"Boo" or "Brr"?

And a frigid All Hallow's Eve to you, too!

Oof-da, but it was cold tonight. There's a little dusting of snow on the ground and some ice here and there on the roads and parking lots, and the temperature has been in the low 20s. Thank goodness for very little wind tonight. Still, it was cold enough to bite at our ears and cheeks as we braved the weather to go trick-or-treating.

Tuesday nights, Suzanna and Abigail have dance class, and they wanted to attend tonight, even though the instructor gave them the option to skip it for Halloween festivities. While they were dancing, Susan took Hillary to the mall to make the candy-collecting rounds. I picked up Suzanna and Abigail after dance at 6:45 P.M., took them home, picked up Hillary, and escorted them around the block for some chilly trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood.

There were precious few other people out and about. At many houses, the girls were told that they were the first people to show up--and that was around 7:30 P.M.! Candy givers were overstocked and feeling generous, dumping mounds of their goodies into the girls' bags. I was freezing my extremities, but we still hit all the porch-light-lit houses on our block. Everyone was very friendly, and some had even set aside special goodie bags for the girls without ever having met them ("We've seen you out on your bikes, and we mean to have your family over soon").

No one argued when we'd made it around the block and Daddy suggested heading indoors. Susan made hot chocolate for us all and reported that about a dozen people had stopped by our house for candy. So, sitting on our kitchen counter now are the two giant bowls of candy we bought to give away plus the two giant bowls' worth of candy the girls collected.

I guess I'll have to pitch in and do my part to make all that candy disappear. *sigh*