Nicholas & Wesley picked out their costumes for Halloween back in early September: Darth Vader & The Incredibles, respectively.
On Saturday, we attend the Jarvinen’s Halloween bash where both the adults and kids were dressed for an evening of fun and games. Nicholas as Darth Vader, Wesley as Batman (previous year’s costume).

On Sunday, Julia and I take the kids trick-or-treating at Bonfante Gardens while Alex embarks on a glee-ful trip to Fry’s and other stores to find a replacement laptop for his dad. Nicholas dressed as himself, Wesley dressed as a little Cowboy (accessorized using props from his school’s recent Western Days event).

Halloween day, I spend more hours in the car than I do in my office chair driving back and forth between work and school to attend the kid’s Halloween festivities (Wesley’s at 10:30am, Nicholas’ at 1:30pm). Nicholas is dressed as Darth Vader (minus the mask at school’s request), Wesley is dressed as Spiderman (Nicholas’ costume from previous year). Later in the evening, Julia and her husband came with us to trick-or-treat and we did a quick round up and down neighboring streets before retiring indoors. It was so cold outside that the kids did not even question us at all when we said, “let’s go home now ok?”.
Finally I ask myself…. why did we bother buying Wesley an Incredibles costume? He never even wore it once this Halloween. Next year… my proposal to them will be ghost sheets.

And one last thing I wanted to share with you all is the the behavior of one trick-or-treat guest at our door. Two high-school aged girls came knocking on our door to trick-or-treat. I present them a tray of king-sized candy bars to choose from since I decided to be a little more generous this year. The girls were thrilled over the variety of candy choices and selected a candy from my tray. Then one girl hesitated a moment and asked… can I have another? I was a little shocked over that request (and was thinking to myself… didn’t her parents teach her any manners?) but figured… hey why not… in the spirit of Halloween. She of course was happy, but then the other girl complained… “hey… that’s not fair” to her. Of course, my motto is to always be fair right, so I offered the other girl an extra too. This is all fine with me really until the 1st girl pulls out a little donation box and asks if I’d be willing to make a donation to UNICEF. I make her explain what that is (my way of stalling to sort of take all of this in), then I turned to her and kindly said… “I make all my donations to United Way and prefer to do my gifting that way”. They both had a stunned look on their face and obviously has no clue in the world what the heck I just said probably, took it for what it’s worth, thanked me for the candies, and then went on their way. This year is a strange one I’ll have to say. We’ve never had teenagers and families “bused in” before like this year. We saw several vans parked on the side of the street waiting for pick up/drop off of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood. What the heck is that? And then to have some kids say to me… “nice house” just gives me a slightly uneasy feeling (I mean obviously these are not neighborhhood kids cuz all the houses in our area look pretty much the same). I usually dim all the lights when trick-or-treaters come to the door so they can’t really see much inside the house, but Alex still keeps some light on in the back so that doesn’t work too well. Interesting experience it was this year.