Halloween 2011

Is it just me or does it seem like Halloween lasts a week now? There’s not just one night of trick-or-treating, there’s a neighborhood party and then a church festival all followed by the knocking on doors of complete strangers in hopes that they give you candy and not an earful for waking their baby or interrupting their favorite re-run of MASH. Maybe I’m getting grumpy in my old age but I felt like this year it was never ending and I was even more afraid that the costumes wouldn’t hold up for three events. Fortunately, I was wrong.

And so here was our line up for this year’s festivities –

*Dagen was a football player, again. You see, if you look back to last year, he was also a football player. Poor kid, he wants so badly to play football for the city or the Y but, unfortunately, I am having serious reservations about him playing. Baseball, basketball and soccer I have no qualms with but football is rough and rowdy and aggressive. True, Dagen’s personality fits every single one of those characteristics and he’s actually really fast and certainly has the physical build of a left tackle but all I can envision is a debilitating hit and I start hyperventilating. I mean, some days I’m ready to hang up his baseball cleats and glove and enroll him in ballet because I know that in any sport he can get hurt but, with football, the chances are much greater. Yeah, whatev. One day he’ll play but for now I’d like to remain in my bubble, thank you.



*Davis was Woody from Toy Story. He actually asked to be a cowboy {because he loves Woody} so as I was trying to piece the costume together, we found out that a fellow teacher of Dallas’ had the actual Woody costume AND it was in Davis’ size so it worked out great. Although we did try to find cowboy boots, we were unsuccessful and I refused to spend a load of cash on a pair of boots he would not wear outside of this costume so we went with rain boots. Close enough.



*Dayne was Robin, as in Batman and Robin, but without the Batman cohort. Even though we had his partner’s costume, the ‘partner’ in this family wanted to be Woody so Dayne was flying solo without back-up. It’s not like he really cared nor did he have a say in the matter. We were going with a goal of zero dollars out-of-pocket and because this was a hand-me-down from the brothers before him, we hit that goal. Well, with the exception of one new football mouth piece for the eldest.



All in all, despite the craziness of the extended holiday, it was fun. They are all at great ages and don’t require so much assistance from us which makes it really nice. And of course the added bonus of sharing in their loot after they've passed out with exhaustion is not so bad, either.



Speaking of loot, did anyone see the ‘I Told My Kids We Ate All Their Halloween Candy’ video from Jimmy Kimmel’s show? Well, we pulled the same prank on our boys and it was pretty funny….borderline cruel but funny. Listen, this is miniscule when compared to the chaos we endure. I like to think of it as another form of free therapy for parents.