Last year on Halloween, I wrote a post about how much Halloween brings out the holiday grinch in me. I've not been a fan of this holiday for quite some time, and usually on this night, Kirk and I will hunker down in our bedroom with a movie and popcorn, the porch light on our front porch decidedly turned off.

But this year is different in a way neither of us expected.

It began with three pumpkins -- two orange ones and a funny looking dark green one with a huge stump handle bursting out its top -- that Kirk brought home from a pumpkin patch on his way home from running errands around town last weekend. And then last night, he suggested we carve them while giving out candy to the neighborhood kids tonight.

"Could you get some candy when you make the grocery store run tomorrow?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, surprised.

It wasn't like Kirk to be into the candy and kids thing on Halloween night, but something seemed different in him somehow. More open. Excited, even.

In reflecting on this shift, I've come to think it has a lot to do with having discovered our village in recent months. Something in our life has shifted at a tectonic level, and we seem more open and available to participating in the world around us in a new way. We seem more rooted inside our life and more open to relationships.

I really like it.

Here's how that looked for us tonight, for example. While making dinner, we opened our front door and let the sounds of children laughing and parents chatting drift through the screen door. We carved a pumpkin and set it out to join the two other faceless ones on our front steps. We roasted pumpkin seeds (even though they promptly burned because I forgot I'd put them in the oven). And we kept a huge bowl of candy well within reach, greeting the young kids in their colorful costumes and trying to guess who they were pretending to be as we gave them each a handful.

And now, appropriately, we're watching Harry Potter.

It's been such a fun night, and I really didn't expect that at all.