Halloween

Here's Isaac on our front porch posing with our Halloween decor -- the strange look on his face isn't political commentary, but an attempt to imitate the jack-o-lantern's expression. He said he wanted a sad pumpkin, but I think it ended up looking worried instead.

We live in a suburb full of kids, but our house is at the end of our subdivision, on a cul-de-sac, atop a hill, in an area where there are only houses on one side of the street, at the edge of the city limits. Also there are no streetlights or sidewalks. It is an awesome place if you like privacy and quiet, but it is not prime trick-or-treating territory. We ended up getting just one group of trick-or-treaters, five boys about 11 years old. They were very polite, especially considering all the work they went through to get to our house.

And did Isaac go trick-or-treating himself? All week he had been claiming he didn't want to, but at the very last minute he changed his mind. (I think he was inspired by the sight of the candy we'd bought for our own potential trick-or-treaters.) So Craig dressed him up and took him to the houses of our three nearest neighbors, who were thrilled to see him. Then it started to rain so they came back home. Three houses for a three-year-old seems about right, actually. (Plus we have all that left-over candy of our own.)

What was Isaac's choice of costume? For the last month he has been consistent: he wanted to dress up as Mario, one of our house-cleaners. This was hero-worship, plain and simple, as Isaac has been a big fan of Mr. Mario ever since he started working for us back in early 2007. But Mario wears jeans, a t-shirt, and Converse sneakers -- not much of a Halloween costume, especially for Isaac, who mostly wears jeans, a t-shirt, and Vans sneakers. So I was planning to fix up a house-cleaning toolbelt for Isaac, but then Isaac said he did not want to go shopping for a kid-sized squirt bottle, squeegee, or bucket. I wasn't going to force him to wear a costume, and plus I was secretly relieved to avoid all the trouble, so we didn't make any costume preparations at all.

So what kind of a costume did we come up with at the very last minute? Construction worker, just like last year. We already had the kid-sized hard hat, tool belt, tools, and workboots. Cute and easy. Perfect.

- - - - -

Even though we don't have a costumed picture from this year, here are two from the past: an elephant in 2006 and a construction worker in 2007.