Just a quick post on the Halloween activities.

 

Planning for Halloween at the Fraser household begins weeks in advance of the actual date. First and foremost on the list of items to accumulate are the costumes, followed closely by the pumpkins and decorations. This year Sarah was dressed as an "adorable witch" (according the costume packaging but would have been accurately described as such by anyone who saw her) and Brennan was a cow. I thought a little Don Juan costume would have been appropriate for him but apparently pint size costumes are limited to farm animals.

 

Jess and I, back in early October, took our 2nd annual trip to Andrew's Scenic Acres to pick some pumpkins and raspberries.  This year Sarah was more mobile and able to pick some fruit on her own. If the owners were smart they would weigh her upon arrival and then when leaving, as I am sure she ingested a pound or two's worth of raspberries. After being given her own container and shown how to pick, she was off to the races. Oddly enough she did not actually try and eat any of the berries and had amassed quite a tidy little pile in relatively short order. 

At some point I decided a treat was in order but was fresh out of Arrowroots, so I decided some unpaid for fruit might do the trick. She tentatively tried one berry and upon discovering it didn't take like toasted horse crap, decided that eating every berry within a 5 mile radius was in order. Unbeknownst to her there were ants and other miscellaneous critters mixed in with the berries ... not a big deal when considering their high protein content but Jess wasn't crazy about the idea of Sarah biting into an ant or worm. While I was able to pry the basket away from her, the raspberry bushes surrounding her proved too much of a temptation and she continued grazing until I popped her into her wagon and hurried along to the pumpkin patch.

 Sarah was initially not much interested in the big orange balls in the middle of the field, but after some cajoling decided to help pick out several suitable pumpkins. Brennan was sleeping peacefully and decided early on that the 3rd annual trip to the fruit farm would be his time to shine.

 

Prep work for Halloween this year included teaching Sarah to say "trick or treat", which came out sounding more like "tik o teet" ... this upped the cute factor and ultimately let to more junk food per house than originally envisioned. Jess also decided that the standard happy face carved into the pumpkins was boring and common, so this year she purchased stencils and power pumpkin carvers. While the pumpkins did turn out quite well I think that the combination of power tools and fruit is a disturbing development ... but that could just be me.

 

Lloyd and Claire made the trip down for Halloween again this year, providing us with the ability to take the kids out while Claire hands out the candy to the beggars. Brayden, Jen's son, decided that going door-to-door with Sarah might yield more candy, so the two kids walked hand-in -hand to the doors while Jess, Jen, Lloyd, Brennan and I tagged along to make sure nobody screwed our kids out of their deserved junk food.

 

The first couple houses were a challenge, mostly because Sarah thought that people opening their doors and offering candy was an invitation for her to enter their home and kick back. After a few lessons from Brayden she got the hang of it and became quite adept and grabbing 2 or 3 treats from people.

 

One stop on the route was the Calabrese home. Pig likes to ham it up a little and play the music to Halloween in an attempt to give kids already on a sugar high another reason to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Most kids aren't old enough to get the reference and think Pig is probably playing some B side tunes from Barney's Greatest Hits. Sarah didn't flinch and decided that her relationship with Bev and Wee Wee warranted a few extra bags of cheesies.

 

We called it a night after the Calabrese home. Sarah was pooped from her trip earlier in the day to downtown Oakville, where merchants gave out candy to the thousands of pre-school kids roaming the streets at 10am on a Monday morning. While she doesn't actually like chocolate, the abundance of chips made her quite happy, as did the promise of doing it all over in 12 months.