Happy Halloween!

You know, I used to enjoy Halloween when we lived in our house.  As a librarian, I gave gently used books I’d been collecting throughout the year instead of candy.  I got my inspiration from an organization called Books For Treats (http://booksfortreats.org/).  Last year at this time we participated in the haunted trail at our job in Oklahoma, but I didn’t enjoy it.  This year I almost missed the fact that it was Halloween.

This morning I fed the pigs and finished planting the cabbage.  Then Mark and I started working on a new chicken coop that Karl and Nancy have in mind for a structure where the frame withstood but the rest of it got pretty torn up in a couple recent wind storms.  It was so peaceful.  I enjoyed listening to the breeze through the leaves of the trees, the lowing of the cows, the clucking of the chickens, and even the grunting of the pigs while I was working.  The horse in the pasture next to us was feeling a bit frisky and was galloping around.  The watchdog, Stewart, gave me kisses and wanted to play.

Nancy was gone at lunchtime so Mark and I prepared lunch from the foods she had left for us to put together.  Then Mark and I took the afternoon off to go to the Laundromat and the store for some groceries.  When we came home we fed the pigs and the chickens again and then we took showers and dressed up.  Nancy and Karl had invited us to come with them to a potluck and autumn sing-a-long.  However, when we showed up at the house in our fancy duds, Nancy told us that she’d begged off the gathering because she hasn’t been feeling up to par.  However, she and Karl wanted to take us out to dinner in town.

They took us to a little Mexican restaurant in town and we had a really pleasant visit.  Mark and I talked about our religious backgrounds and we asked about theirs.  They attend a Reformed church here that has a core membership of about eight people.  Karl is very knowledgeable on just about any subject you can think of so he talked about the history of the Reformed movement and he seemed to know something about the religious backgrounds we came from.  I told him I spent most of my adult life as a Mennonite and he said he could tell as soon as he met me that I was a gentle person.

We were having such a good visit that he asked if we’d like to go to another place for dessert, but when we drove there there was no parking.  That was when it occurred to us all that tonight was Halloween and that all the businesses were handing out candy.  Instead we stopped at the grocery store and Nancy bought some cream puffs.  We took them home and she made a berry puree that she put on top of them.  We continued visiting for quite a while…a very pleasant evening.

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