Vida. Risa. Amor.

Here's a brief "status update" on the Palacios home this Friday night:  the girls are out at a high school football game, my boys are watching Dr. Doofenshmirtz rap with Perry the Platapus on Phineus and Pherb, Chemo is hopefully wrapping up his 12 hour shift at work, and I am kicking back after scooping out 4 pumpkins.  With ice-cream.  Life is good.

I do this every year.  I can't not carve pumpkins, and I can't not save the seeds.  We never end up eating all the salted seeds I roast, but I do it anyway because it makes me feel semi Martha/Crockerish...(in other words, both resourceful & festive).  We do pumpkin carving in two steps:  scoop night and carve night.  I just like to get the scraping of the insides of the pumpkins out of the way so the next day the kids can just carve away without getting pumpkin slime all over themselves and the floor.  Plus knives and boys don't mix...and the stench of pumpkin innards makes my girls gag.  So at our house, scooping out pumpkins over the years has become "Mom's job".  I don't mind.

So we're set for a fun weekend of football and softball, end of season parties and Halloween festivities.  If I'm not up to my elbows in pumpkins, then I'm up to my eyelashes in halloween treats.  My contribution to the world will always be box mix cupcakes and rice-krispies....I seem to not fail in these two party desserts.  I did burn some cupcakes last night though.  shhh...don't tell.  It's my oven's fault anyway.

I realize it's often a rare occasion where my whole family has been home altogether, but we all seem to be enjoying our lives for the most part.  I'm sort of hoping the pumpkin carving will bring us together tommorrow night though....that and maybe some smores around our firepit.  On Sunday the kids are looking forward to trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, and so from youngest to oldest, this year we have a pirate, (captain Jack Sparrow), a cowboy, a derby girl, (going by the name of Smashley Simpson), and Thomas the Train.  After hours of searching my closet for a costume, my highschool daughter finally decided to just be Thomas.  She's too old to trick or treat though....I've cut them off at 13. 

As my girls like to say, "it's all good in the hood", and for the most part it's a real family friendly atmosphere here on Halloween night.  So I give Arizona an A+ for fun on Halloween...(just don't forget to disguise the adult beverages). ;)