Happy Halloween

This weekend Nate and I had a wonderful weekend celebrating Halloween, not something that we rarely do since it’s considered a fringe holiday to our evangelical circles. Friday night we were able to borrow the daughter of our dear friends Doris and Andrew and we spent an evening trick or treating at the local Science Station. As soon to be parents, it was fun to have Gabriella and watch her three year-old reactions. First she was terrified of the strange looking people, making her shake visibly. I briefly worried about causing the poor thing permanent trauma but she quickly got accustomed to the situation and even befriended a nearby clown. I don’t know who had more fun, Gabriella or Nate. Nate’s known Gabriella since she was born but there is something amazing about seeing your husband being so tender to someone so little. As we ended the night she became aware of the candy in her possession but we asked her to wait until we returned home to her parents supervision. (I didn’t want to be the one to return the child complete with sugar-high) I am pleased to announce she was incredibly obedient, waiting at least until the car pulled in the driveway. This was by definition home and so there was no protesting as she dove into her stash. I had to smile when she handed me a tootsie roll, with a bite out of it, wrapper and all. On Sunday we had another chance to celebrate when Krissy and Scott joined us for the day. We had a wonderful brunch after church stuffing ourselves so much that we had to invite them back to relax for awhile, since all of us were feeling incredibly sleepy and the rainy weather didn’t help. Before we knew it we became fully committed to several Halloween inspired TV shows, thoroughly scaring ourselves silly. I normally avoid every thing scary but it was incredibly funny as we yelled at the characters that went off by themselves and so on. But at the end of the night I was definitely glad I had Nate to curl up next to. I think scaring ourselves like that is something we may only do once a year (at best) and its always much better when you don’t have to go to sleep alone.