the day my tivo died: Dia De Los Muertos

Ahhh! The day after Halloween! I love it. I know I am going to get a lot of flack for this but I HATE Halloween. I hate picking the costumes (too much decision making), I hate picking the candy (what's on sale, what won't I eat all by myself before trick or treaters arrive), I hate the whole pumpkin thing (buying, lugging,carving) but most of all I hate the division of candy afterward ("she got more than me"," she stole my snickers" -" no i didn't" -"yes you did"). I also hate the fact that the minute they clear those Halloween shelves there are exactly 53 shopping days left until Christmas and they (the evil retail elves) don't waste one second of prime selling time. Please don't remind me Christmas is coming when my pumpkins are still out. Which reminds me. How lame am I? How totally lame of a STAY AT HOME MOM am I , that we forgot to carve our pumpkins this year. Did you hear me? I said WE FORGOT TO CARVE OUR PUMPKINS THIS YEAR!! They just sat there...uncarved...how sad. Now we don't even have roasted pumpkin seeds. I guess I could always buy them at Trader Joe's. And I guess we could always do them next week (as suggested by the girls), but I don't think so. Once I rip off that October calendar page it's time to add my "Christmas Playlist" to shuffle on the IPOD. I am officially in holiday mode. Any second now I will have my annual "where to have the holidays" fight with my brother and the season will be underway. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I would love to have SOMETHING, ANYTHING to actually look forward to other than a season finale (TV). So here we go. Here come the holidays, good or bad, like 'em or not, here they come. Just for reflection though, I thought I might share the few Halloween photos we did manage to get on that day.

(ps. Abbie changed costumes 3 times before the date, and had such a meltdown about her hair after school on Friday she made me trim her bangs in my bathroom with cuticle scissors before I sprayed it red. Rachel's props cost more than her dress. I BEGGED her to put Miss Alaska on her sash, wear glasses and carry an American Flag and go as Sarah Palin but to my dismay she said NO WAY! - she likes Obama. Oh and I think the Auto Focus feature on my camera may have ceased working because all of my pictures are really blurry, but maybe it's just the Xanax - J