'm not even really sure why I did it. I mean, I could've just written a check myself and gotten it over with. But no. Had to put my adorable boy in a bee outfit and parade him at the neighbors. Ah, now I get it. And it worked, too. Everybody exclaimed over how cute he was.

Oh, and to get myself into the Halloween spirit, I made these:

They are rice krispy treats that I tinted orange, cut into pumpkin shapes and decorated with jack-o-lantern faces! How incredibly Martha Stewart! Well, actually, the faces look a little demented, since I made the icing color myself by mixing the four colors of decorating icing I had together and scraping it into a plastic bag to use as a pastry bag. It worked, but it was none too precise. And the orange was just red and yellow icing mixed in with the marshmallow. The icing was the only foodstuff I had in different colors, and it was in those little mini tubes you get for decorating, so I had to nearly spasm to squeeze enough out. That's why they aren't terribly orange. You try sqeezing those mini tubes of icing and see how much you get out before you pass out from the pain. Oh, and you wouldn't believe how much sweeter these get when you mix in maybe a tablespoon of decorating icing.

Anyway, that was our Halloween. I can't wait 'til next year. Then we can write a check to UNICEF, and go door to door for the CANDY, like any red blooded American oughtta.