Halloween Tricks and Treats
Sam was a little frog for Halloween. One day we were at the store and he saw this frog costume. He pointed to it and said, "Oh wow! Wook! Wow!" I figured that if he used 75% percent of his vocabulary to express his interest it must be The Costume.
This is Sam and his friend Lincoln at Pumpkin Land. These pumpkins were ginormous, but they were also starting to rot. I'm thinking Pumpkin Land hit its peak around Oct 20th. But we still had a great time.
We wandered around the corn maze with our friends Caroline and Lincoln.
Sam loved running through the paths and scaring birds out of the corn.
I tried all day long to get a good picture of Sam, smiling in his costume. It never happened. He was happy, but so interested in his costume, his shoes, the leaves, the candy, and whatever else was going on that I could never get him to look at the camera.
The church had a Halloween carnival on the 30th and we all had a good time. Sam likes to carry around his Pumpkin (Bapum) and especially likes candy.
The Young Women had a fish pond and Sam won a monster finger puppet. He was super excited. He ran around the gym saying, "RAaar!" and showing everyone his new toy.
...And now for the tricks
While we were eating dinner on Halloween night we heard a strange noise and then the whole house shook. We opened the front door and the whole neighborhood was out on porches wondering what in the world had happened. Once again disaster has struck our little house. We have these monster elm trees that we want to have trimmed, but it is so expensive! We're talking several thousand dollars. So every time we have a storm we hold our breath, afraid that some enormous branch is going to come crashing through the roof. Well last night there wasn't even a breath of wind, but a huge limb from one of the trees fell down into the tree below it, sending other branches into the power lines across the street. I was so scared. I was relieved that no one was hurt especially considering that it was Halloween and there were a lot of people on the street and in our yard just moments before this happened. The power grounded through the tree and into the ground and shook the whole neighborhood. The fire department and the city power trucks all showed up and closed the street.
Sam thought the whole thing was great. The lights, the trucks, the firemen. I was mortified and worried. It has all turned out okay though. We had called the city last year to ask them to cut the branches that hung out over the street. They said they wouldn't do it because they didn't touch the power lines and it wasn't a hazard. So then last night they worked until almost midnight cutting branches.
This morning they came with the chipper and took away most of the debris. They were really great. Very professional and safe last night. I assumed they would only do what was essential and then leave the rest for us, but they went out of their way to cut extra branches and they did a great job.
The good news is that everything is okay and I think that now it might not be as expensive to have the rest of the branches cut. In other good news Daniel got a promotion and a raise yesterday, so does anyone know any good tree cutters in the area?
