On Friday, Evie and I tried our most ambitious baking experiment yet: a pumpkin roll.

Pumpkin roll is easily in my top 2 deserts all time. I could probably eat one by myself, in a sitting, if I had to. But this is the first time I ever tried to make one. People kind of talk it up like it is hard, so I was a little worried, but honestly it wasn’t really that much trouble. And it was deeeelicious (even though half of it was eaten by a bunch of barbarians).

On Saturday we hit up the Halloween thing at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where we are members. It was a cold, wet, miserable day like you wouldn’t believe. The kind of day where nobody should be outside, everyone should be inside, under blankets, with something warm to drink. So traipsing around the zoo wasn’t really the greatest idea. Especially since Evie couldn’t wear her coat, because that would have ruined her awesome bat costume. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but most of the indoor enclosures were closed for the day, meaning we couldn’t get out of the elements. Luckily the bat enclosure wasn’t closed, so we were able to get some pictures of Evie in her bat costume looking at the actual bats. We did not stick around for the music or trick-or-treating, but Evie did ride on the carousel, so she was happy.

Finally, on Sunday we carved pumpkins. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that Evie requested that her pumpkin be crying, with tears running down its face. That being said, I am quite proud of the way hers turned out, very sad looking. Evie was a good model, fake crying for me whenever I needed it, to get the look right. She wanted my pumpkin to be angry / scary and Sara’s to be happy. She helped do hers, but got bored long before everything was done. That’s okay, I had fun doing it. Plus I have a bunch of roasted pumpkin seeds to eat now!

One last thing to mention about the weekend, I opened my first jar of pickles! They were very good. If I had been given that jar by my grandma, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But, since I was the one actually making them, I was maybe a little over critical of them. They were a little vinegary and a little salty. Still, all in all, not too shabby for my first time out!