The scariest thing about Halloween was the voting line!

We're trying small photos today (except for the enormous Ben 10 image - sorry about that), in order to cut down the time it takes your computer to load this page. You can still click on each photo to see a larger version, as usual. We will have a lot of photos today, so we'll see if this helps.

VOTING

We Baracked the vote yesterday, and it turned out to be an all-day affair. It took us about 3 hours, 30 minutes. G was a complete angel the entire time, and we were proud that it seemed that everyone within an hour wait of us complimented us on his behavior. People two barricade lines over were leaning over, and we heard people even farther back talking to each other about him and how they couldn't believe a kid that age would be sitting so calmly. If only he always acted so well, life would be so much easier! Here are some pics from the line. You can see that nearly everyone had something to read or, in my case, crochet. The yellow pages are sample ballots. We did not hear a single cross word; everyone seemed to be happy to be there, and nobody complained about the line even once. We were all probably just happy we wouldn't be in the even longer wait come Tuesday.

HALLOWEEN

Gabriel had a really great time on Halloween. The turn out in the neighborhood seemed to be a good bit smaller than last year, but attendance in our house was much higher. Madeline, Zillah, and Iggy came over with Rebecca and Kirk to trick or treat with us. Along the way we met up with Gabriel's friend Drew from down the block and we had a lot of fun getting our candy. As you can see, Patty dressed up as Ben Tennyson's cousin, Gwen, and Matt was their friend and fellow alien fighter Kevin Levin. We made the first two images larger to compare our pose with that of the real Ben, Gwen, and Kevin.

This is Joe. Gabriel's class weighed, carved, and named him. It was a great class project. We got to bring him home, because we'd donated the pumpkin. We were so excited to bring him home and think he had a fun Halloween with us.

This is Gabriel's jack-o-lantern. Even though he was Ben 10, he still loves his Transformers!

Some houses were scarier than others. This one belongs to a "baby nurse," as she called herself.

Gabriel got a lot of really great candy (most of which he probably won't be allowed to ever eat!), but most of all enjoyed his special Halloween treats of Echo Echo (one of the aliens that Ben Tennyson can change into) from Bunnut, his transforming calculator from Bun, and his spooky Halloween bouncy balls from Mommy and Daddy. After the kids slipped into nice, carbo-crash enduced sleeps, the adults checked out the Checkwood's new Wii purchase: Guitar Hero World Tour, which comes complete with drums and a microphone. We got the band back together again and had a great time until the wii (ha ha) hours of the morning. We love Halloween!