Halloween

Halloween preparations start with a pumpkin patch trip -

It appears the days of being excited by putting pumpkins in a wagon, petting a bunny, and riding a drowsy pony are long gone - along with the days of having entire fall weekends without soccer games, birthday parties, and play dates.  This is currently the go-to pumpkin patch for our crew:  a lot filled with giant bounce slides and houses near the freeway in San Mateo, close to Daddy's work.

 

After 30 minutes of bouncing in decidedly un-fall-like weather, two red-faced and sticky kids are frog-marched over to the "pumpkin patch" to make their choices.  The straw bales almost, but don't quite, hide the cars parked just outside the fence.

This year's Halloween costumes skewed to the scarier side. After 4 consecutive years of being some sort of feline, Lucie decided to branch out and requested a werewolf costume.  And once again, searching online was an alarming exploration of the abundance of "Sexy Insert name of thing here" costumes that exist, and why they would make such a thing in kid's sizes.   Also, as Lucie pointed out, it's important that the costume is SCARY.

I think she makes a very scary little werewolf:

Brennan's costume was difficult in a different way, as he had requested a Zombie WWI Soldier costume - I blame the history comics he's constantly reading.  Surprisingly, this appears to be an untapped market for the costume industry.  I briefly started pricing out olive drab suits and replica WWI-era gas masks, and then remembered 2 consecutive Halloweens carrying around Storm Trooper helmets and thought the better of it.  He took the news surprisingly well, and cheerfully offered to be the Grim Reaper again, but last years' dark robes were noticeably shorter on him.  So I dredged Uncle Gavin's old space camp jumpsuit out of the Halloween bin, which was tried on, declared "cool", and the end result was Zombie NASA Crew.

Daddy returned to his Johan Cruyff kit, which does a great job of making my costumes looking less obscure. 

(if you give up:  Heathers.  It's been an interesting litmus test of which of my current acquaintances watched the 1988 Winona Ryder film as religiously as I did.)

For a Halloween First, Brennan decided he was carving his own pumpkin this year - he wanted to make a ghost.  However, I'm still Lucie's Pumpkin Monkey, and was directed to make this cat after she failed to find a horse design I thought I could execute.

They also decorated their little pumpkins using Lucie's paint set, making a Puppy Pumpkin -

- and a Bomb Pumpkin!

I managed to finagle my way onto my favorite field trip, the the first grade visit to the Mission neighborhood to cap off their learning about Latino heritage and Dia de los Muertos.  I love listening to the kids talk about their favorite Balmy Alley murals, and I love that stopping for lunch in the Mission is part of the field trip.  We stopped at d'Maize for really tasty pupusas and agua fresca.  Sadly, the bread-man making was not part of this trip, so we only got to stop in to La Victoria bakery to admire the baked goods and the oferta, and to pick up a bag of pan de muerto for later.

We managed to take advantage of a few balmy October afternoons to climb Tank Hill.  Some kind soul set up a rope swing again, so the kids get to enjoy spinning and swinging with a fabulous view -

- even if they don't even bother to look at it.