Quick Halloween Post...

I'll post about baseball and school later.... just wanted to get a quick post up about Halloween.

We were on the fence a little bit about whether to do trick-or-treating or not.  We figured that the kids could wear masks... we could wipe down the outside of the wrappers with lysol wipes... etc.  Isabella was looking forward to it and we thought it would be good to have a little bit of normal.

Isabella wanted to be a dragon, then a vampire, then Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books.  We settled on that.  Drove to a town north of us where I found a high quality one for sale at a pretty good price. (It came with skirt, vest, tie, sweater, robe and wand!)  instead of a cheaply made one out of plastic-y stuff.  While we were in a new area, we made an afternoon of it and went on a hike too - for some fresh air. 

Mercer said that he didn't want to go trick-or-treating.  But, a couple of days before Halloween, he started asking questions about his old costume from last year.   

(I was working on a big deadline that was overdue and I finally got done on the 30th, so I couldn't look 'til after that. We spent the better part of Saturday looking for - and eventually finding it in the bottom of a crate full of random kids things!) 

Todd took the kids out.  It was a little quieter than normal.  He said that not as many houses were handing candy out as usual.   Some of them had "candy chutes."  I handed out candy instead of letting kids grab out of the basket.... and wore a mask.  I felt comfortable.  I estimated about 150 kids -- it was a lot lighter than normal.  I've always thought that we have over 200 kids.  Maybe 2-250?  

It was still definitely enough to feel some normalcy!  

The kids were sweet... as they always are.  And they seemed more excited than normal -- maybe because they were glad to be out?!  What we didn't have were the teens in hoodies coming around late. 

Isabella has a "book character" day at school soon.  She will get to wear her costume again, thankfully! (And she said that she would like to be Harry Potter sometime... that would be the same costume minus the skirt-- and add a painted on scar and round glasses.) 

We'll get good use out of her costume.  (Like we unexpectedly got 2 years out of Mercer's costume as it turns out!)    

They came back a couple hours later....with a BIG bounty of candy. 

Todd and Isabella carved the pumpkin the weekend before.  It made it through the evening.  (looks like it was "leaking" on Halloween so wasn't quite sure how long it would last!)

The "M" pumpkins were bought as a booster for the high school baseball team.

Even though there was a full moon, there were no tricks!

Overall, it turned out well.  A good time was had by all (well, Todd had to deal with a break-down along the way around the neighborhood).

It was nice... even though it was more low-key this year.