Last night was it. The big hurrah! Halloween. Tons of costumed kids on a sugar high.
Of course we were right in the midst of it. This year the kids went as a Tractor (what else would Jack choose…really?) and Emilie went as Curious George. With one curious little monkey the only obvious option was to have Kevin be the Man with the Yellow Hat. My costume was a little harder. I ended up throwing on a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat to go as a farmer/rancher along with Jack. Later Jack told me I was dressed as a Scarecrow (guess I can terrify birds if I wear cowboy hat) which would have been and AWESOME costume had I asked my 4 year old sooner. You live you learn.
For those wondering, yes, I did make Jack’s costume myself (made Emilie’s too for what it’s worth). It’s little more than cardboard boxes, spray paint, and bolts. It turned out pretty awesome and he got lots of compliments in this Ag based community.
As has become our tradition we fueled up on Jack-O-Lantern pizza and Henry Winehard’s root beer before heading into the candy gathering fray. Please not the two photos below. The one of the left I took by plan, then walked into the office to put the camera down and returned to the kitchen. In that small window of time the Olive Thieves struck and de-eyed our dinner. The kids are mum on who took the olives…..
Trick-or-treating was a blast this year. Both kids have it down pat. Emilie is pretty gung-ho. If you don’t answer fast enough she starts saying “Open door! I want candy!” Really she said this a lot…mostly because she’s too short to reach most doorbells and felt she had to yell to be heard. Jack scored tons of big brother points though because he would remind people to give his sister candy after they gave him some. He looks out for her for sure.
The neighborhood we trick-or-treat is across town and friends of our live there. The wind was blowing and it was pretty nice to be able to stop in halfway through and warm up. The wife is an incredible cook and grew up in Japan. This means lots of yummy yummy food with a Japanese flair. There was one point in the night where we were wandering down the street munch on warm homemade egg rolls. She even sent me home with a container of soup and some seaweed paste with rice (much yummier than it sounds). Had I thought of it I would have just skipped dinner!
The other fun part was their dog ‘Buddy.’ He’s a boxer/pit mix. He’s not quite ready to be a farm dog (Bronco will attest to that….I think he still has nightmares from meeting Buddy 
) but other than that he’s sweet as can be. He LOVED the kids. Probably because Emilie was willing to feed him any people food she could lay hands on. Jack claims he has a ‘sticky’ tongue. Post trick-or-treat. These three did a good job of wearing each other out.
As for the treat part I think each of the kids’ bags must have weighed four pounds by the time we finished. I could tell Jack was running on empty but he kept saying “One more house…” I think we have enough candy to get us through to Christmas.
