girls just want to have fun: Halloween! A Story in Pictures

Halloween is probably one of my favorite holidays, so we're lucky we landed in a neighborhood that does it up right. Sadly, we were so busy in the weeks leading up to Halloween that we missed a few key celebrations. We didn't make it to the park district Halloween party or to the Y Halloween party (not that we've ever been to either of those parties before) or to the downtown Halloween walk (which is a real bummer because we all enjoyed that last year). We barely even made it to the pumpkin patch (and only squeezed it in because I am a sucker for tradition and absolutely insisted on it).

Anyhow, we had an awesome Halloween in the awesomeness that is our new neighborhood. We met up with a gang of neighbors around 3:30, and then I didn't see my kids again for another hour or something like that. The older kids were moving so fast that we had to order them to stop at a few key points so all the adults could catch up. I didn't realize that we were repeating the same pattern from last year, which was to head all the way over to this house a few blocks away because it is so scary. So scary, in fact, that a few of the kids ended up in tears. Which sort of begs the question as to why they were all in such a hurry to get there, but...

After the kiddos had their fill of trick-or-treating, we all headed back to our place for pizza and alcoholic beverages. Believe me: We all needed them at that point. We were lucky enough to fall in with this great group of neighbors shortly after we moved, and many of them have kids that are in kindy or first or second grade (a few others have kids who are a year or two younger than Sadie). There's really a great feeling of community, which is something we were sort of lacking in the city. The kids play pretty well together for the most part, though there was some drama (big shock) among the girls--mostly among the first-borns who are pretty dominant personalities. In this kind of situation, it's pretty helpful to have a neighbor who teaches kindergarten. She is so used to dealing with that kind of drama and finally just told the girls they needed to work it out amongst themselves because they are going to be together for YEARS to come. Sort of hard to think that far ahead, but at some point, we'll all see this group go to prom together! Yikes. We were all joking around about how the drama would at some point become about who was dating whom rather than about who called whom "stupid."

Anyhow, another great Halloween for the record books, and even Moe seemed to enjoy himself. He shocked me by mingling with the neighbors and even (gasp!) eating crackers off the floor. I tried to get a picture of him in his Halloween bandanna but he was having none of it (he's terrified of cameras). Happy (belated) Halloween everyone!