October Hightlights Final Installment: Halloween

What choice does a family blogger have than to report on Halloween? I only have a few days before Thanksgiving to get the month of October wrapped up, and then we move headlong into the Christmas season.

The nice thing about little babies and young toddlers is that you can usually dress them up however you want, or you can skip dressing them up altogether. Look at this cute Pocahontas costume I got to put Esther in last year:

And this year she was a little Michigan cheerleader:

But one day, all of the fun you had picking out the cutest, most creative showcase of your talents will evaporate when your child becomes old enough to choose his own costume. Gone are the days of tiny pea pods, knobbly-kneed giraffes, and hot dogs with a squiggle of mustard down the front. Now I must submit to the fact that my child wants to be a ninja every single year. Or a black phantom. Or, in Eli's case, a ninja for the school parade and a black phantom for the night of trick-or-treating. One thing I am grateful for is that Adam's recurring choice of costume, a devil, is at least a really cute homemade suit from Dan's mom, complete with horned cap and pointy tail. Eli, on the other hand, wears the nasty k-mart special black jump suit with artificial pectoral muscles made of rubber on the chest. Sigh.

We began our Halloween celebration this year with a party at the church on Tuesday night. Then on the big day, the boys packed their costumes in their backpacks and changed into them at school after lunch. In the past, the students at the elementary school have marched in a Halloween parade that requires them to weave in and out of every single classroom. This parade route is actually an object lesson in gridlock, particularly designed to make parents rue the day they ever tried to come and watch it.

This year, some genius person at the school decided to have the children parade through the neighborhood instead of through the halls. We were blessed with beautiful sunny weather, so all was well. Here is Adam (aka SATAN) lining up with his class to start the parade:


Here is Eli thinking he is much too cool and old to have his mother chasing him down the street with a camera:

And I'm sorry to say that I don't have any good pictures of the boys trick-or-treating because they were in too much of a hurry this year to waste time posing for pictures. Geeeeeeeze, mom!