I feel like I’ve been playing catch up. The first week of November, actually, beginning early in the morning on October 30th, we, along with most of the state of Maine, lost power due to an unexpected rain and wind storm. We were out from early Monday morning until Friday afternoon – 5 days.
Now for all of you who live in cities, you may not understand what having no power means. For those of us here in rural places it means no running water. We have a well and we need power to run the well pump that brings water from the well into our house. No power means no turning on the faucet, no flushing toilets, no filling water buckets for goats. It’s a pretty big deal. I can live without lights but we rely on a source for water. Fortunately, a friend of ours has a generator they weren’t using, so they loaned it to us and we were able to get the water running (and the toilets flushing) after only a day.
But five days! I know it’s nothing compared to what a lot of people have had to deal with after recent hurricanes, so please don’t think I’m complaining. I’m grateful to all the linemen (and women) who worked so hard to restore power to our state. Since then, though, I feel like I’ve been behind on everything. We lost a week of doing laundry and regular chores, working on the kitchen and a sorting and purging project I’ve been working on (I’ll tell you more about that later).
So, yes, it’s mid-November, but I didn’t have a chance to share our Halloween costumes and pumpkin carving, so let’s pretend it’s November 1st, okay?
We were late with carving pumpkins and finally carved out time (sorry, bad pun) to do it together the last weekend of October. The kids all had a lot of fun, though Sophie thought scooping out the “pumpkin guts” was pretty gross at first. Husband helped the Littles with a lot of the cutting, Zach decided to attempt to carve with his sword (though he did end up going back to a regular knife for much of the work, and Maddie worked and worked and worked to get her’s just right (the Cheshire Cat pumpkin). It was late in the season, but it was so fun to be able to do it together. Also, here’s a hint for you if you don’t know it – use a drill to make pilot holes in the pumpkin before carving with a knife. It makes it a LOT easier!
Our costumes this year were a lot simpler than we’ve done in the past, though Emma and Sophie’s still took some time for me to make. Silas dressed as King Arthur, wearing a costume he was given for his birthday (my children love to play dress up), Emma was Pippi Longstocking. I made her dress, apron and hat, all with the intent that they can be used for regular wear after Halloween was over. Sophie was Mulan and was the hardest to make because I didn’t have any pattern to use. Maddie decided to be Cri-Kee – the cricket friend of Mulan. She looked pretty cute! Zach had to work, but joined us during our trick or treating dressed as a pirate.