Before Life Got Weird, I Celebrated Halloween
I mentioned in a previous post that my parents came to visit me, for the holidays. OK, just one holiday, but Halloween is one of the coolest holidays ever so the parental visit during this time of year was very important. (Plus it was nice that they were around when Beirut came calling.)

Anyway, this Halloween with the parental unit (the first since 1996 btw), was a fun one. First off, mom and dad took me to Fairway to fill up my cupboards with tasty food (food that I will not really be eating because I don't have room in my luggage for it all). Afterwards I got the folks on the subway for a delicious meal at the Chip Shop. We went to SoHo so mom could do some birthday shopping at SoHo Patch. We then grabbed a quick bite of dessert at The Bakery. Then we rushed back home to have a quick bite to eat before heading to our Halloween festivities.

The beauty of living in NYC, is that I also live close to the Historic Hudson Valley that has charming Stars Hollow-esque festivals like "Blaze" an amazing jack-o-lantern festival that had been featured in some of Martha Stewart's media.

The festival contains a gazillion pumpkins, most of which have been carved to represent a piece of a whole sculpture, like the above mammoth skeleton.

So, I don't have a very good camera for nighttime shots. (I looked for a night feature on my camera, and it still alludes me.) These are more dinosaurs.

Hatching dinosaurs.

Ok, so it wasn't just dinosaurs. I kind of got tired of taking pictures when so many turned out blurry.

The house below is Van Cortland Manor. It looks kind of eery in this shot.

At the end of the tour o' lanterns, we learned the secret to this festival is that most of the pumpkins are not real. I am sorry to reveal this huge secret, but it's probably the only way anyone would want to recreate the spectacular year after year.

The last pumpkin exhibit was the gift shop (no surprise there), but we gave in to the subtle marketing and bought scone mix...that was packaged in Spokane, WA. How ironic that my parents flew all the way to NYC to purchase scone mix they could have gotten at home.

After the festival, my parents and I participated in a time-honored family tradition of getting lost on the way home. In the past, this tradition was observed only when looking for Christmas trees, but I am glad that our inability to read road signs showed up for Halloween.