(Walk) Street Urchins

Another Halloween come and gone, and as exhaustion slowly takes over where the sugar coma left off, the kids are now in bed, with visions of Kit-Kats dancing in their heads. First up we have a Death Eater (from Harry Potter) and you have to admit, even if he doesn't eat food like the rest of us, he sure didn't miss anything in the looks department. The mask that came with the costume was super-scary, but it was also uncomfortable, so fortunately we got to see more of his face than the mask. Luke's best friend Shane dressed up as Harry Potter, and Shane's brother Ty went as a Dementor, so as they trick-or-treated they were like three little black caped shadows darting through the night.

Zach has had quite the week of publicity, if you count his making the semi-finals in the pumpkin race, and subsequently being featured in the local paper with his cat pumpkin named Milo. Also, if you haven't already been bombarded by my emails, you know that Zach asked for, and is very proud of, his water heater costume. I entered him into the costume contest at our local mall, and if you haven't voted for him yet, or only voted for him once, please do so again at Manhattan Village (under the contest tab). Apparently you can vote once every 24 hours until November 4, which lots of other parents seem to be doing, because Zach was way down in the voting last I checked. Now I don't care so much about winning, but it would really bum me out to have some other kid with a mass-produced costume win the costume contest. As my sister indignantly put it, "You can't enter a costume contest if you bought it from the store!"

Last night at the appointed hour Zach decided that he would rather be a cat for trick-or-treating purposes, which was fine with me because the water heater costume is a little restrictive and he was going to need to do a lot of walking and step-climbing. With cat and Death Eater in tow, we headed out to the circus that is the walk streets. Each year we've done this it seems to get more crowded, but it also seems to get more manageable as the boys get a little older and we know more friends who live on those streets. This time we were able to get a little respite by darting into a few houses where the real action (read: private parties with cupcakes for the kids and wine for the grownups) was going on.

Zach was just about the happiest cat in the world, tripping down the street with treat bag in hand. "Truck or treat!" he would call out proudly at each house. Then, after he received said treat, he would say, "Happy Halloween!" with a heart-melting smile. At some point when his bag was almost too heavy for him to carry, he declared, "I am a treat machine!" Too true. Now for the aftermath...