this is HaLLoWeEn

A Tale of a bi-coastal Halloween

 After going through an array of costume choices.....snowman, to batman, to mario, to luke skywalker, to darth mal, etc., Miles settled on a pirate. (Well, on the friday before Halloween-the day of the church Halloween Party, I asked Miles what he wanted to be for Halloween and when he said, "Ummmmm...pirate." I sewed up those shorts in about 2 minutes and put them on him before he changed his mind. I went through mine and Laurie's costume box to get the rest of the pieces and had him in full costume by 9am.)

 Parker was Jack Skellington from "Nightmare before Christmas"...I sewed his little "tux" complete with a bat bowtie. You should have seen my sister and I sewing the coat-no pattern of course- trying to make sense of the collar/lapels while studying miles' seersucker jacket. as much as I sew, I had never even sewed pants before so this was pretty funny. we whipped it out though in about an hour and now I can say I've sewed a suit. ;)

 I was a flapper/20's girl and Craig was a ?? (sheriff/trucker/ himself)

The boys loved the Church carnival and I was glad they got to see their cousins and friends costumes before we whisked them off to Boston the next morning.

 ..But not before I went to Brittany and Heidi's amazingly spooky Halloween party. so cool and lots of great ideas for the Haunted house I'll now have to do next year since we weren't here this year. Can you spot charlie the snake adding to the creepy decor?

Halloween Day

 The boys managed to get in 3 sets of trick-or treating....first at the campaign headquarters. Craig and I went down to the office to talk shop and the boys showed off their costumes to Mitt and Ann (pretty sure this happened while they were in a meeting). I wish I took pictures of the boys running down the halls of the office, trick-or-treating at cubicles and offices along the way. Everyone was so nice to them. They got things like tic tacs, packs of oatmeal, blueberry muffins, gum, Romney bumper stickers/tattoos/pictures of Mitt- as well as loads of candy.

 Miles posing with Will's dog, Pockets, who was also a pirate this year.

We left the campaign office and headed to Beacon Hill. This has to be one of the number one places in America to trick-or-treat. If you are ever even near the East coast on Halloween, you need to make this happen for your kids. 

 Beacon Hill is in the middle of downtown Boston, more or less, right near the state house. It's a really old neighborhood full of brick town houses and cobblestone streets. The whole neighborhood goes all out for this holiday, decorating even the common space, then the home owners sit on their steps with the candy. We even went to John Kerry's house (he was in DC, but his house keeper was on the steps with the candy).

 I loved having fall leaves for Halloween-something I didn't have a kid, nor will my kids have- and the brisk weather. It felt like out of the movie Hocus Pocus.

We got to Beacon Hill at 4pm, so by 5:30pm, we had already filled our bags and seen the sites, so we had time to get back to Belmont to go trick-or-treating in Winnbrook with all the cousins.

I know this picture is horrible, but I wanted to note Thomas' zombie mummy costume that miles was somehow, not afraid of. And Joe Joe, the skier, who were both so kind to my boys, and probably got way less candy than they could have because they were always waiting up for Miles.

a few reasons miles was so slow (in addition to the short legs)...

-he tripped an average of 7 times between every house. (these streets had no sidewalks and the yards all just connected to each other, so you kind of went through landscaping to get from house to house.) this was only part of the problem. We decided another was his eyepatch,covering sight from one eye, so we took this off. Then I took off his pirate hat that kept slipping down over his eyes. then I took his 10 lb bag of candy away and gave him an empty sack i asked for at some house. he still tripped the night away--of note...he only cried once, normally he never noticed, just got back up. he still has bruises up and down his shins from tripping up the brick stairs at each house.

-he had to pull up his pirate pants at least once every 3 minutes (see the first picture in beacon hill and remember how i said I made them in 2 minutes...whoops)

-he would enter majority of the houses he got to. just walk right past them in the front door and into the entry and look around to see if they had any scary stuff.

-he talked to EVERY SINGLE PERSON giving out candy. these conversations went like this..."what you dressed as?"-even when the person clearly wasn't dressed up. "what's your favorite one?"-in reference to the candy. "do you got a dog?".."what's he dressed as?" (the dog). "What kind me brother Parker got?"-in reference to the candy, since parker was always about a house ahead....Miles would want to pick the same kind. "you got coconut kind? that's my dad's favorite."

-he was indecisive about the candy. He would dig through EVERY bowl. Who knows what he was looking for. It could be a bowl full of only snickers and he would dig, dig, dig....Then look up and say, "you got any lollipops?" eventhough he had picked a snickers bar at the previous house. He was also very consistant in asking for extra candy. they would say "pick one piece of candy." he finally would get one, then look up at them, hold up a finger and say, "it's ok I have one more?" How could they tell him no? This is how he ended up with more candy than parker, even though we would constantly pick him up and skip over houses in an effort to keep up with the group.

I have decided that three is my very favorite age for Halloween. Craig and I laughed the night away watching him and his antics and seeing his joy over getting free candy. It made me think of Parker at this same age at Halloween.