All hail the free and easy Halloween costumes
Because Halloween is exclusively an American tradition, our expat kids are left to their own whims when it comes to the celebration. Which is fine by us, because it means free costumes out of the dress-up box in the playroom, and a flexible date on which to celebrate. None of our schedules worked well for October 31st, so for our clan, Halloween was tonight.
We hardly got any decent pictures of the fun, so if you can’t tell, Chickpea was a ballerina princess fairy — a combination of all she wanted to be this year. Basically, she’s wearing ballet clothes. Garbanzo was a UT football player — a total cop-out costume of a Longhorn t-shirt, a toy football, and two quick marks on the face with a black marker.
There are no neighbors for going trick-or-treating, obviously, so we did a combo Easter/Halloween game of finding the hidden candy around the house. I think our friends will be finding candy until they move out, which is definitely better than finding hard-boiled eggs.
We also scored orange pumpkins, which is a rarity in these parts. I’ve seen more this year than in all the falls we’ve been here so far. But they’re not cheap, so we got two, one for the boys and one for the girls. If you can’t tell, the girls’ was the one with the heart-shaped eyes and nose and the lips.
Chickpea got to take the pumpkin home, which she dubbed “Katie” (her favorite name right now, for some reason). Kabob made the grave mistake of telling her that perhaps this weekend, we would use the pumpkin to make some pumpkin pancakes.
CHICK: Nnnnnooooo!!! Dad, we can’t carve Katie! (tears welling up in her eyes) I want Katie to be part of our family forever. She’s going to be my sister.
KABOB: Um, okay. She’ll probably last about two weeks.
CHICK: No, Dad! I don’t want her to last! I want her to stay forever!
By this point, I was trying to hide my laughing from the front seat so much, we had to change the subject. But she was on a roll today, as earlier, she greeted me with this as I got out of the shower:
CHICK: Wow, Mom, you smell good.
ME: Thanks. It’s that new lotion I made last week with our friends. (side note: I learned how to make lotion last week).
CHICK: Really, you smell so good. You smell like those colorful Cheerios that are at Nana and Hot Rod’s house.
ME: Um…. thanks, I guess.
KABOB: (coming in to the room) Oh yeah, you do. I think it’s those apple cinnamon Cheerios.
ME: It’s lavender lemongrass.
CHICKPEA: Well, it smells good. Not like you usually smell.
So fun! Were the pumpkins hard to carve?
Also, that Chick…she never ceases to crack me up! ;o) Haha! Thanks for sharing another funny moment.
Wow, does this ease my mind…my 5 year-old has been playing with a little pumpkin for about 3 weeks now. It’s her “baby” and she feeds it rocks it and tucks it in. I don’t think it’s become a full-fledged member of the family yet.
How I love the honesty of children. Great story.
can i just say that i was a ballerina princess fairy like every single year? we called it that exact same thing. i had ballet clothes, a princess crown, and a fairy wand. what more could a girl want?