Halloween recap

Didn't get great pictures this year, but hopefully they'll give you the idea. It may have had something to do with being 48 hours into a blackout, making us a little less focused than usual. Alice was Belle, thanks to Mor-mor, and Edith procured the elements of a woodsprite costume, contributing our only modicum of craftiness by spray-painting the wings silver with me.

The storm helped distract us from mourning our Manitou neighborhood, in which it was Halloween when we first figured out what an amazing community we'd joined. All this month I'd been pre-emptively mourning the kids traipsing up and down Crystal Hills by the hundreds, mountains backlit by sunset, garages converted to haunted houses, adults wandering half a block behind with their own friends, accepting grown-up treats (from hot drinks to bowls of chili!). I wondered how we'd fare without the Maniboo carnival. Heck, we weren't even sure we could find a reasonable place to trick-or-treat here at all, living inside a school surrounded by playing fields, and beyond that by enormous estates.

In the middle of Sandy, our standards changed. The girls didn't have school Halloween festivities in school that morning, because we had no school. But in the evening we were delighted to hook up with a new classmate of Edith's, her brother, and her mother to trick-or-treat in their friendly family neighborhood. It was nice to meet people off-campus living in a real neighborhood again. And if there weren't quite the same hordes of children running around, there was nevertheless a good turnout considering that the whole neighborhood was without power. An extra little bit of Halloween spookiness! And the part of me that rebels against hyper-safety-consciousness was gleeful at being able to ignore the age-old rule: Only trick-or-treat at houses with a light on.So much for that!

Zeus, woodsprite, and vampire

The kids marched up to one dark house after another, boldly rapping because doorbells didn't work, and I'm glad to say they were never accosted...nor have they yet died from poisoned candy.

 

Assessing the haul... (This was Alice's first year to clue in on the candy part--she was surprised and delighted all over again at each door)

...while random pieces of broken electrical poles dangled overhead

Back at J's for candlelit hot cocoa before heading home