Happy Dia de los Muertos!

I have a random day off from work today (*cough* furlough *cough*) which happily coincides with a field trip Tommy's class is taking to a local museum.  So I get to go, which is always super fun!  Tommy's class entered an exhibit in their Dia de los Muertos display, and this will be the first time I've seen it.  I'll make it over to Oakland where my grandma and grandpa are buried, and I'll visit their graves and add flowers and clean up the area.   I love traditions!

Speaking of which, a very special tradition started around here in the last couple of years.  It involves spending the two or three days before Halloween trying on every costume in the dress up boxes!

 We saw a parade of pirates, jedis, super heros, and warriors for the entire weekend.  I was curious how they would actually end up on Halloween!  Tommy eventually went as a gladiator, and Scotty went as Optimus Prime from the Transformers.  We headed over to the Harris Family's new house in an upscale neighborhood in Oakland. 

 We had a blast, watching the Giants game (and getting updates at every house along the way!) while also cheering them on with a portable radio (what can I say?  We're fans!) and the kids scored full-sized candy bars from many of the houses.  What the what?  It was a shocking turn of events for all four sets of parents that were chaperoning our troupe of marauders.  Why, back in the day, we got raisins and mini snickers!  Good times.

I had my own kind of haul over the weekend....I've started clearing out the gardens as the chill in the air is taking longer and longer to dissipate each day.  I brought in the last of the eggplants (that would be about 2 dozen, by the way!) as well as a couple of squash and thanks to a heat wave earlier this month, I also got the last two cucumbers, and two bell peppers.  I'm only through two tomato plants (I'll get through the other tomato plants today) but I already have a nice pile of red tomatoes and a hojillion green ones.  I think we may be eating fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving before all is said and done! 

Hopefully, all these vitamin-rich homegrown veggies will counterbalance two buckets of candy.  Oh wait.  Am I supposed to care about the sugar?  I think I am supposed to let my kids pick two pieces and chuck the rest, is that right?  Ah, well.  I'm going to leave that to the good parents.  We'll be here, on a sugar high, eating tomatoes.