Hallow-weird

It was not the most typical Halloween around here.  Halloween is sort of taking on an odd feel these days anyway, now that Jacob is probably within a couple years of being done trick-or-treating (by his estimates--but let's be honest, sometimes the costume game improves in high school, and having a little brother may extend that more than he thinks).  Seeing co-workers, family, and friends with little kids makes it extra clear that we're getting to be on the back end of this experience.  Finding costumes for growing boys is getting harder, as they tend to skew creepy or gross or crude, and that's not within my Halloween parameters.  I'm not of the religious group that doesn't celebrate, but I do think that if we're going to celebrate, we should do it in a way that respects our faith and doesn't venture into legit-creepy or disturbing.  I allowed the Scream mask last year, but nixed Jacob's requests to be Pennywise or the new Joker this year, partly because he's never seen those movies to understand how messed up those characters are, and partly because they're just disturbing to people for many reasons.  Carter isn't much easier, but we've still got a few more years before we reach that stage with him.  So, anyway, Halloween just feels different.

We had a busy week as usual, and somewhere in there I had to finish my costume, make sure the boys were set for theirs, and take care of a million other things--on top of still being sick and finally going to the doctor and getting antibiotics (which are still only sort of working--I'm better but not great).  On Tuesday, Craig and I had biometric screenings at my work, which are essentially low-key physicals that check cholesterol, blood pressure, and a few other health measures.  As expected, Craig's numbers look great after his weight loss.  Mine were as expected, but I haven't been able to work out in a bit so I'm sure they could have been better.  When I was waiting my turn to go in, I admired the view out the window on a very pleasant fall day...
 

It ended up in the 60s and was fabulous outside later in the day.

Jacob had basketball practice Tuesday, and Jacob and I had to go to church stuff on Wednesday so I had to start carving the pumpkins Tuesday night and finished them on Wednesday.  Most of it ended up after bedtime, so in the end I did them all myself.  Carter actually made the carving suggestion for a Raptors one, and these were the finished products...

I was just too tired to be creative by the time I finished the Raptors one.  Basic it is!

The Raptors one looked cool in the dark.

As for costumes, we were fortunate to randomly find Carter's at Walmart last Saturday when I was picking up something I bought online.  Jacob's was a last minute job on Monday.  The Halloween store was pretty picked over by then, so it wasn't ideal, but it was good enough.  Still, everything felt a bit like an afterthought, maybe because I've been sick or maybe because no one could find what they wanted for the last month...and suddenly it was Halloween week and we had to get it done.

I also had to finish off my costume for work.  Our suite had a video game theme, and our group was doing Super Mario Kart.  Because I accidentally missed the planning meeting (due to receiving a shipment of seven boxes that I had to find space for about five minutes before the meeting started), I had slim pickings of characters.  I did some looking on Pinterest and settled on King Boo, a ghost.  I was lucky enough to find the exact crown I needed for $4 at the Halloween store the previous week, and then formulated a plan to build the costume.  I finished it on Tuesday night so I could take it into work on Wednesday before the wind and rain started on Halloween.  I was excited on Halloween to go into work and put it all together!

The first thing I did was get a picture of me with my inspiration...

King Boo is over my left shoulder (right side of the pic)

The office looked amazing!  So many cool video game details!

Coins, bricks, mushrooms, and Pac-Man dots to mark the trick-or-treat path

Another group did Tetris...

And another did Donkey Kong...

Ah, brings back old school Atari memories...and those twisted paper vines were so cool.

Pac-Man hung out near the front door...

Our section looked so fun!  Alas, I was too busy with actual work on deadlines to do much decorating, but the team did a great job!

This hallway had lots of mushrooms, a question mark box, and fun decals.

Everyone loved my costume!  It was so simple--just a white shirt, two pieces of white posterboard, a printed out face that I found on Pinterest (ideally for adding to white paper lanterns), and some leftover craft foam for the tongue.  The tongue was particularly tricky since the angle of the mouth in my printout was a bit different than other pics with the tongue, but I finally figured out how to cut it make it work.  My tiny crown was such a lucky find, too.  I added some string to make my sandwich board, then taped on the inside a thick ribbon that already had Velcro on it (I think it once held sheets or something) like a belt so I could stabilize where the board sat on my body.  It worked perfectly!

My colleagues did a great job on their go-karts, which they wore around the building and even used for a silly race!

Note the little banana peel (an obstacle in the game) that was just paper wrapped around a water bottle

 Details like banana peels and bombs rounded out the cuteness...

It looked so fun, and in the end, our suite won!  There was some tough competition, but between the costumes we all came up with and the fun décor, we were unstoppable!

In the meantime, it was POURING outside.  In the inches of rain.  We weren't sure that trick-or-treating would even be possible, not just because of the rain, but because of forecasted high winds.  In the end the winds didn't pick up until after trick-or-treat time, but the rain was a challenge.  The boys debated going out, and we even considered going to the church that hosts Upward Basketball games for their Harvest Festival in the school gym.  But in the end, Craig went out with the boys for maybe an hour.  Oddly, the only kids we ended up with were the kids across the street.  Our street is normally at least half dark, and I think with the rain people just skipped our section entirely.  It was a bummer (and now we have way too much candy left), but at least the boys were able to do some trick-or-treating so it really felt like Halloween.

Here is Navy Seal Carter, who preferred having his face covered with his mask.

I then made him smile for me because it was so much cuter.  This costume had two grenades, a knife, a walkie talkie, and a headset (which he skipped because it didn't fit right).  And it was still 33% cheaper than the Halloween store.

Jacob was a rapper.  He rationalized it by saying that if he got the hoodie to match the pants he got the previous weekend, at least that was better than spending that much or more on something he'd only wear once.  Then we just had to add the chains and hat.  He wanted a grill for his teeth, too, but those were sold out.

Hard to see, but the hat has a bunch of gold studs on the front.  All about the bling, baby.

I opted to spice up the boring pumpkin I carved with the "fancy" pumpkin light that flashed rainbow colors.  Maybe next year I'll regain my face game.  Too bad almost no one got to see them!  Stinkin' rain.  The boys came back with damp feet but were otherwise unscathed.  They got just enough candy to spice things up amidst our leftovers.

So, between the last-minute costume buying, the crappy weather, the lack of trick-or-treaters, and the boys' short outing themselves, it was just an odd day.  It's rare that my work day is so significantly better than our evening.  We finished off the evening with a crazy windstorm packing 60+ mph gusts that lasted from about 9pm until late morning.  I slept with earplugs in as I knew that every time I woke up to blow my nose or deal with my dry mouth from mouth breathing, the wind would keep me up.  The earplugs did their job and I slept as well as I could have expected with a cold.  It was rather unnerving in the morning, though, particularly when I went to my pre-furniture delivery allergy shot and sat in the parking lot feeling my car shake in the wind.  Our pool cover fell in, but otherwise we came out unscathed.  Many houses in Buffalo and Rochester got hit by trees, though.  A house around the corner had the top half of a dead pine tree snap off in multiple large pieces, and I saw a house with siding damage a few minutes up the road.  Thankfully we put the hoop in the garage or else I would have been ridiculously worried about it--and after the last wind damage I didn't want to risk it. The also did quite the job of finishing off the majority of the fall leaves, which was a bummer since the day after Halloween always feels like the fun part of fall is over, even without that.  Now we're left with just cold and snow and one wonderful blip of Thanksgiving before winter takes over for real.  All in all, it was just a weird lead-up to the holiday and a weirder 24 hours.

And now it's November.  How the heck is that possible?  Wasn't it just New Year's?  Thanksgiving is less than four weeks away, and then the Christmas craziness begins.  Of course, we'll be too busy with basketball to notice, I think.  I have no idea how these last two months (of the decade!) will go, but there's no stopping it now...