And you and me will be whirlwinds of danger. we'll crash on our bikes and take candy from strangers...

Kimya Dawson shout out!

So this weekend was our Halloween party and an unseasonable snowstorm. (My spellchecker wanted to correct that to "an unreasonable snowstorm" and I'm not sure it's wrong.) It wasn't the biggest snowstorm we'd even seen, but the thing that made it dangerous was that many of the trees still had a lot of leaves and the compounded weight caused a lot of trouble.

We had been shopping the night before and it looked like we were going to get quite a few people, but as the snow accumulated and guests (quite reasonably) had to cancel, we found ourselves going from "How are we going to feed all these people?" to "What are we going to do with all this food?"

A couple of our friends live very close by and a couple were willing to brave the winter weather, so it wasn't a complete bust. Lily ran around and played superheroes with a friend's son. She said that I was the Joker. I don't think that was the best fit. I'm a paunchy, bearded man with glasses who happened to be wearing a Superman shirt.

The Joker? Bizarro, maybe.

They had to take off and Lily played "What were you thinking?" with the grownups. You get a question, say, name five things that are blue and you get points based on the number of people who have the same answer. For instance, if you said the sky, and 5 other people also gave that answer, each person would get six points for it. If you said the sea and only three other people agreed with you, you'd get four points.

Its kind of neat, because there are True or False questions. True or False, the Amazon is the longest river in the world? and it doesn't matter if you get the question right or wrong, only that you're in the majority. We had to make some accommodations for her, but she didn't do too badly.

The next day, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, and I asked Lily if she thought Mother Nature was mad at us. (She's not sure if Mother Nature is real or metaphorical.) She kind of shrugged and said, "No, it's just a cold Fall day."

For my birthday, I got some nice clothes from Jen, some blank nesting dolls from Lily and the Superman stuff I had worn over the weekend.

Blank nesting dolls. Seriously, how cool is this?!

Jen went as a pirate and Lily went as a fairy pirate princesses. I was Lily's "Candy Caddy". I kept offering to hold her candy, but she kept declining when I clarified that I'd be holding it IN MY TUMMY!

Pirate Booty

I was actually very proud of her. We went out with one of her little friends. Lily is completely fearless and very much into scary stuff, and her friend, like most little kids, was less so. Some of the houses were pretty intense, and her friend didn't want to approach, but Lily gently offered help, "It's not so scary. I can hold your hand," and then accepted that her friend still didn't want to do it. I'm really happy that she's kind enough to make the effort, and gracious enough not to force it.