Today, I am thankful for...

• Three pumpkin pies baking in the oven.
• My husband and son calling me downstairs so I don't miss my favorite balloons in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• My mother still visiting from West Virginia.
• My husband's relatives cooking the Thanksgiving meal.

More good books for children

Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex. With its "...skull and a shoe and a pot full of goo. And a hairy old werewolf who was hollering Boo" this petrifying parody of Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon is sure to make any 6-year-old want to scream, "Goodnight monsters everywhere."

Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel. This book holds two stories that make my son giggle hard enough to fall off the couch. In "Strange Bumps," Owl gets scared of the two bumps that are under the covers at the foot of his bed. And in "Upstairs and Downstairs," Owl comically tries to be both places at once.

DK's Jewish Holidays Cookbook has great traditional recipes, like turkey kreplach and savory cheese sufganiyot, and non-traditional recipes, like matzoh brei and Persian lental salad. And it's designed to get children helping out and cooking in the kitchen.

Turning six

Grandma Edna and K'NEX

It's a banner day when Grandma Edna arrives from West Virginia and you get to open your birthday present, a 20 model set of K'NEX dinosaurs from Uncle Mike, three days early.

Carving the pumpkin

My brave knight

On the drive back from an early trick-or-treat stop at Grandma Diane's house, my son and I discussed strategy for the evening. Should we hit a couple of blocks in our neighborhood? Hit a block in Uncle Thom's neighborhood then ours, like last year? Or go somewhere new?

He opted for new. After hanging the balloon ghost he made with Grandpa Cook on our front porch, we headed to a nearby street known for its chocolate and scary decorations.

Our first stop was a friend's house along the way, then nearly door-to-door in the first block on the chosen street.

Things were going smoothly until we reached the haunted graveyard where a girl holding a plastic machete and severed head invited him in. "I don't want to go there, Mom," he said. We hit the next house then crossed the street to where two costumed girls sat on a porch handing out candy. He kept glancing back at the graveyard.

Let's take another look, I suggested, misinterpreting his glances. This time a witch mixing potions and a hideous clown beckoned. "Mom, I want to go home now," he said. I encouraged him to stop at a couple of houses on the way. But no amount of coaxing could change his mind.

Once we hit our block he was confident again, skipping up to doors of neighbors that he knows. He joked with the couple across the street about the bloody hand in their mailbox being that of our mailman and laughed at a mechanical spider that dropped down when he stepped onto another neighbor's porch.

Lost in the corn maze

The spur-of-the moment call came from my sister-in-law: "Do you want to meet me and the twins up at Engwall's corn maze?"

I conferred with my son who had been on a field trip there with his kindergarten class four days earlier. He was excited at the prospect of going back into the maze and, especially, leading his younger cousins through it.

The weather was sunny and crisp -- a perfect fall day. We arrived, barely on time. My sister-in-law got "bridged" by two ships, one out-going, one in-going. By the time they arrived, my son had checked out the Halloween garden decorations and visited with a former preschool buddy who had moved away.

He eagerly ran to show his younger cousins how to climb up and over the lookout tower and the entrance to the maze. Once inside, total chaos reigned. His cousins wouldn't follow him, choosing to go in divergent directions. His preschool friend joined the crowd. No one, save an occasional adult, followed the paths.

Somehow, we found all the letters in the maze that solved a scramble puzzel but one. It says, "Lost in the corn maze," my son informed us. Good thing he had been there before.