Halloween 2016
/Halloween is one of my favorite days to play with my kids. This Halloween Awesome Husby was out of town on a business trip to San Diego so I was all alone with my kids. I'm always lonely when he is gone but this time was a little better because my kids had Halloween off school and I enjoyed being with them all day long. We carved pumpkins, ate Cafe Rio take out for dinner and then went Trick-or-Treating together.
Carving pumpkins is a lot harder than it looks. It takes a lot of patience and some good fine motor skills; all things my children are developing. Every year that goes by I'm encouraging my kids to be a little more independent. This year I told them they were going to carve their pumpkins on their own as much as possible. I watched as they struggled, did better than they thought they could, adapted, complained, asked for help, gave up, and continued with perseverance. This year they learned that things that are fun aren't always easy. While they worked I fished out pumpkin seeds from the guts to roast later, which are a traditional favorite in our family.
Marilyn had the most perseverance carving pumpkins out of all of my kids. She's got lots of practice with that perseverance stuff. Max even carves his pumpkin like a ninja! I hurried and took this picture during the first two minutes of Noah carving his pumpkin because that's how long it took for him before he said, "to heck with it" and went to find something else to do, and that's OK.
Linda came over every day after school to give me some adult companionship and make and eat dinner together. What a difference it made in my mood! She and Kim helped me clean my house, fold my laundry, and work on gardening projects together. On one of these days he told me a story I didn't remember from growing up; it's interesting how differently we remember things. We lived duplicate lives and yet things that made impressions on her didn't on me and vice versa. When I was 7 or 8 my teacher made us pumpkin seeds and brought them to school to share. For an assignment we had to write a recipe on a card and I wrote the recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds. I'd never had them before and apparently loved them so much that I saved that recipe card for months and gave it to my mom for a present for Mother's Day or something. 39 year old me thought that was really adorable of 7 or 8 year old me! I think I like pumpkin seeds even better now.
Halloween night the kids and I set out to go Trick-or-Treating. Noah was a cobbled together amalgam of whatever he could find in our costume box and around the house that he thought would be fun. He wore these goggles the whole time that shined blue lights out of them and he covered it up with a black ski mask. He could barely see where he was going and I spent the whole night guiding him around while he held onto my arm. That kid! Marilyn was a very pretty self made version of Raspberry Torte from the cartoon Strawberry Shortcake. Max was a green ninja. I always feel so carefree and childlike with my kids when we Trick-or-Treat together and this night was no different.
