What a great time to have The Great 2011 Halloween Backgammon Tournament And Graveyard Maggot Stew Surprise! We had the first snow of the season (though we did get some heavy wet snow fall that didn't stick on Thursday night) and it was a huge snowstorm.

We got through dinner and two of the movies before the power went off. Most went home, but Sue, Rick, and I went over to Linda's to watch the movie of the night, The Night of The Living Dead.

We ended up getting about 2 inches of really wet heavy snow. The power was on when we got back home, but we could hear the sound of the heavy snow falling off of the tree limbs onto the roof.

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Sue made up this interesting Halloween table center piece that got a lot of comments.

Sue racing to finish her pumpkin carving before me!

Food prep (and Corona beer drinking) started early.

We lit the pumpkins early to met off the snow....

You can see how wet the pumpkins are; the streaks on the picture is sleet coming down.

Tim arriving in the start of the snow storm.

But we're inside, warm, and ready to play some backgammon - we had actually been playing for awhile before our guests started arriving.

Eleanne had wanted to bring her daughter Mikaela with her to the party but the storm was so bad in her area that they decided they'd better not risk the drive over as it was getting really slippery. Sue had scrawled this onto the upstairs bathroom mirror for Mikaela.

Linda, Rick, Brian (unseen), and Tara arrive in mass.

Let's see how long Rick can stand walking around in this gear....

'REDRUM', ['murder'!]from the movie The Shining, which was the movie of the night, though the power went off just before I got it going so we ended up going over to Linda's to watch it.

A brief - very brief - halt in play to satisfy the photographer (Sue).

Tara and Brian over the board while one of the movies I was running all afternoon ground along in the background.

Rick and Linda go at it over the board.

Sue and Tim having at it.

Rick staying under cover....

Our pumpkins holding up in the storm, lighting the way for our guests.

Chris and Jim arrive with desert!

Time to eat!

The power went out about 8:00pm so we broke out some candles and lamps and sat and chatted for awhile until deciding that the night was over. We could see that the snow was not only coming down hard, but it was so heavy that we just knew that the power would be awhile coming back on. Actually, ours was only out for a few hours but this was one of the major storms we have had and literally tens of thousands of people lost their power for days.

Just Rick, Sue, and I went over to Linda's to watch the movie. She was lucky not to have lost power and we said that if our power was still out in the morning, we'd be back over to shower and warm up....