Well the porch light is off. The candy is on piles on the kitchen counter. The kids are all bathed. And now sawing Zzzzs in their beds. And I’m gnawing on pizza rolls and licorice [good dinner, huh?].

Halloween is over. Bummer.

We were able to get all of our pumpkins carved before trick-or-treating. All eight pumpkins. Well actually seven because we didn’t carve Caleb’s pumpkin. Instead Lee drew a face on it and Caleb colored it in. And he did a great job.

This was the first year Skyler & Spencer carved their own pumpkins. They have one of those templates. They punched the holes. And then they cut them out. They were so happy with the work they did. This did amazing work on those pumpkins. I think this means I’ll never have to carve another pumpkin ever again now that everybody but Caleb can do their own.

Please excuse the camera shake. I was too lazy to go all the way downstairs to get the tripod.

The kids had their school parties today. They got to wear their costumes and parade through each of the other classrooms from kindergarten to fifth grade. Then they got to dig in to a ton of goodies; cookies, carrot cake, chex mix, marshmallow mummies. My mom happens to be in town so she hung out with Skyler and her class. My grandma joined us and tagged along with Spencer and his class. I went to Caleb’s class.

Then earlier tonight the kids got back in to their costumes to trick-or-treat. Caleb was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Leonardo I think??). Spencer was a skeleton pirate. Skyler was the Devil’s bride.

I seriously underestimated Caleb’s interest in trick-or-treating. We had only been to about 10 houses when Caleb started telling me he wanted to go home. After a few more houses he was basically begging me to take him home. But we were still a block from home. I said, “We’re on our way home, but we might as well stop at some of these houses on our way home.” He wasn’t buying it. He was tired and bored and felt like he already had enough candy. He even said, “I don’t want anymore candy!” What kid says that?

So there I was, basically forcing my kid to trick-or-treat. I was all “you will take this bag of candy and walk up to the door and beg for more candy and like it” only not exactly in those words.

But we finally made it home. And without any tears. Or fighting. So I consider it to be a pretty good night. Now excuse me while I go digging through all this chocolate and find the good candy.

We had our first presentation tonight in my Marketing Research class. I tried to strike a deal with my teammates. I would do just about anything to get out of giving a speech. But I was worried I wasn’t very persuasive with my teammates and would end up stumbling through a few slides in front of my class.

Two weeks ago we lead a focus group of our peers in a discussion of organic foods and the feasibility of opening an organic grocery store in our area. We then were supposed to compile our data in to a summary and a final report for a presentation to the class. We weren’t required to have every teammate present. Our teacher left is up to us to determine how we’d work the presentation. In fact tonight there was one team who had just one of their team members present the entire presentation. And another team had just two people from their group.

Each team has about seven members. And the presentation was to be between five and ten minutes long. That means, if we had every team member present, we each had to talk for about 30 seconds to a minute. Still entirely too long in my book. Personally I think the presentations with just a couple presenters went much smoother than the ones were seven people hovered at the front of the class and spoke for 30 seconds each. But maybe that’s just because I was determined not to be one of the seven people.

So my deal with my team was that I would write the entire summary and the whole report if it would get me out of presenting. I thought that was a pretty good deal. I mean in the end writing the summary and report would take a heck of a lot longer than just reading off a slide while standing in front of the classroom.

But today when I received the slides from the teammate who put the presentation together I discovered I was responsible for the introduction and stating our research objectives. My plan had failed. I was going to have to present. In front of the classroom. With a bunch of little twenty year old beady eyes staring at me. Hopefully I wouldn’t drool.

So I was pretty much dreading going to class tonight. We met a half hour early to run through the slides [since we didn't even get the slides until early this morning]. As soon as I got there I got a wonderful surprise. One of my teammate, Sarah, asked me if I wanted her to take my slides. She said, “the deal was, you write the papers and you don’t have to present.” And then I made out with her.

Ok, so I didn’t really make out with her. But she is my new best friend.

Instead of presenting I just worked the computer and advanced the slides while Sarah presented both my part and her part and the rest of the team presented theirs. And then we all sang Kum Bi Ya together and everything was good. Yeah, that’s last part didn’t really happen either. But our presentation did go really well and I am expecting an A.

I wasn’t going to blog about this because I really don’t want to start a big debate. But it’s really been bothering me. So here it is.

Every day on my way to school I drive by this big sign on the interstate. It says, “God is pro-life. Are you?” This strikes me as a very odd argument for the pro-life cause.

First, God is obviously not always pro-life. Otherwise people would never die. Women would never have a miscarriage. Infants would not be stillborn. Babies would not die. Children would not get cancer. You get my point.

I understand the arguments that a fetus is a child, life starts at conception and abortion is murder. I may disagree, but I can at least understand those points. But I just can’t get behind this whole “God is pro-life” argument. It’s like peer pressure. All the cool kids think this way. God thinks this way. You should too.

I am a Christian. I go to church every Sunday. I’m a Shepard in Sunday School. I’m down with God. I just don’t think using his name to scare people in to believing your position is the best way to go about it. Be a little more creative. Use some facts to back up your opinion. Say God condones murder. It’s in the 10 commandments. Throw out some scripture if you have to. But put you’re lame “God is pro-life” sign away. Please?

Here in The Bean Blog household we are on the countdown to Halloween. I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween. Don’t get me wrong. As a child I enjoyed trick-or-treating and eating the candy afterwards. But then it became a chore. I feel like I’ve been trick-or-treating every year of my life. By the time I was old enough to have outgrown it I had a little brother and then a little sister to take around the neighborhood. And then shortly after I graduated and moved out I had my own child to take trick-or-treating. So it’s gotten to be old. [Plus people always give out chocolate on Halloween and I don't like chocolate. ]

I’m also not fond of horror flicks and ghost stories. So that part of Halloween never interested me. I’ve never been a Freddie or Jason fan. I never dressed as a witch or a goblin. I prefer something a little more sweet like the year I was Marilyn Monroe or the year Lee and I were a King and a Queen.

And it just seems odd that a Celtic holiday about the ghosts of the dead returning to Earth the night before the new year has now turned in to kids dressing in clown costumes or, even worse, slutty cheerleaders while begging for candy. When did all that happen?

But we have kids and they LOVE Halloween. They love decorating. They love going to the pumpkin patch. They love carving pumpkins. They love dressing up in costumes. They love trick-or-treating [even if it's snowing out and snot is smeared down our cheeks from our runny noses]. So I try to be a good sport about it. Even when the kids are whining or fighting with each other because it’s an hour past bed time, their adrenaline is on overdrive and their bellies hurt from so much sugar.

On Monday we found out we had been boo’d. Lee found a bucket of candy on our doorstep with a note. The note said we needed to make our own candy buckets and put them on other neighbor’s doorsteps. We also put the “We’ve been Boo’d” sign on our door so everybody would know we’ve already had our turn.

The kids were so excited about making the baskets and putting them on the doors. That is until it was time to actually put the baskets on the doors. Then they all came down with a case of the stomach butterflies. They were scared they were going to be caught. But Lee helped them get all the baskets delivered.

And this morning, the first thing they did was look out the window to see if the baskets were gone. They were.

The kids have been asking me for weeks “when are we going to decorate for Halloween?” I wasn’t planning on decorating for Halloween. Isn’t it enough I have to buy costumes? [Don't even get me started on the debate about how I must not really love my children since I buy their costumes instead of making them because I might bite you.] But apparently that isn’t enough.

Luckily Lee must love our children more because he decorated for Halloween. First he made this spooky milk jug skull to fit over a candle holder that dangles in front of our kitchen window.

Then he made our very own graveyard in the front yard. He spray painted the center of the far one to make it look like it was an open grave waiting for the next body. It even says next on the tombstone. Spooky.

Remember how we went to the pumpkin patch last weekend and ran out of time to actually get pumpkins? Well we remedied that today with another trip to a different pumpkin patch. Between Caleb’s class field trip, last weeks visit to the pumpkin patch and today’s visit to another patch, I’m a little pumpkin patched out. But at least we finally have our pumpkins.

Spencer found a really big pumpkin. And he was determined to carry it himself. He’s so strong.

We left the house with the intention of buying five pumpkins; one for each kid. However, we ended up buying eight. Plus a jar of raspberry jam. We’re such suckers.

Now all we have to do is carve them. I’ll think we’ll wait until tomorrow for that.