The boys were very excited about Halloween this year. This was first year that Eliot really took pumpkin carving into his own hands (literally). Though supervised the creations on the right and left were his very own work. The one in the middle was commissioned and supervised by Peter.
Last week we went to Sendiks (a local grocery store) where they had all sorts of harvest/Halloween activities going on including face painting.
Peter wanted to be a blue cat and was very pleased with the results. When I take pictures with my phone he's never sure where to look, which is why he seems to be staring off into space.
Eliot wanted to be a cheetah. Though "cheetah" was not part of the face painter's official repetoire she very obligingly adapted her tiger face to come up with a close approximation. He asked for "the lines down the face" but when she didn't seem to know what he meant he was a good sport and thanked her anyway.
The night before Halloween we attended the Harvest Festival at church which of course included costumes and Trunk-or-Treating. After Eliot's face painting was done he painted Yellow Bear's face so she wouldn't feel left out.
While Eliot chose to be a cheetah, Peter chose to be an Australian redback spider (which was a costume that I'd made for him last Halloween). The two of them had a great time crawling around and really getting into character. Eliot kept telling Peter that cheetahs eat redback spiders and that Peter should give him a "venomous bite."
They both won on the cake walk (thank goodness!!) and were very pleased.
They each won a doughnut in the bean bag toss.
They settled in for spooky story telling.
The spooky stories included the standard grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for guts, wet sponge for brain etc. They thought it was delightfully yucky.
Saturday was Trick-or-Treating in the neighborhood and Eliot donned his cheetah outfit again, it's fun to be able to use your costume more than just once.
Fifteen minutes before Trick-or-Treating was to begin Peter announced that he wanted to go as a black cat instead of a spider. This seemed simple enough--and what's the point of all this anyway if it's not to have fun?--so I whipped together some ears and a tail with the boys' "help" (which eventually meant their being shut out of the sewing room so that I could get it done without also sewing pieces of elastic to scraps of fabric for Yellow Bear). Peter didn't want me to take his picture so this one was taken on the sly while he was describing how full he was. All the last-minute costume making meant that we had only one of the two hours allotted to Trick-or-Treat. This was just as well since their patience could only stand going down one street and back up the other side.
Once they were done they settled down on my parents' porch and stuffed themselves with candy while passing out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters that came along.
Peter dumped his candy onto the table to sort through it. In the picture I asked him to say "Happy Halloween" in order to get a good smile but he wanted it to look like he was just beginning to say "Halloween" so he froze in the midst of saying the first syllable. He's certainly one for doing things his own way.
Eliot was over the moon. His dream of being a "real" cheetah had come true as far as he was concerned and on top of it all he had a bucket of candy.
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