Fright night

With TallGirl better, a few items fell off my to-do list - mainly cleaning the fish tank. Helpfully (hmmm) while doing this task TallGirl also took care of another item: washing the living room floor. Though I'm not sure I would have chosen water fish had peed in for the job...

Despite everyone's best efforts at derailing the process, most of the jobs I needed to get done were done and at lunch time most of our friends arrived from the airport and the mini-holiday could begin. Long lunch outside, in the unbelievably hot weather (the thermometer said 32C but that can't be right) culminating in some better-late-than-never Halloween preparation and then the trick or treating itself. All the kids in our little group of houses just gang up and run around to each other's houses, so it's fairly low stress even for the parents of the younger kids. My little camera doesn't cope well with anything out of the ordinary (or perhaps more accurately I haven't learned how it works yet) but this red-eye shot of the front door is appropriately spooky I think.

Later, with the kids finally chased off to bed, the final member of the gang arrived. As by then we were around the campfire and well ahead of him in terms of liquid refreshment, I'm not sure we even offered him any food. An early hours game of ping pong outside the kids' rooms was probably equally impolite...