Halloween 2013

I blame my mother.  She never cared much for Halloween (ironic, considering her deep and abiding love for sweets) and must have passed her feelings on to me.  I don't think we ever put up any decorations, other than carving obligatory pumpkins, my entire childhood, and so I feel blameless that I don't own a single Halloween decoration to cart around the world with me.  This year we didn't even carve pumpkins.  A few Sundays ago the girls, of their own volition, made a garland for the front door and that was as far as it got.  This year, at least, I can blame pregnancy.

My children, not knowing any better, were perfectly happy with our Halloween celebrations.  Some friends from the embassy living in our neighborhood threw a neighborhood/embassy party the Saturday before Halloween complete with selected trick-or-treating around our neighborhood.  The girls, showing off their bulging lunch bags of candy, were ecstatic, and spent the next week gorging themselves. 

I'm not a sugar-hater, but I do try and keep the family sugar intake fairly low.  Normally.  But when it comes to Halloween candy, I'd rather it be gone and off their things-to-beg-for lists, so I let them have a free-for-all.  One morning after school Edwin announced he didn't need any lunch because he'd had so much candy and took himself upstairs to sleep it off.  I was happy to have one less person to feed before it was my lunchtime.

Halloween itself passed by with just one trick-or-treater ringing our doorbell and the children didn't even ask to go.  They knew that the next day was the embassy Halloween party where they would get to dress up again and get candy again.  What more could a kid want?

This year Edwin wore an old bedsheet as a ghost (Sophia's suggestion), Sophia dressed up in scarves as a peasant, Kathleen was a princess for the third year in the row, and Joseph was a prince (Sophia's suggestion again).  Total cost of costumes: $0.  Total time spent: 30 minutes.  My kind of Halloween costumes.