Halloween 2012

This year we let Marcus guide our costumes--we were Buzz Lightyear (formerly known around our house as "the green man"), Woody ("the cowboy"), Jessie ("the cowgirl"), and Rex ("the dinosaur"). We had a really fun Halloween, despite Samantha's antipathy to hats in specific and costumes in general.

A week or so before Halloween we chose our pumpkins from an area farm. I also started getting decorations and games planned for our party, including a large inflatable "cauldron" cooler that the kids could toss candy-corn-shaped bean bags into. What better thing to do when inflating a giant cauldron, though, besides put a baby in it?

The Saturday before Halloween we carved a pumpkin. First, Robert and Marcus researched faces online, while Samantha slept through this boring part. Then, we used the drill attachment I got Robert a year or two ago to hollow out the inside of the pumpkin, and finally we carved our face, at Marcus's direction.

We went to two parties before our own. First there was the potluck Halloween party at Marcus's old preschool, which recent "graduates" are invited back to. It was a bit challenging for Marcus; he hasn't seen most of these kids in four months, and now he sees them in costume! We heard a lot of, "Mommy, do I know those children?" as he scrutinized them.

Robert also took Marcus to the Pru Boo for the third year in a row, and they arrived home having had so much fun that little Buzz Lightyear was asleep on Robert's back.

Then it was time for our Halloween party. We had it on Sunday afternoon, 3:30-5:30, and we had twenty adults and fourteen kids. This was the day before Hurricane Sandy, and it was grey and cloudy but only mildly drizzly, so I sent the kids up onto the roofdeck for one of the games (a candy corn relay) anyway. Everyone got to run around, and no one seemed to mind the weather too much.

 

After they came back down, we had dinner, and then the bigger kids played with the little Legos in Marcus's room for awhile, and then we did what Robert called "the world's most compact trick-or-treating," with nine treat stations around the apartment, and kids filling the little treat bags they decorated when they'd arrived.

It was a lot of fun, even if Samantha absolutely refused to wear her costume for more than two minutes.

Present were:

a pair of deviled eggs (Miriam and Karen);

a funky/punky princess (Amalia);

Miss Havisham and Master Yoda (Marissa and Charlotte);

the Bloggess and Victor (Sarah and Sean);

a soccer player (Mulugeta, here trying on the Viking's helmet);

Lightning McQueen (G.);

a pirate family (Valentina, Israel, and Andrei);

Dexter, Medusa, and a monkey (Rik, Dee, and Max);

said Viking (Leonid);

a sailor (Howard); Princess Aurora (Alex); Kanga (Olivia); Weird Al (Carlos); a tiger (Alexandra); and Spiderman (Jayden).

Finally, on Halloween afternoon itself, we went over to the South End library first, where they were having a small party, and then to Titus Sparrow Park for their pre-trick-or-treat party. That was, as always, a madhouse, but a fun one, with free pizza and cider and pretzels, a kids' concert, a costume contest, and hundreds of kids and families milling around the playground and lawn. From there we trick-or-treated down Columbus Ave toward home, and then we called it a night.

 

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Created: 10/31/12. Last Modified: 10/31/12.