trick or treat

This year Joachim was very excited to wear a hand-me-down Spiderman costume so for the sake of continuity I made Anna Wonder Woman. When I first told Ben he said, "you know she wears basically a bra and underwear." I didn't know, so I looked her up and I was frustrated by the sexualized superhero. Still, to not disappoint my comic loving friends Chase and Pidge I made the toddler version.

One glaring discrepancy between Anna and Wonder Woman is the lack of black hair (well, that and cleavage).




Joachim's good trick or treating buddy.

We went out with friends to both our Main Street event and a neighboring city's. Lots of kids activities and lots of familiar faces, lots of fun (and then we redistributed most of the candy Halloween night).

As a religious person I am a bit self-conscious of my enthusiasm for such a holiday, but I enjoy making the costumes and Joachim still wears the ones I made years ago (or at least the surviving pieces). We also, for the first time got to go through our own neighborhood. When I was growing up we went to block after block and only a few houses didn't participate, apparently in our neighborhood here, only one or two houses per block participate. Still, I got to meet a bunch of the faces that live behind doors I've walked by for years. One house had a bonfire, hot cider and big chocolate bars, yum.

There's a well-loved story in my family about my brother one Halloween when he was a little older than Joachim. His candy bag was heavy and dragging on the ground and my dad said, "Well, do you think you've got enough candy, can we head home now?" Jonathan vehemently set his bag down and faced my dad to tell him, "Dad, it's NOT about the candy, it's about seeing all the neighbors." And he was sincere, a beautiful trait about him to this day.

This pumpkin was a Martha Stewart project from the late 90's. Technically I was supposed to poke the Christmas lights through each hole, but that proved too time consuming so I just dropped the whole bunch in. I think I'll try again next year, but with a bigger drill bit and maybe a pattern of some sort.