Zombies for Dessert

I realize that Halloween isn't a national holiday, but when it falls on a weekend day, shouldn't I have it off from work?  Nope, not today.  I was required to attend a meeting this evening from 6:00 to 7:30 P.M., and I went in ahead of time to do some grading and be "on call" in case I was needed to set up for the student presentations that were a part of the events.  While I was gone, Susan and the girls tended to the essential Halloween festivities.

Wanna know who these be-costumed beauties are?  Read on!

• Susan took the girls to a residential facility for elderly people, who were handing out candy to treat-or-treaters today.
• Then they went to the Prairie Hills Mall, whose businesses were giving out candy to kids in costumes.
• Then they went to visit our friend Monica in her apartment, and she gave them candy, too.
• Then they went to Treat Street at the Grand Dakota Lodge, at which local businesses had rented out and decorated the ballrooms and a series of hotel rooms.  As trick-or-treaters moved from spooky room to spooky room, people in costumes stood inside to hand out candy and/or to jump out from behind doorways or scream or act out an eerie scene or otherwise scare the children.  Hillary got scared when she spotted a man in a gorilla suit, so she screamed . . . which caused him to scream because he hadn't noticed her there, and her scream "freaked him out" (according to Hillary)!
• Then Susan took the girls trick-or-treating at family members' houses: Dale and Mary's, Terry and Audrey's, and Pat and Kathy's.
• Finally, they came home, and Susan got situated to dole out candy to trick-or-treaters at our house while the girls (and one of Abigail's friends) walked around our neighborhood to trick-or-treat.

The girls were home again by the time I returned from my meeting, and we all sat down to eat a supper of "bloody" (tomato) soup and chicken quesadillas on tortillas that Susan had cut to look like jack-o'-lanterns.  Speaking of: I told you, Faithful Reader, several days ago that I would post photos of the jack-o'-lanterns that the girls carved.  Here they are:

A little blurry, perhaps, but you get the idea.

Now, back to the girls' costumes:

a witch 

a pro tennis star

 Cleopatra

After we had eaten supper and the girls had gone to bed, I had a little Halloween treat of my own: watching the premiere of the AMC television series The Walking Dead, a show about survivors of a zombie epidemic in America.  The show is off to a great start with a terrific pilot, and it was an excellent and appropriate way to "celebrate" Halloween.  Boo!