The Morning After

I must confess: I was in a bit of a quandry this year about Halloween. By October 30th, I had no costumes for the boys, no ideas of fun things to do with them, no carved pumpkins, and no energy. But I had plenty of stress about the whole thing and the fact that there was nothing planned.

After a quick pow-wow with my ever-understanding husband--who also recognizes the importance of my avoiding additional stress right now--we decided to boycott the holiday this year. I sat the boys down on Halloween morning and told them that instead of doing the sugar-high thing this year, we would have a family night, complete with "mummy pizzas" (english muffins with sliced olives for eyes and shredded mozzarella for their "wraps"), spider web cupcakes, and a rented movie with popcorn. Reese clapped his hands. Cole was less than thrilled.

Thus followed a long conversation where I tried desperately to explain the reasoning behind doing something different this year. The end result was that Cole was just so disappointed to not get to dress up and go out somewhere. He suggested a compromise ("option three; not ideal") of he and Reese dressing up in clothes they already had and going trick-or-treating just to the neighbor's houses--meaning they could get a couple of little candies, but not bucket-fulls. They readily agreed to coming home as SOON as Dad said they had enough. I felt this was a fair suggestion, and Justin and I conceded. So our "pared-down" holiday this year included not only the trick-or-treating, but the mummies, and the cupcakes, AND the promised movie ("win/win/win!"). I laughed when I crawled into bed that night----for all of my good intentions, did I just raise the bar for next year?

Here they are in their self-made outfits. Cole dressed up in army attire and Reese put on a black sweatshirt and pants, the cape Justin made him for his birthday last year, a huge brown pirate belt, and grabbed his nerf gun. "What are you?" we asked. "Darth Vader!" was the answer. Of note: the amazing thing is that at one of the houses, an older woman answered the door and said, "Oh, look, it's an army man, and Darth Vader!" The boys didn't think twice about it, but Justin said his jaw about hit the floor!