We WITCH You a WONDERful HALOween

As with everything in 2020, Halloween looked a little different this year. But guess what - it was still really great! Declan declared it his favorite Halloween ever and Fiona suggested we just celebrate like this every year. She was big fan of not covering blocks and blocks of houses for trick-or-treating! Further proof that sometimes the simplest things at home are the best [that said, Universe, we would really really really like to be able to see our family for Christmas. Pretty please.]

Without the pressure of being costume-ready by Baker Boo, I was way behind the game on costume selection and procurement. So when my Aunt Marti sent me an email that said she was sending costumes, it was such an unexpected blessing. She told me what she had picked for the kids, but I didn't tell them. All I said was that if they preferred a different costume once they saw the surprise, we could do that. **Spoiler alert: they were all delighted and I was off the hook. Literally everyone was happy. Major Halloween win!

Fiona's costume was a combination of Hermione and Harry Potter, complete with her own copy of the first book. Mike and I [mostly me] have been trying to convince her to start the series. Our hope is that this will spark enough interest to encourage her to tackle what she feels to be VERY LARGE books. Quinn's costume was Wonder Woman. She.was.thrilled. There was even a shield! D's costume was Master Chief from the video game Halo. We do not know anything about Halo in this house (my friend Adam had to tell me the character name) - but there was a cool costume, a weapon, AND a voice changer. This is spot on for a six-year-old boy!

Our celebration started on Friday night, when we finally got around the carving pumpkins. Since it was an at work and at school day - and I forget every dang year how long and messy pumpkin carving is - the kids were up late and we ended up having dinner downstairs at the bar. It was the start of the "different but great" theme for the weekend. It was such a pleasant change and the five of us spent the whole evening laughing together. 

All three kids helped a lot with the pumpkin gut removal (Quinn and Dec loved it. Fiona hates everything about it. But she was a trooper). They were great pumpkins and I ended up making about six cups of roasted pumpkin seeds. We tried a new system and added a "sweet and salty" variation to half of them. Huge success!

The Halloween-on-Saturday situation was amazing. I asked Quinn how we possibly ever are ready for a Halloween not on a weekend. Beside roasting seeds for what felt like half the day, Quinn and I spent the morning stuffing treat bags for our treasure chest. She pulled out most of the Milky Ways for me - and made a strong case to be a favorite child! A couple hockey practices and a few errands were also squeezed in. We had an early-ish dinner of our annual bats and cobwebs pasta and then costumed up for the evening!

We met our bubble neighbor families and the kids did piñatas in each of their yards. This was the highlight of Dec's night - beating things with a shovel. We'll pretend that's not alarming! Then we came back to our yard where Mike and I had put together a scavenger hunt of seven clues that the kids had to follow to find a treasure chest of treat bags. The six of them worked together really well to solve the clues and had a great time. Mike had grabbed mini bottles from the liquor store, so I also put together an adult treasure hunt. 

The rest of the night found us just enjoying each other's company, with the kids running around the yards and the adults standing in the driveway with beverages. It was a lovely day, but once the sun went down, it got chilly. Holy smokes was I cold by the time we came in! But it was exactly what we all needed. We put a big bowl of candy out on our front step for the kids that were trick-or-treating and there were only four pieces of candy left at the end of the night. To Mike's relief, the bowl was easily refilled with what the kids had got from the piñatas and scavenger hunt. Definitely a more manageable amount of candy than we have gotten the last couple years. Maybe this time, it won't last us until Easter!

We were all tired the next day (Halloween + Blue Moon + Daylight Savings will do that to a person), but so happy. Celebrating together with friends felt so good. And being able to do it outside and safely was such a gift.