Pirate booty

For the past few years, we've approached Halloween with a combination of enthusiasm and trepidation. It's Meh's favorite holiday, so the house always gets an excellent dose of decorating (my favorite little touch this year was that she added felt horns, glasses, and a witches hat to our illustrated portraits), and this year Z helped hang a bunch of ghosts outside. He then proceeded to happily point out the 'looooots of ghosts in the tree' every day while waiting for the bus, super cute. The trepidation comes on the actual trick-or-treating evening, where for the past few years we've actually made decent progress, from porch meltdown to driveway meltdown to successful afternoon event but failed/unoccupied house abort.

This year unfortunately Meh had to work on her favorite holiday; she did on the plus side put together a fabulous costume of a character from an excellent series of books currently making the rounds -- apparently her injury makeup was real enough that a few coworkers and patrons were checking to make sure she was alright! I planned ahead a bit by asking a few neighbors if they'd be home on the early side so I could bring the boys down before their (heh) witching hour, and by talking to the boys about trick or treating and costumes and such beforehand. Mima and Papa also came over to assist with the trick-or-treating, along with "Lola in a costume", as both boys pointed out repeatedly as she wagged around the house in her nifty Woodstock outfit.

Six o'clock rolled around and I got Z into his pirate costume; he was very happy about it and checked himself out in the mirror. On the other hand, O was having none of the costuming -- though he was enamored of the big felt candy bag. We then headed out, and actually had a pretty successful evening of trick-or-treating! Z did a great job knocking on doors (though usually he then transitioned to trying to open them), saying trick-or-treat, picking out a piece of candy, and saying thank you. Here's a fairly representative instance:

Even O got into the act of picking out bags and boxes of sugariness ("a yellow one!"), and dutifully held onto (hoarded?) the candy bag. We got through probably close to a dozen houses before O and Z were ready to head home -- but overall a huge success. And enormous thanks to mima and papa for helping me wrangle the boys on our evening outing and first wholly successful trick-or-treat!