Dear Aunt Debbie,

I'm thinking about you today and all the good times we had making costumes, dressing up, and trick-or-treating with our cousins.  And for some reason I remember you dressing up right along with us kids.  Or am I mixing up Halloween with your famous birthday clown appearances?

At any rate, in preparation for a Halloween party, we spent the afternoon working on our costumes.  I had decided to be fun—for once—and dress up myself.  There was a big bag of balloons in my room just waiting to be turned into a bunch of grapes!  Amabel agreed to help by wearing my old purple sweatshirt while I stitched on balloons.  Well, then you can pretty much guess what happened. . .  After we finished, the costume looked a whole lot cuter on her than it did on me!  



We then started on Ellen's ghost costume and I was working on the fit of her hood and eye holes when I started to laugh out loud, watching the two girls bumble about together.  "Who are you laughing at, Mama," Amabel said, "Me or Ellen?"  

"Both of you!" I replied, "and Papa too!"  (Because he was down in the basement working on a secret costume that he refused to tell us about!)  And then I convinced the girls to go outside for a quick photo by saying "Aunt Debbie would love to see a scary ghost and a huge bunch of grapes!" 



Now I've got to pull something together for myself (because I don't think I can squeeze into Amabel's nurse costume).  Any ideas?!