Week O' Halloween

When did Halloween become more than a week long of events? We had several Halloween related events last week, so he had fun all week long…a Halloween themed piano class on Monday, a full day of parties and games on wed at school, trick or treating on Thursday, a Halloween costume birthday party on Saturday, and carving a pumpkin and running around in costumes with Hayden while we helped Becky and Jason move to NC (boo!) on Sunday. Actually, we're not officially done with the pumpkin carving either, so it could be more than a week's worth of adventures.

For some reason, the centre county region declares (somewhat arbitrarily?) what day will be designated trick or treat day. Sometimes it is actually on Halloween and sometimes it isn’t. this year, it was on Thursday night and then there was a big costume parade downtown on Halloween night which we didn’t go to.

So, trick or treating was actually on Thursday night last week 5:30 – 8:30. We had been making a lego costume for noah over the past few weekends which was actually quite the fun project for all of us…painting, cutting, gluing and taping. we were trying to get good pictures, but between playing around with camera settings (see figure 1 below) and getting anxious by watching the other trick or treat-ers go by (see figure 2 below), these are the best shots we could get of our (emphatically insisted upon) multicolored lego.

Fig 1: multicolored lego (aka noah mr bugaboo). please note the orange on both sides (unseen). also please note the black smudge on face. and lastly note the HUGE hit of red gloves, specially purchased at target.

Fig 2: multicolored lego in front of our house. please note that there are trick-or-treaters going by

So we had an early dinner and then got ready. We went trick or treating down to our friend rob’s house and back (maybe 10 houses) while we were gone, we left a bowl of candy out front. Noah wasn’t quite sure what to think about trick or treating and was kinda shy about saying trick or treat. Plus, the lego box was a little too big for him to comfortably grab a piece of candy from a basket and then put it into his bucket. Plus, he had trouble navigating steps and holes in the grass (we cut through some yards since driveways are long around our place) but he nevertheless had a good time and it was hard to convince him to head back home.

We had run out of candy by the time we got back. there’s no way all the kids abided by the “please take 2” sign that we left out. But, I do think he had more fun handing out the candy and seeing everyone’s costumes. We ran out of candy about 7:45 despite buying probably 300 pieces of candy. That all worked out ok though since he had had a few pieces by that point and it was time to wind down. I think we all enjoyed putting the costume together more than anything else though.

on Sunday we did carve (most of) a pumpkin because noah was quite excited about it actually being Halloween but with no fun "official" Halloween events. So, pumpkin carving which was a big hit too. after carving, we met our new neighbors too. I made an apple pie and we took it over. They’re a couple with grown children and a friendly, old (ie nonjumping) dog who seemed very nice. Funny how we brought them an apple pie and we left with a baggie full of cookies.

other halloween events last week were not photographed by us but also consisted of reusing an old dragon costume. and just to refresh your memory on that...