The last two weeks have flown by. Halloween was a hoot and I was able to make it home from work on time to prepare for the onslaught while Jo and the Kids got into the trick or treating action. Jasmine looked awesome with a green face and a wart on her nose, it’s a pity she didn’t have a costume :-). Abbie kitted out as a wicked purple pirate and Cam was making bad-guys shake in their boots as mini-Batman. With bags in hand, and Jo pulling the trusty wagon behind they set off at about 6pm just after the sun had set. Our pumpkins looked the part, especially the spooky tree design that Jo had chosen, I was pretty proud of my execution on that one. Jo had also set up a gravestone out the front complete with a green blow-up alien and combined with our cardboard skeleton we were good-to-go. Some people go all out, even weeks before the big night we had started to see graves dug in peoples front lawns, witches attached to the front of cars (as if they had been run over, looks hilarious!), scarecrows, heaps of carved pumpkins and lots of other freaky stuff... imagine the streets in Melbourne that go nuts with Christmas decorations and then convert it to a Halloween theme and you’ve got the idea.
Jo had set me up with a huge bowl of candy (ok, they’re lollies but I’m getting into the spirit) and I dealt with a steady stream of visitors all costumed up and ready to scare, I think around 30-40 groups of kids helped me offload the contents of the candy bowl. I did suggest to a few that I’d prefer a trick to a treat, just to see what they’d do, but most looked at me blankly and held out their hands for goodies so I guess that the trick part of Halloween is pretty much dead.
After being out for about an hour Jo returned with a tired Cam and a whole wagon filled to overflowing with sugar and starch, outstanding! The girls were keen to keep going so Cam stayed and helped me man the door for another 45 minutes or so and by around 8pm the stream of kids had pretty much stopped. On their return home all the loot was piled up in the lounge and the kids chowed down, we gave them a time limit though and they gladly trudged off to bed completely exhausted before 9pm. A pretty successful night all round and I think that it lived up to the kids expectations.
Last weekend we were invited to visit some new friends we had made while staying at a hotel just prior to moving into our home. Dan and Joyce Ballesty, and their tribe of Erin, Elise, Liam and Declan, are from Wattsburg Pennsylvania, near the town of Erie in the USA. We had a great time when we first met, staying up late and talking each others ears off. After successfully getting home from work just before the kids at around 3:15 we planned to set off straight away so avoid the weekend traffic which was expected to be harsh due to the unseasonably good weather. And it all would have worked out if I had been able to find my passport! After some frantic searching it turned up tucked in the back of the glove box in the car, man I was sweating for a while there. The drive to Wattsburg would take us past Niagara Falls, over the Peace Bridge into the US, through Buffalo (the capital of New York state) and then down Interstate 90 to Erie. A three hour drive turned into 4 due to a one hour stop at US immigration which was a bit of a drag, but now we have 3 month visa’s so we can slip straight through next time.
We had a great relaxing weekend with the Ballesty’s who spoiled us rotten and we hope we can return the favour soon. The weather was really mild on Saturday so we mostly spent it outside where I showed Declan how to kick a footy aussie-style and Dan wound up his arm with some well aimed flat passes NFL-style. We went for a walk at the local school, which has 3 campus’ for elementary, junior high and senior high, were Dan, Dec and I kicked an NFL footy around on the grid-iron field (complete with stands and lights, quite a setup). We also had a great stroll through the woods where the amber leaves had pretty much all fallen and laid out an incredible carpet. Needless to say a fair few leaves where picked up and thrown :-). The country side there is beautiful with rolling, green hills and small farms compete with those typical North American style barns and silos, magic stuff. In some ways it reminded me of the rolling hills of Silvan and Seville back home. Joyce and Dan told us that there is a pretty large Amish population in Pennsylvania and we hope to be able to get back there soon to see how these people live in the 21st century as though it was the 18th.
Sadly after a rainy Sunday we had to head home, but not until after Joyce and Dan stuffed us with pancakes, eggs, breakfast sausage (mmmmm sausage) and crispy bacon, luckily a heart attack forced me to lie down afterwards, truely awesome :-). The trip home was pretty easy and as is usually the case seemed to pass a lot faster than the outbound journey. Of course immigration at the Canadian border was a snap, the guy asked me a couple of questions and didn’t even open our passports. One thing that is interesting is the switch between Metric (Canada) and Imperial (US) measurements, the car has a button your push to switch when you go over the border and the speedo changes to suit, so if your going 100kph and hit the button to go to mph the needle just drops to indicate 60 and a dash light tells you that its now showing mph. Almost got picked up by a New York state cop for speeding... doing about 72mph in the 65 zone on the interstate... almost.
No comments:
Post a Comment