Trick or Treat is done!

This afternoon was Newton's Halloween Safe Walk - basically they shut down about 3 blocks of the main drag through town and representatives from area businesses hand out candy to the kids. It's always a zoo (putting it mildly) and really just makes me dislike Halloween even more than I already do - but at the same time, it gets all of the trick-or-treating out of the way and we don't have to get in and out and in and out and in and out of the van to go door-to-door.

Sarah and Emily opted to stay with the church group and hand out candy, rather than walk to get candy - this made me happy in many ways. I'm glad to see them starting to want to be more involved with our church, since they go to their father's and not mine on a regular basis. The youth group was in charge of handing out candy, and although my girls are still a little young to be a part of it, they're a great group of kids for them to get to know.

It also meant that I only had to keep track of 3 kids in the crowd, and that there would be 40% less candy to take home. Win!

Wasn't even going to attempt to get them all to smile. Sometimes, it's just not worth it.

It was a beautiful - but windy - afternoon.

He can look so darned cute at times...

Just a small sampling of the crowd

Like I said, gorgeous day...

Crowd...

Crowd...

Oh holy crap, it just gets worse....

The truck, in full superhero costume.

The haul

Of course, I also had my Policy Council meeting to contend with today - it was supposed to be from 10:00am until 3:00pm - but of course, there are always those people who don't believe in following an agenda, and so we didn't get out of there until almost 3:30. And I got elected to be the secretary again. Yay me. Actually, I don't mind it that much, because it forces me to pay attention and to stay awake during the meetings. Of course, I was paying so much attention today that I wrote down the date and time of the next meeting on the minutes, but forgot to write it down in my datebook. Crap.

After we got home tonight and got supper out of the way (thank you, Wendy's) Emily decided to do some laundry. I was helping her to get it started, and something in the laundry room just didn't smell right.

I looked behind the dryer, and sure enough, the vent duct had pulled off of the back of the dryer. Gee, wonder when that happened - judging by the layer of lint and filth behind the dryer, I would say that it's only been a few days, but still.....

I really wasn't in the mood to clean back there, but since I was there anyway I took care of the worst of the grime after I got the duct reattached (really wish I could find my duct tape) and then got everything put back into place. Now I can do even more laundry. Oh, yay me.

But for now, I think I'm just going to work on straightening things up around the house and then try to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm not feeling so incredibly hot tonight and I think a shower and some sleep will work wonders....