My siblings and I always dressed up for Halloween. Even when we moved to the sticks, my mom would drive us to the ever popular neighborhood, Cottonwood, to trick or treat with our friends. We were never aloud to dress up as scary characters, but it was a good thing. It forced us to be creative and I enjoyed the challenge.
Past Halloween costumes include:
cheerleader
ballerina
Kermit the frog
the mom from Coneheads
My favorite costume so far is Pippi Longstocking ---->
Halloween in the midwest is a totally different ball game. People get pretty weird with legs hanging out of their car trunks. Imagine having to explain that to a 3 year old! Places get scary, too. Front lawns turn into graveyards with fake bloody hands emerging from the ground and black coffins leaning against porches.
For the entire month of October, I have to keep the kids away from grocery stores. You'd think that public places like that would keep things simple and decorate with pumpkins, some black cats and maybe a simple white ghost, but no. Not in the midwest. Halloween would not be celebrated without ghoulish bloody mangled bodies hanging from the ceiling and again, bloody hands coming out of the vegetables in the produce section. Everything is over the top gross and it's annoying.
Dan gets super cranky in August because the summer lingers on and he can't stand the heat of the sun. For me, October is my crankiest month. I'm done with the blood and guts. Done with hiding Elijah's eyes every time we walk into a bank. Done with reassuring him that no one has lost their limbs, that it's just a weird joke.
Tonight, we had planned to host a neighborhood potluck after walking the block with the kids. I was prepared to step out and celebrate the holiday (although I wouldn't be caught dead saying "Happy Halloween") but I got called to a birth last night. Plans changed, we still dressed up the kids and went for an early walk, but bedtime came early, too. At least for this mama!
And now for the costume pictures:
Elijah was his usual football player "Elijah Rudy" self while Lazarus branched out as a bandit. So cute!
We have some weird stuff here, too! All this month when we saw scary things I told Áine that Halloween has fun, cute, and exciting things and some people like to do weird scary things, and we are going to do the fun, cute, and exciting things. She seemed satisfied with that and when she did happen to see something too scary I was able to distract and remind her about the fun things we chose to do. It is a weird holiday though. I was ready for it to be done the other day when I saw a hand hanging out of the back of a pick-up truck. Just not sure how anyone finds that fun and festive!
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