Halloween

As previously mentioned, this was the Year of the Lion (again) and the Year of the Sock Monkey (my choice).  As my last year of choosing, I totally give myself an A+ for cuteness.  The boys had a costume parade at school which, last year, was recognizable as a parade.  This year it was recognizable as a mob.  As predicted, our two animal zoo was extra terrifying… headless.

Nate spent the whole time hiding his hat behind his back.

One slight tangent regarding the costumes in Jake’s class…  Almost every day I get to have breakfast with JJ and several of his classmates (his whole class is almost entirely girls, Nate’s is the opposite).  In any case, these little girls almost all wear princess dresses to school every day.  Literally it’s breakfast with Cinderella, Ariel and Tinkerbell.  This week Tinkerbell changed it up and came in a brand new Hello Kitty tiara and head-to-toe coordinating outfit, including new glitter shoes.  The only way I could tell it was Halloween was that Mia was wearing a homemade rainbow costume.

When we got home that evening, we met the Pizza My Heart delivery man, the fifth member of our family.  Yes Fernando, that’s directed at you.  Then we spent an indeterminate amount of time searching for a shoe before we hit the streets with the early birds.  As expected of a second child, Nate was a natural.  He was marching up to the doors of strangers, followed by his excited but leery lion bodyguard.  Some magical trick-or-treat spell came over them and they both wore their headgear the entire time… it was truly miraculous.  Three doors down, Nate tried to take the proffered candy basket, twice.

Jake’s lion costume is flood-ready.  I don’t think we had that problem last year.

When we got home, I made my typical mistake of thinking we’d have less trick-or-treaters than usual because it’s a Wednesday and it’s threatening to rain.  I handed out small handfuls and then had to revert to the measly 1 fun-size piece per visitor.  I also had to keep a very close eye on Jakey.  If you come to our door, you totally want the extra generous, headless lion throwing candy into your bag.  When it came to the insanely cute, homemade garden gnome girl, I let it go.  But the teenager who told me he was “Nothing”?  Here’s some snack-size malt balls.  Next year, make an effort.

We passed out over 550 pieces of candy and had to turn our lights off early.  I’d like to give a shout out to the geniuses at Hershey’s and Nestle that added the new “96 pieces!” badge on the front of the bags this year.  I’m greatly appreciative that I no longer need to calculate which brands have the most pieces via the serving size times number of servings (Kit Kat, by the way).  I salute innovation in candy packaging.

While Jacob and I manned the door, James changed Nate out of his costume.  I turned around and he was wearing a diaper and a little Penn State t-shirt.  Really, James?  Fortunately, no one misinterpreted it as a costume in extremely poor taste.