Halloween Recap

My Halloween photo collection begins with shots from the Cancer Support Center's fall fair, which was this past Saturday.

This first photo showcases Nathan with his bat face paint, coloring a skeleton picture at the coloring table.  A surprising recent development with Nathan is that he loves to color and draw, and devotes significant time to his projects:

 

Though here he appears to be taking a break to eat candy.

This next picture at the ball toss game isn't a great photo, but I like how it shows the little girl dressed as Olivia, who is my favorite children's TV character:

This is a pumpkin with a freakishly large stem.  

I worked two volunteer shifts selling pumpkins as a fundraiser for the Cancer Support Center.  I sold a total of 3 pumpkins in the 5 hours I worked, and one was a pumpkin I bought myself.   

Here's Nathan at the Great Pumpkin photo op area:

Miscellaneous pumpkin patch shots:

My mom and stepdad arrived in town the previous day.  Here's my stepdad horsing around with our favorite little firefighter:

By the way, let me just pause for a moment and note that Nathan insisted on wearing the costume with the coat tucked into the pants.  Several adults tried to explain to him that the coat goes outside the pants, but as far as Nathan was concerned it was coat tucked in or no costume at all.  I fretted over what the other parents would think of me, improperly costuming my child!  But it was a lesson in picking your battles.  

Two days later, it was Halloween and time to carve up all our pumpkins.  Here are Nathan and Grandma Janet performing the initial cut:

Not pictured: Nathan's subsequent meltdown and time-out that resulted from his frustration over trying to draw out a face on his pumpkin.  

But once calmed down, we got back to work:

This pumpkin was 40 lb, approximately the same weight as Nathan.  

As you can imagine, we weren't eager to carve another pumpkin with Nathan, so we resorted to vegetable-based pumpkin decoration instead:

I myself am a pumpkin purist, so I always insist on one pumpkin carved in the classic triangle-eyes-and-grin-with-missing-teeth style.  But this year I decided to be topical and give my pumpkin a sign indicating that his tooth loss was a result of the tough economic times:

My pumpkin and I support universal healthcare.

Here's Nathan's 40-pounder.  I think it came out well, despite the frustration:

Here's the vegetable one on the front porch:

I also carved this cute cat pumpkin:

Next step: trick-or-treating!  

Now, where we live, the village sets specific hours for trick-or-treating: 3:00 to 7:00 p.m.  The trouble is that people are only home at about 1 out of every 5 houses at 3:00.  

Anyway, this is a trick-or-treat action shot:

Not clear what's going on here.

Thanks to these neighbors for buying this inflatable Frankenstein monstrosity to entertain Nathan:

Here is Nathan with the candy he got from his first run trick-or-treating with me.  Bill took him out a second time when he got home from work.  

It got dark toward the end of the established trick-or-treat hours, I successfully distributed the rest of my candy to the barely-costumed teenagers who came around, and I lit up the pumpkins:

In case you were worried about fire safety, I used flashlights.