Halloween Plus a Bonus

Here's the bonus! I never had a chance to blog about Mary's visit to the White House Gardens. One of her friends from Stanford works at the White House and got a couple of tickets to a White House garden tour. On a beautiful Sunday morning in October, Mary and her friend got to walk around the Rose Garden, the vegetable garden, and whatever else is back there. She really enjoyed it.

And then there was Halloween. As you can see, Mary and Peter got into the spirit. Mary is dressed as Wednesday Addams (from the Addams Family) and Peter is . . . . . Carl Sagan. (Don't ask me what inspired him.) Their costumes are great and . . . . .

so is Jessa's! She and Ana went as one of everybody's favorite Emoji—the dancing bunny girls!

Meanwhile, John and Troy took Sirius on a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods. Here's the traveling dog, all ready for adventure.

The city dog got a taste of the country.

Meanwhile here at home we gave out Tootsie Rolls for Halloween. This is our third Halloween in St. Louis. We basically weren't at home for our first two Halloweens. This year we were home and I dressed up in a costume and had Halloween music playing in the entry way. What I'm trying to say is that this was our first "real" Halloween here. So thank goodness that earlier in the day I was talking to some locals who clued me in on a St. Louis tradition. Turns out that around here it's a custom for the kids to arrive at the door with a joke to tell in exchange for their treat. I had no idea! So the first group of kids knocks and I open the door and this cute little girl in the front has this huge smile on her face and she blurts out, "I got a joke!!" So she told her joke and I kind of figured maybe that would cover the entire group. But no! Each and every kid told his/her joke. And from then on, and I am not kidding, every single kid had a joke, save for two. I'd answer the door and ask, "Who's got the best joke?" and they'd all raise their hands and try to be the first one. It was really cute. The only downside was that we didn't have quite enough joke tellers to take all of our candy—I bought 150 Tootsie Rolls, and we didn't get 150 trick-or-treaters. Yikes—we've got to get rid of this candy before we eat it all!!