Well, I'm finally off the
ragged 12-hour shifts and had a weekend to unwind, so slowly but
surely life is beginning to return to normal. Halloween has
also passed, unspectacular as it was.
If you didn't know, Kay is
a decoration freak...and come Halloween and Xmas, our house is
rigged like holiday town. This year we set up a black light
glow-in-the dark display in a 2nd floor window that consisted of a
ghoulish witch, a large skeleton and a couple of other creepy
things. Lit up with black lights at night it was pretty cool.
The whole front of the house was decorated with a ton of other
things (check out the pictures at right). Unfortunately, we
were one of the few homes on base who actually decorated - we
could only find about three other houses with anything more than a
pumpkin (not jack-o-lanterns) - which was really
disappointing.
The trick-or-treating
experience was similarly disappointing - apparently nobody around
here has the holiday spirit. Less than half of the houses on
base were handing out candy for the kids, including only three
houses in one whole neighborhood we went to. The kids were
really bummed to do all of that walking and come home with nothing
more than a small bucket of candy.
Despite the lack of
participation by others, Hina did have a great time running around
yelling "hello" and "trick or treat" to everyone she saw - she loved
it! And it was fun watching her as well.
We've started to break out
the Xmas decorations, and we're hoping to see a little more spirit
around here for the holidays. Maybe. We bought a bunch
of lights last year during the post-holiday 50%-75% discount sales,
so with no electric bills this year (electricity is free on base) we
plan to go all out. The decorating starts in two weeks, and
I've got a couple of four-day weekends scheduled to work on the
house! So much for "time off" from work...