Trick-or-treat!

Blake is fond of saying, “It takes a long time for _______.”  You can fill in the blank with boxes, birthdays, morning, anything he’s looking forward to... and Halloween was no exception.  Figuring out what to be is the consummate Halloween question.  I am usually pretty psyched for this holiday in September, but as October 31 gets closer, my motivation wanes.  We knew Gavin would fit into the frog costume that we purchased last year, but Blake was still a question mark. 

He and I had had many discussions here about what to be—“house” seemed to be topping the list.  And then finally in the pool on Friday Oct. 30, Blake announced to his swim teacher that he’d like to be a garbage truck.  So that afternoon, he and I sat down to sketch our ideas and design the costume:  I drew him with clothes on and trash stuck to him (yes, mom was trying to take the easy way out), but Blake quickly pointed out that that didn’t look like a truck.  That meant we were going to have to go for the real thing. We enlisted family and neighbors to acquire the needed boxes and after a lot of tape, cardboard, construction paper and hot glue, here is the garbage truck.

Boo Garbage Collection Services Truck

And here is the frog.

Gavin the frog

And here is a bag of trash for "Boo Garbage Services" to collect.

And finally the whole Ziesler clan.

We trick-or-treated in the neighborhood with our neighbors and good friends Scott and Shane and their twin girls Sadie and Sophie, as well as their grandmother Shari. 

Sophie the flower and Sadie the bunny

The entourage

I’m a fan of the fact that former President Bush changed the dates for daylight savings time to enable little kids to trick-or-treat in the light, but Sebe pointed out that without porch lights on in the dark, perhaps people could put up a sign so we don’t have to walk all the way up the sidewalk to find out that no one is home and there is no unattended bowl of candy waiting for us.  Nonetheless, Halloween falling on a Sunday seemed to ensure a fairly high likelihood of people being home and we made a pretty good haul.  

We went to Grandma B’s house afterwards for cider and a special treat and Blake got to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters there.  He got a big kick out of that!