Back in Time

Here's one of some of my siblings taken in 1963.

Thanks Mom!

My mom emailed me this old photo of my brother Joe. Crafty mom made the pumpkin costume.

Happy Halloween!

From the top: The Brainiac and The Athlete dressed as Sarah Palin and a gangsta, My nephew The Prince in his lion costume and my Chiropractor's dog Bumbles dressed as a bumble bee.

Happy Halloween! Today I'm going to share some of my favorite Halloween photos. Please feel free to email me yours if you want them posted here. Then take the Halloween quiz I've posted to find out your Halloween I.Q.

Immigrants from which country brought Halloween to the United States?

	Ireland
	Scotland
	Italy
	Russia

Halloween is also called all of the following except...

	All Hallows Eve
	All Saints' Eve
	Hallowed End
	Samhain
	Spirit Day

Before pumpkins, Europeans originally carved...

	Turnips or rutabagas
	Green cabbage heads
	Watermelons
	Apples

Where does the movie Halloween take place?

	Haddonfield, Illinois
	New York City, New York
	Reno, Nevada
	Austin, Texas

In 2007, the top costume for children in the U.S. was...

	Spider-Man
	Witch
	Princess
	Bride
	The correct answers are: Ireland, Spirit Day, turnips and ruatabegas, Haddonfield, Ill. and princess.

TRADITION!

These are the gravestones the Brainiac made with her dad when she was nine years old. They cut them out of wood and used a burning tool to write the messages, which I dreamed up.

Every year since then we make a little graveyard on either side of the walkway to the house to scare the trick-or-treaters.

Last year I had to ask a neighbor kid to put up the graveyard with me. The Athlete was too busy and The Brainiac was clearly not interested.

This year it was just The Entrepreneur out there with me, pounding the stakes into the ground and hanging the bats and cobwebs.

Part of me wanted to avoid the dangerous climb up the ladder to the crawl space over the garage where the tombstones live the rest of the year. But Halloween would feel kind of wrong without them.

That's how it is with traditions. Pretty soon you are doing them because it feels weird not to.

I have a little prediction that one day those tombstones will be like the cookie jar that my dad got his Oreos out of every night after dinner. They will be fought over by the very children who now think they are a little bit silly.

How smart that there are four of them. One for each kid to carry on the tradition.