Halloween

 Halloween was different this year.  I was actually hoping to get out of it all together, because it's not my favorite holiday and usually a lot of work to put costumes together.  But we did get invited to a brunch with two families.  Costumes were recommended, but sort of at the last minute, so we didn't have time to get costumes together (although I guess Weston and Savannah's were ready; I didn't think eating brunch wearing a costume would work very well, and I was just feeling lazy about wearing costumes).  I thought we still had a costume store in town though, but when I went over there, it had closed down.  So I'm not sure where we would have bought a costume last minute.  Anyway, we had tons of yummy food, the ones in costume did a little parade, a bob for apples (in separate containers), and we just hung out.  Our friends have a Newfoundland dog.  I don't know if they call him their bear dog or if our kids made that up, but he's definitely large like a bear.  He's so easy-going as well.  Weston wanted to just lay on the dog, and the dog had no problem with that.  

And it turns out that Nathan, Jared, and Owen got invited to a party on Halloween night.  Again, I had heard about a get together but didn't think it was going to be a costume party.  We dug out a pirate costume for Jared, an elf costume for Owen, and couldn't come up with anything for Nathan... so we made a "No Costumes" sign and he was a protester (which was fitting for this year).  Weston and Savannah dressed up for a friend lunch at the park.  Weston wanted to be a hobbit, which we only had to cut off a pair of pants for his costume.  His hair was already pretty good!  I spent some time on Savannah's costume.  She wanted to be Mulan.  I looked on Amazon, but they were super expensive, so I attempted to make something.  I couldn't find anything at the thrift store that looked Chinese, so the only thing I could think of was drawing on fabric.  So I ended up sketching 2 dragons and then cutting those out and hand stitching them on another piece of fabric.  I don't feel like the time required to make it was worth the one lunch outing where people actually saw it... but she liked it, and she did wear it Trick-or-Treating.  However... no one even really saw her costume.  I should have let her wear it to the brunch.  Trick or treating this year had to be just a bowl of candy left outside.  We couldn't knock on doors or hand out candy.  Some people got creative and made a candy chute, where kids could catch the candy being sent down a chute.  Most people didn't do anything.  Some people left candy on a table by the curb or in a bowl on the porch.  It's just not as fun when you don't see other people or say "trick-or-treat".  A lot of people just turned off their porch lights for the night, so it was pretty dark.  We saw very few other people out there.  It was the most depressing Halloween night ever.  Savannah still managed to get quite a bit of candy.  The people doing the candy chutes were sending about 10 pieces of candy (probably since a lot of people opted out of trick-or-treating all together and they weren't getting very many kids coming by).  We went to 3 or 4 of those candy chutes.  Weston didn't want to go of course.  He hates candy.  So it was just Savannah and me wandering around a mostly dark neighborhood, grabbing a piece of candy from the bowls left outside.      

We didn't do pumpkins this year either.