Halloween Fun

I've always been sort of so-so on Halloween. It's fun once you get into it, and I've certainly hosted my share of Halloween parties, but my lack of a creative gene has meant feeling less than enthused about costumes.

This year, Angelina wanted to be Tinkerbell. In my "now-I'm a Stay At Home Mom I must be a domestic goddess" mode, I decided to make her costume. I like to sew, I am tolerable at it, but just barely. Weeks of work and more than double the cost of buying a cheap Target Tinkerbell costume, and I didn't take pictures! (I am sure someone did, so hopefully I can post soon)

All that focus on Tinkerbell I neglected Lenaïc's costume. Fortunately Babies-R-Us had all of ONE costume left, on clearance, in his size (sort of...it was a bit small but worked long enough for a picture).


This turned into weeks of Halloween activities. First, the KWAKs (King William Area Kids) Pumpkin Carving and Dia De los Muertos party last week. Anyone who still thinks there aren't any kids living downtown needs to show up to one of these events: kids galore! Again my lack of artistic skills show, so I turned over pumpkin carving to our neighbor Rick, who used Angelina's drawing on the pumpkin to cut. Turning out pretty impressive! Alas, that pumpkin didn't survive our 80F+ week so Frédéric and Angelina carved another one on Halloween Day.


And then came the costume parties. On Saturday, a boy from Angelina's class was hosting a party (or rather, his parents were). btw - we love this new school and the families there! Angelina has been talking about this boy A LOT, so it was nice to meet his family, as well as many other kids and their parents. Dragging her home was not easy. Angelina never wants to leave a party.

And then came Halloween Night. In years past, our neighborhood had been inner-city ghetto. Not a nice place to be, esp. for kids. Which follows that few kids did trick or treating. Our first few years here, we rarely had any kids come by and so we hadn't bothered to take Angelina out here either. Last year we went to King William, the next 'hood over, which was fun, but overwhelming: Truckloads of kids, many teens looking pretty scary, streets with far too much traffic. So this year, a neighbor who happens to be the mother of two of Angelina's playmates suggested we bring Halloween back to Lavaca. And so we did.

Coordinating with a handful of other families with small kids who preferred to trick or treat in Lavaca, we assured a critical mass of kids and a critical number of houses to give out candy.
We started with a pre-party at our house - a chance for the kids to check out each other's costumes,



for the littlest ones to have some Halloween fun, and to fill them up on healthy dinner and snacks (carrots, apples) before heading out into the 'hood for candy. Turned out great! In addition to our pre-assigned houses, we came across many others handing out treats who were surprised to see so many kids, and happy for it. Also happened upon a number of other kids out, so we didn't single-handedly bring Halloween back to Lavaca, but we put in a pretty strong effort!