It was the weekend of Halloween parties. We had a school party on Friday night, sponsored by the PTA and a Treat Street party in downtown Kailua on Saturday night. We even had a third one that we could have gone to on Sunday night, but we decided two was enough.
The Kailua party was well organized and we felt more at home at this party. They had live music, games for kids, food booths, and a costume parade. The parade was led by the founder of Famous Amos cookies (and Kailua resident), Wally Amos. He owns a local cookie shop in town called Chip N Cookie. Wally sold his company to Keebler and now focuses most of his energy on literacy and writing.
Waiting our turn at one of the games in Kailua
Tuesday Night
It's the night before Halloween (oooo, sounds like the beginning of a scarey story) and I finally bought a pumpkin today. Noah's been begging for one every day for the last few weeks. I tried to explain to him that in Hawaii you have to buy a pumpkin right before Halloween or it will go bad. After awhile it must have sunk in because he stopped asking. Either that or his mind was onto something else.
One of the stores in town was selling pumpkins for $.39/lb, which seemed like a decent price. By the time I got there they had three left. Two were in sad shape and the third was so heavy I couldn't pick it up. I went to another store and they had a ton of them. No wonder -- they were $.69/lb!! As I looked at the pumpkins I kept hearing Noah's little voice in my head saying, "Mom, can I have a big pumpkin? Mom, can I have a big pumpkin?" It was like a broken record. I knew I had to buy one, even at the ridiculous price.
So, I left the store with one, nicely round, mid-sized pumpkin. It set me back $9.17. I am guessing that same pumpkin would have been roughly half that price back in Idaho. I started to miss our Jack-Be-Little pumpkin patch that we grew in our garden last year.
I commented to Tom the other night how no one around here decorates their front door area (porch, step, whatever) for Halloween like we were used to seeing back home. You don't drive through a neighborhood and see a few pumpkins nicely arranged by the front door. You don't really see any Halloween decorations, either. Since it's so hot and humid here I can understand why they don't put the pumpkins by the front door. A few days later it could be an orange jello substance quivering in the corner. There's enough of a bug problem around here without inadvertently making a delicious pumpkin dinner to entice them.
The pumpkin is sitting on our kitchen counter, ready to be carved. The poor thing went from a nicely air-conditioned store to a warm house. I thought about putting it in the refrigerator, but that seemed silly to me. I couldn't imagine putting one in the fridge, especially since we don't have room for one anyway. I plan to carve it on Halloween afternoon. I hope it holds up when I go to cut it. I can just imagine trying to cut out an eye and the entire thing collapses into a pool of mush. I guess if that happens, I'll be making some pumpkin pies!
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