A Festive Family Halloween!

Uncle Joe and Aunt Suzi flew into Boston on Halloween Eve to spend time with my cousin Jacob who is a German professor in Worchester.  We were delighted when they asked if they could spend some time with us!  We hung out Wednesday afternoon at the house, visiting and catching up, and then Thursday morning the kids and I took them to downtown Boston.  Uncle Joe had been to the city before, but it was Aunt Suzi's first visit.  We bundled up, but the day turned out milder then expected, for which we were all grateful!

We started off in the Public Gardens, and this time I was prepared to feed the ducks with two slices of bread (in addition to the crackers that we had for a snack).  Sarah did a great job making her partial piece of bread last, while Nathan was generous with the chunks he was throwing for the birds.  Before long, we had quite a following of ducks and geese.  We saw the swans swimming and eating in the pond, but they didn't come over to visit today. 

I guess I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised by how bold the animals were.  This goose stuck his face right into my camera lens, and there were quite a few others hissing at us when we didn't throw bread their way.  In fact, Sarah started out feeding on the ground, but we quickly moved her up to stand on the bench so the ducks and geese weren't right in her face.  Also, one lady warned me that the squirrels may try to get into the backpack I had left unzipped next to us on the stroller, so I thanked her and zipped it closed.  Then there was a squirrel that jumped on the bench next to Sarah that I was trying to scare away, and I ended up having to give it a little push with my foot because my foot near his face and waving arms weren't enough to scare him off.  And then I turned around and another squirrel was on the stroller and trying to climb into my (again unzipped) backpack and steal our snacks! 

After our food supply was exhausted, we wandered around the park to the "Make Way for Ducklings" statues.  As before, the kids loved playing on the statues and would have been perfectly content to hang around for way longer then we did.  

We then walked across the street to the Boston Common and I could see that something was going on in the Frog Pond, and as we got closer we realized that they had drained the pool and were setting up the barricades to turn it into the ice skating rink!  The kids were entranced by the forklift so we stayed to watch the set-up for quite a while.

Then we walked the Freedom trail to Faniuel Hall, where a line of hundreds of people prompted me to ask someone what was going on.  "Citizenship" she replied, so we figured they were gathered to take their oath of allegiance to the US.  Pretty cool!  It always seems like we see something cool and/or unexpected when I take the kids downtown, although each time I'm sure it won't happen to us again this time.

We lunched at Quincy Market, where Sarah commandeered my bowl of clam chowder soup in favor of her cheese pizza.  I love what an adventurous eater she is!  To the kids' delight, Uncle Joe and Aunt Suzi also treated the kids to another set of smashed pennies.  We made quite a scene trying to smash Sarah's penny, as I was holding Sarah while Aunt Suzi and Nathan were trying to help her turn the crank.  How many people does it take...

We went home to put the kids down for a nap and while we were awaiting Jacob's arrival at the apartment, Uncle Joe got a surprise Facetime call from cousin Mary who is on a medium-term mission in England.  We all had a great chat with her, and Jacob even arrived during the conversation so they got to catch up as well.  Technology is so wonderful!

Brian got home early so we also had enough time to carve our pumpkin before dinner.  I had let the kids each pick out a pumpkin at the apple orchard with Grand Dad and Nana a few weeks ago, but with all the crazyness of the past few weeks, I was sure that we weren't going to have time to carve it until after Halloween.  Not that the kids would have known or cared, of course.  And I encouraged Sarah to pick out a small (pie) pumpkin so that we would have one to carve and one to roast and eat!

After looking online for some inspiration jack-o-lantern pictures, Nathan picked a more non-traditional face with scary eyes. Brian sat down to sketch out the design on the pumpkin and quickly got mobbed by the kids who wanted to "help".

Then it was over to the table to commence carving.  Uncle Joe was doing a superb job at keeping the kids interested in the process (well, they lasted a few minutes at least)!

About half way through carving, I realized that I didn't have any tea lights to stick inside the pumpkin, but putting our brains together, we came up with a birthday candle and made a "holder" out of a discarded piece of pumpkin shell.  Worked for us! 

Carving the pumpkin turned out to be so much more fun since we got to share the experience with extended family!

Then came costume time!!  I had started discussing costume ideas with the kids in late September, and when Nathan suggested Tigger and Sarah decided she wanted to be Tigger too, I enthusiastically embraced their suggestion!  So a trip to Joann's and many hours of sewing later, their costumes were almost ready to go before our trip to Knoxville.  And I have to applaud my foresight, since making the tails and ears at the last minute were almost more then I could squeeze into last week!

So, after a little indecision about whether or not they would wear their costumes to dinner, we trooped
off to try a new restaurant, The New England Soup Factory.  Overall we were all pretty pleased with our meal, though my Lobster Newberg was quite different then other lobster soups/stews/chowders I've had so far!

The matching Tiggers after dinner!

We swung back by the house to get tails and candy bags and glow-in-the-dark wands before heading up the street.  Nathan was so excited about trick-or-treating this year!  He kept saying things like "I LOVE trick-or-treating!  Let's go to some more houses!"  And I was thrilled with how he always spoke up and gave everyone a cheerful "Happy Halloween!" as he came up to get candy, as well as almost always remembering his "Thank you".  In fact, he would even prompt Sarah if she would forget to say either of these phrases.  Sarah was most excited about the lollipops that many people were handing out!

Our non-plan for the night was just to wander the neighborhood around the nearby park, but by chance one of the ladies handing out candy mentioned that we should go by Brook Street.  Right after that, we heard a gang of older kids run by yelling about heading to Brook Street, so Brian and I decided we should check it out since it would be our only chance.  At this point, Uncle Joe, Aunt Suzi and Jacob decided to start heading back to Jacob's place, so we stopped back by the apartment for them to get their stuff and say goodbye, and we snagged the stroller to speed up the couple block walk to Brook Street. I tried to get another photo of the kids (since I figured these pictures would be my lasting evidence of the hours I spent making their costumes), but they were too excited to keep going to really cooperate.

We were floored when we got to Brook Street!  One block had been barricaded to stop the traffic and there were THOUSANDS of people trick-or-treating!  It was kind of cool for the first few minutes, but then it just felt too crazy trying to push through hordes of people to move up the block and get to the porches of the houses.  The kids did get lots of comments and compliments on their costumes, though!  (I'm sure it was the matching that pushed them into the "super cute" category.)  So after working our way up one side of the street, Brian and I scrapped our plans to go down the other side and took an alternate route home instead.

We inspected the kids' candy when we got home, and although it seemed to me like we had spent a lot of the night trick-or-treating, they really didn't have an excessive amount of candy (especially after we confiscated everything with peanuts and tree nuts for after-hours parental enjoyment... I guess this would be considered a perk to having a kid with a peanut allergy?).

So thanks to Jacob, Aunt Suzi and Uncle Joe for making our Boston Halloween especially fun and memorable!  What a fun day!