finally some halloween details

To be very honest... I am NOT one of those "OH MY GOD, I LOVE HALLOWEEN" parents. In fact, if I had a choice, I'd probably ignore Halloween and Valentine's Day and a whole bunch of other commercially viable holidays in this lovely country of ours. The commercial hype and crowd mentality of it all truly does frighten me, especially so, when there is no substance to it in the first place. ( a topic for a whole different blog...)

However, I have kids. And kids like carving pumpkins. Kids like getting dressed up. Kids like walking around in the dark. Kids like candy and decorating and spider webs and spooks and masks and...  kids like all those mysterious and scary creatures in the wood... and the neighbourhood, too. And kids make one adapt and make one make compromises. Right? Right! So, here I am... going out for Halloween with my kids and making the most of it.

Our Halloween saga began some weeks ago, when we began talking about getting some pumpkins and Kaspar insisted that one pumpkin was not enough. His main reasoning was that he might want a "scary faced" pumpkin, but Stella might be afraid and might want a "princess faced" pumpkin instead. By the time we got to the pumpkin patch, we were already picking out THREE pumpkins. Somehow I missed the argument for that one! But once we had picked out three - the mommy, daddy and kid pumpkin - the obvious was inevitable... WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER KID? Let me tell you, that one is very hard to argue against, especialy if you DO have two kids! Lol! So, we ended up with four carving pumpkins and only one carver,  because the other one is on the road :-) And you must be kidding yourself if you think that carving one will be plenty. Faces and mustaches, eyes and eye lashes, cheeks and noses, chins and patterns, tongues and bow ties were drawn on all four, and all four HAD TO BE carved! Only when the face on the last one got rubbed off by mistake I had my chance to pipe in and suggest we carve a few houses on it, instead. My, seemingly innocent suggestion was followed by Kaspar's idea that he should be the one carving the third pumpkin, because, after all it's his pumpkin... is it not?

If you've never been a mother/father standing next to a six year old waving a knife around, puncturing and slashing a pumpkin, you might know what I felt like. I was freaking out! I was very afraid that he'd cut himself. Or cut Stella in the excitement of it all. But in the end it worked out ok. He carved a great big T shape into the largest pumpkin and announced that it was a headless cowboy in a dress (when the top of the pumpkin was removed it grew a head!) That was his logic! I had to respect it. Until our neighbour Chris came by and asked point plank "WHAT in the world happened to THAT pumpkin?" And I almost cracked, I came close to laughing out loud. But Kaspar was right behind me and I managed to wink at Chris and got Kaspar to give him the whole story. (Chris has two kids, so, he quickly caught on!)

By the time the clock struck six on Halloween night, I was scrambling... trying to get the kids ready, giving out candy to the first little Halloween wanderers, layering t-shirts and sweaters under costumes, finding gloves and hats and trying to set up my friend's hubby (who's new to this country and new to the whole Halloween experience) with detailed instructions on what is to be done, when the children come to the door. After all I had to take my kids out! We got out onto the street shortly before 7pm. I was already exhausted!

We attempted to keep a calm pace down our street, together with our friends, who have a two year old, but very soon realized that my kids are not going to let me keep a calm pace. Stella was considerably faster then a two year old, but Kaspar was pretty much five houses ahead of us no matter how fast Stella and I were going. I was either going to have a "screaming, falling, scraping her knees and freaking out three year old" on my hands or I was going to loose my six year old. On the next street over I ran into my friend Lily, oh what a blessing that was! We split the kids. I was the designated parent of Flower Child and Tinker Bell while Dorothy and Storm Trooper stormed ahead at great speeds, through the streets with Lily. It took us nearly till 9 pm just to walk the length of the famous Lavinia avenue. Lavinia avenue is well known in the neighbourhood for it's absolutely fantastic decorations, effects and community involvement in the Halloween festivities. Truly - it did stand up to the expectations. The previous two years Steve had taken the kids out and I had stayed home to give out candy, so I had missed the exquisite scenes on Lavinia. It was quite something! There were haunted houses; there was wine and beer and even mulled rum & cider offered to parents at different locations; there were buildings with screens in all the windows and haunting video effects; there were people (yes, live people) crawling out of graves in their front yards; there were at least seven movie screens with cartoons for kids of all ages; witches and goblins crawling around in the bushes and scaring the living daylights out of me... it was a crazy, crazy street to be on. And the crowds were just frightening. There were line-ups heading into some of the houses! If we gave out about 400 bags of chips and another handful of candy at our house, the houses on Lavinia must have been giving out candy in the thousands. Of course the kids loved it!

We came home with enough candy to last us a couple of years. Quite seriously, we had so much in the big bag that my wrists were hurting from carrying all of it around for the couple of hours. I was thrilled that Kaspar was more then willing to generously share his loot with our friend's who had helped us give out the candy at our house while we were away.

It was a nightmare trying to get the two of them in bed after. I don't think parenting is fair. Not when Halloween falls on a Monday night. And don't even start me ... the Tuesday morning all hell broke loose... Not fair. Halloween should never be on a week-day. I might have to start a petition.