Up until October had already begun, I had no idea if Josh was going to put anything together for Halloween or not. In years past, he has commenced dreaming/scheming/planning in about July or August; but this year, he just couldn’t come up with an idea that really felt like a winner. And work was busy, and we went on a big expensive trip, and we still have five kids, etc. etc. etc.

But things at work slowed down and people started asking Josh about his plans (peer pressure power!) at the optimal time to facilitate the quickest turn-around for Halloween we’ve ever had! He built this custom animatronic, interactive Halloween game from start to finish in 11 days!

If you were lucky enough to come and play it, you already know how impressive that 11 day effort was! An exciting new thing that helped things go so quickly was that Josh got AI to do the grunt work (like coming up with a base script that Josh improved upon, coming up with random examples for the categories game, creating a poster image, etc). I don’t, personally, care very much for AI; but I can’t deny that Josh was really able to profit from it this year. I told him that it is now officially his responsibility to teach our children to use AI in appropriate and upstanding ways. 🙂 If that part of education was left to me, we would all probably swear off any and all technology developed post 2010. (Only half-joking.)

But we had lots of Halloween fun this year even outside Josh’s legendary yard attraction!

We had our family Halloween party where we let all the siblings and niblings play the attraction.

Early in October, I was able to convince 3 of the girls to come up the canyon with me to enjoy the autumn leaves. Last year, I only convinced one, and another was brought along forceably.

And with the advent of cooler weather comes the compulsive need to “yarn.” So I have crocheted approximately a thousand pumpkins (okay, only 10), and I knitted this sweater for Portia. I am newer to knitting, and I made this sweater 3 different times before it got to be something that Portia would even consider wearing. But I am very pleased with the end result, and even MORE pleased that it is, indeed, the END result.

And then came the magical day, itself! The three bigger kids went out trick-or-treating by themselves this year (BIG DEAL!) and I took the two youngest with me. Everybody got lots of yummy candy, and we even got over 100 trick-or-treaters at our house! I forgot to take a picture of the post trick-or-treating spoils, and I’m genuinely bummed. That is one of my favorite parts of the day.

Josh has some analytics attached to his attraction and it looks like the game was played about 400 times over the course of the month! So famous!

And now that the spooky magic of Halloween has past, we are enjoying being thankful! I love celebrating the Thanksgiving Season with “thankful minutes” during the day, and keeping our growing list of gratitude on the kitchen door. I am truly thankful for this life of mine, and for this season of the year!