Halloween

We've been here just over a year now, so its interesting to see all the different holiday preparations all over again.  We started really with 4th July, then Labor day now Halloween is ramping up.  Already, a month before the big event people are decorating their homes and Halloween paraphernalia has been on sale for at least a month already.  Halloween is big here.  Growing up in England, for me, Guy Fawkes night was always bigger, but in NI and Ireland Halloween has been quite the event the last few years, especially in Derry!  But I think we are all being subjected to the influence of our transatlantic cousins and now we are seeing more and more Halloween celebrations over in the UK.  Here, they have the Thanksgiving/Fall celebrations, and the decorations are subtly different, still plenty of orange and brown/black colours but the Thanksgiving decorations involve turkeys and scarecrows; Halloween is more witches and goolies and ghosts.  The two older boys will both have been on visits to pumpkin farms by the end of today, and all over the place are 'fake' pumpkin patches, that will no doubt turn into Christmas tree farms once Halloween is over.

Eoin came home yesterday from a trip with the scouts, laden with his own enormous pumpkin (eek, what am I going to do with it - quick, need a recipe for pumpkin pie), and tales of hay rides and pumpkin shooting.  When asked what he shot the pumpkin with the said 'a pumpkin gun of course', yes of course, silly me.  I expect Finn to come home from school today with another, hopefully smaller pumpkin after his class trip, but these are things they would definitely not get to do a home.  Subtle differences.  At home the weather is very autumny, rainy and windy - here it is cooler but pleasant and sunny, still wearing short sleeves most of the time and summer pjs still.