Halloween 2008

Our first Halloween in Omaha was festivity-full :) Here's how the week went down...

Wednesday, October 29th: Ellie's Halloween program / party at preschool:

After missing a few days while we were in Hawaii, Ellie's first day back to preschool was the Halloween party (good thing, too -- she was SO excited -- I think it helped tear her away from that swimming pool in Maui)! So, as we were all a little jetlagged from our trip, I had to wake Ellie up around 8:00 that morning so that we could get in costume and get to school on time. She was thrilled to put on that Ariel get-up (even the wig) and was even more excited that Frank and I would be coming for the program. Again, I gotta say, that's one good thing about Omaha - Frank works close enough to skip out for an hour to watch Ellie and her class sing their 6 halloween songs and make a mysterious "witch's brew" -- it was cute, and she was so happy to have us there watching her "hang out" with her friends. Very fun!

Thursday, October 30th: Carving pumpkins

We went to target and bought (probably) four of the last carvable pumpkins in Omaha (and a little one "for the baby," ellie insisted...). Usually, pumpkin carving starts off with a bang, but before the first one is completely gutted, the kids are off doing something else, and Frank and I are left to do all the "fun" by ourselves... This year, they both showed much more stamina! Ellie loved scooping the guts out of the pumpkins and was heavily involved in the "design" phase of the pumpkins -- instructing Frank on how exactly she wanted each face to look. It was fun - but I might advocate pumpkins only for the kids in future years, especially with three kids -- I mean, carving 5 pumpkins is a little excessive!

Friday, October 31st: the BIG day... Halloween!

Not a big hyped up day - the preschool party was done, we had a lazy afternoon...just waiting around to trick-or-treat, basically. We had heard that the hours here were 6 pm - 9 pm. OK, weird for us (I think in Elk Grove, we had many trick-or-treaters by 4:00, but whatever...) We ate dinner, waited around, and around 6:00, the kids were in their costumes and we were out on the driveway doing the "photo shoot." Still no action on the street...pretty quiet... At about 6:15, we couldn't hold them back any longer, so we headed out. Last year at this time, Nathan was not a great walker yet (can you believe it??), so this year was much better in terms of mobility! We headed down one side of our street and back up the other side -- about 20 houses in all --just about perfect - nathan was pretty tired - Ellie and Frank did a few more houses, but even they were home by about 7:30. So, halloween traditions are a little different around here. We were the only family out by ourselves. Apparently the tradition here is that the women all gather at one house and have some kind of cocktail party and answer the door for the trick-or-treaters. Meanwhile, the dads take the kids out, while pulling a wagon of beer (no kidding) and loosely supervise big herds of their own children begging for candy... it was strange. Big groups of men, drinking, and big groups of kids running from house to house... and there were TONS of kids... I had bought 3 big bags of candy (about 220 pieces all together) - we started handing out 2 to each kid, but by about 7:45, we had to cut back to one per customer... Frank couldn't do it. He didn't think it was right to give a kid one little mini package of starburst. I couldn't let him near the candy bowl -- I had to answer every bell. No sham in my game. I also took all the "lame" candy out of Nathan's bag and handed it out, too (goobers,... I mean, the kid can't eat peanuts yet anyways...) We shut it down at exactly 9:00 pm with no extra candy -- had we left out lights on any longer, we would have had to resort to handing out pennies or fruit snacks (just got a new big box from costco)... but we don't want to be THOSE people... not when there were three "full size candy bar" houses on our street alone... we don't want to get a bad reputation our first year here!

All in all, it was a fun week, albeit a little lonely on Friday. We usually host a little trick-or-treating party for the grandparents at our house on Halloween. We still bought pumkin napkins and we still made chili (and of course, it was nearly 70 degrees!), and the kids were asking if anyone was coming over. (I think it's a good thing that they still don't really get it that we live so far away from everyone!) Hopefully, we got enough good pictures to capture every moment!