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Halloween 2012

So we didn't get any pictures of kids in costumes this year.  I'll tell you why later, but first let's get to the costumes.

Eleanor wanted to be Harry Potter, or at least someone from that franchise.  She had some money saved up and asked if we could actually buy her costume---not my favorite thing to do, but for a Harry Potter robe, it actually makes a certain amount of financial sense.  She did not buy the wand (which lit up) or the broom or the tie or the white shirt, figuring that she could make something of her own.  She got a dowel from the hardware store and turned it into a wand and broom of her own.

The most troublesome part came when she insisted that she'd wear her rollerblades.  They don't really fit.  She can't go up and down hills or steps in them.  She's already broken her foot on the scooter, not to mention falling down and busting out several knees of her pants.  I was seriously running out of ideas for how to say, "This is a really bad idea," when she decided to ride her scooter instead.  She demonstrated to me that she could be safe (previously broken foot notwithstanding) and the effect with her robe and broom was really quite cool, so I relented.  It turned out not to be a problem: she forgot the scooter on Halloween.

When I asked Amanda what she wanted to be back in June, she said, "Revenge of the Candy Bar!"  She wanted to dress up as a man-eating candy bar with teeth, blood dripping from its mouth and firey red eyes.  Since she didn't waver (in our house, decisions have to be in by September 15, otherwise there are no guarantees) we made that costume.  She had a box about the width and depth of her body, so we painted it with some really nice enamel, wrote "Monster's chocolate" on the front and she added the mouth, eyes and blood.

Luke had asked to be Luke Skywalker.  I had already made him a Luke Skywalker costume when he was 2, so I was pretty sure I could do it again, no problem.  But when Amanda started trying on her monster chocolate bar costume, he wanted to be a chocolate bar too.  Since the other half of the box was the perfect size for Luke and Amanda said it was OK, we did that instead.  Much easier than sewing a new costume.  He didn't even need to paste a mouth and eyes on his costume since he got a set of purple fangs at a Halloween party and was going to use that.

We were getting all ready to go when Amanda slipped on a piece of paper on the floor (don't know how that got there...) and fell into our old telephone table.  All I saw was the blood right over her eye, so I yelled for Michael and he came down.  Great, I thought, a trip to urgent care on Halloween.  The other kids were all ready to go out, but we had to take care of trick-or-treaters and take Amanda to the doctor...  I was so panicked I wasn't thinking very well. (If I had been thinking, I would have taken Luke and Eleanor out and just given the candy to a neighbor to hand out, or even left it on the porch.  But I wasn't thinking, as I said.)

Enter our fantastic neighbors.  They knocked on the door right then, and when I asked if they could take out Eleanor and Luke, they said sure!  Their kids are about the same age, my kids had been wanting to go out with them anyway, so I could stay and give out candy while Michael took Amanda to the urgent care.  Thus Eleanor forgot to ride her scooter and Luke forgot his purple fangs, which was all to the good.

Meanwhile, Michael had cleaned up Amanda's eye, but she was still sobbing uncontrollably.  However, after talking with her it seems that she was sobbing because she thought she couldn't go trick-or-treating.  Michael taped up her cut (much more superficial than we had thought) and took her out once she realized that if she stopped crying, she would get to go out.

I stayed home and handed out candy.  I had carved the symbol for "pi" (remember, 3.14159...) into one of our pumpkins and only one group of older boys paid any attention.  They groaned, I gave out extra candy.

Amanda came home first, Luke and Ella stayed out later.  But that explains why we have no pictures.  Hopefully next year it won't be so chaotic.  Right.

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