Halloween

The kids had a fun Halloween this year. Kevin and Heidi dressed up as Pazu and Sheeta from Castle in the Sky, one of their favorite movies. The costumes were actually pretty easy to put together. For Heidi's Sheeta costume, I used one of my dark blue shirts to make a dress by following this tutorial, and that was the hardest part. It wasn't perfect, but for a Halloween costume it worked just fine. Then I bought a headband and braided Heidi's hair. Sheeta's stone is a very important part of the movie, so I drew the design with a yellow pencil onto blue construction paper and taped it to the medal Kevin got from playing basketball last spring. For Kevin's Pazu costume, I basted a patch to some worn out Sunday pants and cut the sleeves off of a brown button-up shirt I found at Goodwill to make a vest. The hat was borrowed from a friend and the bag was one I already had. When the kids got all dressed up it was so fun! I was really pleased with how the costumes turned out.

We had a ward trunk or treat party on October 30. Amazingly (and thankfully) it was not a chili cook-off (I know, heresy!). We had a baked potato bar, and it was actually really good. The kids even ate a good dinner. We ended up sharing a table with some people who recently moved here from China, and it was kind of funny to see their reactions to everything. They were very confused by the concept of a baked potato. One of the ladies held one up (still wrapped in foil) and said, "Are these steamed?" I explained that they were baked, and she wanted to know if they would taste like steamed potatoes, so I said they were kind of like steamed potatoes. They looked pretty skeptical, but they did eat the potatoes. I'm not sure if they liked them.

We had one friend from the ward who saw Kevin and Heidi in their costumes and knew who they were dressed up as without us telling him. There were a few more people who recognized them once we told them who they were, but apparently most people have never seen Castle in the Sky. Most people are missing out.

After dinner the kids were invited to dance on the stage, then we had trunk or treating outside. Normally we buy a big bag of candy from Costco for Halloween, but I didn't want to have all that sugar in the house this year, so instead we bought jelly bracelets and little plastic dinosaurs on Amazon and handed those out. I know the big kids were probably disappointed, but a lot of the little kids were really excited, and so were many of the parents.

I always enjoy seeing the kids get to try different types of candy after trick or treating. I never buy candy, so it's usually a fun new experience for them. Heidi didn't like the Sour Patch Kids (see the picture below). Actually, about the only candy she liked were suckers and smarties. She didn't even like any of the candy bars (which is okay, because Ryan and I were happy to take them off her hands).

On Halloween we went trick or treating in our apartment complex, which was also really fun. Ann Marie came along in the stroller dressed as an elephant, but I didn't get a picture of her. Maybe sometime I'll get around to it. I was pretty impressed by all of the kids who knew Kevin and said hi to him.