Halloween!

One of the many of things that happened whilst I wasn’t blogging was mankind’s annual celebration of sugar, dressing oddly and going door-to-door to bother people: Halloween!

I never really got that excited about Halloween as a kid, but it’s a little bit better now that I have kids. They get excited about it and it’s one of those hokey, cheesey schmaltzy things that makes parenting great.

This year, The Boy was a pirate (specifically Jack Sparrow, but you couldn’t really tell) and The Girl was a fairy princess. Or something like that. All I know is that it involved a lot of pink and purple, some wings and a wand (which she insisted on using as a broom for some reason).

Like last year, we decided not to coordinate the kids’ costumes. Well, actually, we didn’t even really consider much of anything when picking them out. The Wife picked up The Boy’s costume last year on clearance (he wanted to be a Jedi, but didn’t care enough to put up a fight once he learned of his fate) and The Girl’s outfit was a gift that she likes wearing around the house. I guess we could have expended some energy looking for other costumes, but if the fish are going to hop into a barrel, you might as well shoot ‘em I suppose.

Neither The Wife nor I dressed up (because we’re both above the age of 12), but The Wife did bogart parts of The Girl’s costume.

Since Halloween was on a Saturday this year and we were starting to get a little burned out on our HOA’s Halloween shindig, we decided to head down to The Swamp and visit all of the old folks. We figured they’d enjoy seeing the kids in their costumes and it was time to go down there for a visit anyway. So headed down there Saturday morning.

After some last-minute costume adjustments and an unexplained ten-minute period when our children were running around like crazy people (during which The Girl also showed off her pro wrestling moves), they were ready to hit the road and take the giant swing around the southern half of Brazoria County to visit all of great-grandparents and grandparents. A couple of hours later, we were done. Fun was had by young and old alike.

It was pretty late at that point, so The Girl went to bed while I took The Boy out trick-or-treating. After about ten minutes, it became painfully clear that my in-laws’ neighborhood was extremely bad for trick-or-treating, so we headed out to the mall where The Boy was able to load up his bucket with sugary loot.  On the way back, we hit a couple of church “fall festivals” that were handing out candy to people in costumes (but not in a satanic Halloweenish way).  The last one was also serving hot dogs, so the boy enjoyed a nice non-pagan meal in a random church parking lot. Good times.

We even remembered to haul Halloween Bear down to LJ for his annual photo with The Boy. The Girl had her photo taken with it as well, despite some initial reluctance.

Candy corn at the bottom of the bag

• The Boy had to dress up for his after-school program, so we sent him in his costume from two years ago. As soon as The Girl saw him wearing it, she had to try it on too.
• While we were in LJ, The Boy conducted some spooky science experiments with his papa.
• The Girl was busy discovering things too – namely that fact that she likes flashlights and those swinging-tail pendulum Kit-Cat clocks.
• If you’re still hungry for more Halloween photos, here’s the whole set.