Bust out the orbs

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

This weekend is the start of a big three weeks of competition in my house -- but the competitions aren't exactly athletic related.

The Halloween showdown started last night, actually, with our family's annual "Orb and Ale Party." Each year, about 20 of our friends show up at our house, and we lay tarps down in the living room floor. The idea is for everyone to bring an orb to carve and some ale to drink -- or some soda, for those who wish. We make an evening out of it, but by the end of the night, bragging rights become as valuable as a Super Bowl trophy.

The event is very family-friendly -- the kids enjoy running around and getting messy as much as the adults enjoy the challenge of carving the most intricate pumpkins imaginable.

At the end of the night, all the pumpkins are lined up and voted on, with the winner taking home nothing more than being known as the best pumpkin carver among a very small group of people in Alaska, a title every carver secretly covets.

Then, two weeks later, my sister hosts a Halloween party each year. The costumes have gotten more and more elaborate, as everybody tries to out-do everybody else. This year, when I told her I was keeping my costume under wraps until the day of the party, I was promptly uninvited.

The two events are fun, which is the most important thing.

But in the overall scheme of things, they really start to get the holiday season rolling.

It may be hard to believe, but it's only a few weeks after Halloween that Thanksgiving rolls around, and then, as everyone knows, Christmas is just a month away, with New Year's just a week later.

By filling the calendar with fun get-togethers, you can breeze right through winter and not even know it was here. By the time things start calming down, come January, you have the NFL playoffs and then the Super Bowl, which leads into February.

I'm not going to rub it in anybody's face, but in February, I'm off to Hawaii for two weeks, coming back just in time for the Iditarod in early March. And then guess what -- it's almost time to drag out the trout rods once again.

To summarize -- grab your pumpkin, start carving and get ready for Halloween, because before you know it, it'll be spring. It's that simple.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. One year, he viewed it as the "Ale and Then Much, Much Later The Orb Party," and his carving ended in disaster.