HALLOWEEN!

So I'm finally posting my Halloween blog (it's only a week later, not too bad).

A couple days before Halloween Joshua, his nephew Andrew, and I carved jack-o-lanterns.

Mine's obviously the cat, Andrew's the guitar, and Joshua's the evil grin.

Notice the green beads for eyes on mine

For Halloween, Joshua and I went to Colonial Williamsburg.

We dressed up as a redcoat (British soldier) and a rebel maiden (American).

We got to Williamsburg around 4:30 in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day of Autumn leaves with surprisingly pleasant weather.

First we went to Everything Williamsburg where Joshua bought both him and I tricorner hats. Then we went to the candy store (him and I are such sugar-holics) and as suspected, the Halloween candy was all marked down to around half price. So we bought some.  Then we went to buy tickets for a ghost walk. The one we originally wanted to go on was sold out but the lady working there told us about Tavern Ghost Walks which are run by Shield's Tavern (that place is fun). So Joshua bought us tickets to that one which started at 7pm. We wandered around the area for awhile until then.

Here we are at Shield's Tavern before the ghost walk began. We had walked up on the last story of another walk. The story was a lady named Faith that works at Shield's Tavern was preparing for hurricane Isabel. The first story of the building has functioning shutters so they just close those to prepare for the storm. However, upstairs there aren't shutters so they move all of the furniture to the middle of the room and put all of the antiques and breakables under the table. Sometime among her being nearly done with this she see a window open. Odd yes, but she just goes and closes it. Then she goes downstairs since she's done with her task upstairs. Before she gets downstairs she hears the window open. She goes back up and sure enough it's open again. She closes it but this time just stands a few feet back, arms folded, and watches that window for a few minutes. Low and behold it opens itself right before her eyes. Rather than being scared, she goes downstairs but returns with a nail and hammer. She nails the window shut in the corner, watches it for awhile, and yes, it actually stayed closed. The lady telling the story then says, "And if you go upstairs you can still see the nail hole even though it's been painting over." So Joshua and I want to go see it. When we go over to Shield's Tavern the guy says it's closed. Joshua then says, "We want to see the hole!" The guy then says, "Come in," walks us upstairs, and points it out to us. Indeed it was there. When we returned outside a lady was sitting there and asked us, "Did you see the hole?" We told her we did. Then she asked us to retell the story with it since she didn't hear it. She was nice so I asked her take a picture of Joshua and I in front of Shield's Tavern.

The ghost walk was a lot of fun! We had an incredible tour guide with a great sense of humor. He took us to several different buildings in Colonial Williamsburg and told us stories about employees and tourists having experiences with ghosts (incidences like the story above). He kept joking that if we were all really good he take us to the gardens to wait for the great pumpkin. The funny thing is at the end of the tour he asked, "Now do any of you want to wait for the great pumpkin in the gardens with me?" Right then two dogs one of the fellow tourists brought barked with joy, LOL! They were so good and quiet through the entire hour but perfect timing, they barked "Yes" to his question. We all but up laughing from that.

After the tour, we were hungry. From the last time we went to Colonial Williamsburg we noticed a restaurant called "Fat Canary." We find the name funny so we wanted to eat there. However, it's a pricey fancy place with weird food. With me being allergic to onions and garlic, looking over the menu posted outside I wasn't finding anything appealing. We walked over to another restaurant The Trellis to take a look at their menu. You wouldn't believe it but sitting at the door of the restaurant was a black cat on Halloween night. Knowing me, I called him over and of course he came to get petted.

After petting the cat "Trellis" as Joshua named him, I looked at the posted menu and took notice of the desserts. Then I mentioned, "Wait. I bet the Fat Canary has a dessert menu. Maybe we could just get dessert there." We went inside, talked to the hostess, she handed us a dessert menu, and informed us that we could sit at the bar and order dessert. So we did. We got the fanciest chocolate cake I've ever seen. It's called "The Desserter" incase any of you want to go an try it yourself. It looked like one of those fancy artwork desserts you see on the Travel Channel or Food Network. It was a slice of cake walled in with three sheets of chocolate with hazel nuts, two triangular cookies arched from the top of the cake, and then it had chocolate drizzled all over it and the plate. Not only was it indulgently delicious but it was also surprisingly affordable. It was a little less than $7, which you know you spend around that ordering chocolate cake at TGIFriday's or Ruby Tuesday. So we had our dessert first.

After that, we went back to the Randolph House, the most haunted building in Colonial Williamsburg (perhaps all Williamsburg). We caught a tour getting their story there (similar stories but some insignificant details differed). While the group were all listening to their guides, we were listening for our own evidence of that house. Well, to a small extent we got it. First we heard some leaves crinkling, but it was just the wind, at least until we heard what sounded like a foot step over where there weren't any people and the wind was still. (Let me point out that the house was completely empty and security system turned on.) As we were standing there we heard a floor board creek from within the house as if someone were walking in there..... But that's all we got. Nothing scarier than that.

Once we were done snooping around the Randolph house, we walked back to the car, and left Colonial Williamsburg. We went to TGIFriday's for dinner and ordered our favorite fried mac & cheese. After that, we went back to his house, ate the candy we bought (plus some of the left over trick-or-treat candy the Fulghum's had bought) while watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," and Disney's, "Haunted Mansion." It was the best Halloween I've ever had!