Pumpkins and Halloween

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Why don't we get time off for Halloween? Thanksgiving is lame, political, at best based on a myth, and reinforced with lies. Thanksgiving, as a holiday, makes me sad. But I have a week off for Thanksgiving. So, I've learned to appreciate it as a time when I can visit family and not have to worry about school work. I do love visiting family.

But Halloween...

We buy/make costumes, we buy candy and toys. We pick out pumpkins and we carve them. We stuff little, cellophane bags with little toys and treats. We dress up and do makeup and hair. We decorate our yards and spend hours out wandering the neighborhood after dark (or at home, passing out those bags). Yet we don't get time off for this.

This year, it fell on a Saturday. I'd say that sounds like the best possible case.

We picked out our pumpkins at Nick's Garden Center, just like we did last year. We carved them the weekend before Halloween, which was maybe too early. Cub requested a transformer for his jack-o-lantern. It was a pretty huge hassle, but I managed to make something really cool. Then, a squirrel ate it.

We finally made it to Boo at the Zoo this year. We went the day of Halloween, and since that was a Saturday, it was pretty busy. Of course, like most events of this type, it was heavily sponsored by corporations. That didn't really bother the kids, though. They got a couple of pieces of logo-emblazoned garbage, but they also picked up a lot of candy. Interestingly, S was particularly excited about a pack of band-aids she got from a booth set up by in insurance provider. She got a blister on her toe, and used two of her band-aids that same day. Maybe she learned something about preparedness.

M didn't want to wear her costume because, as a zombie, her dress had a huge patch of fake blood... which was a little sticky. So, she skipped the costume for Boo at the Zoo, but wore it over regular clothes for our night-time, neighborhood trick-or-treat run. I think she was excited to be able to avoid the stickiness and the crazy makeup we used for zombie crawl.

This was the first Halloween for which the girls' daddy was in attendance. He dressed as a mad scientist. Papa dressed as grandma wolf (the wolf dressed up as grandma) and I was red riding hood. We had about 45 trick-or-treaters stop by our house. More than last year! Since we had toddlers, we came home a while before other kids were turning in for the night. So, the girls got to hand out treat bags (to their great excitement). I'm pretty sure we were the only house in the neighborhood who put treat bags together instead of just doling out candy from a bowl (or even straight from the bag).

I love Halloween.