Halloween

I gave myself full permission this year to just buy a costume for Smalls. But the cheapness in me still won out once again and I made it. Cheap and resourceful are my two favorite ingredients for halloween costumes, and I just can't get away from it no matter how far up I move in life.
Here he is as a spider.

It was pretty shoddy handiwork and the strings holding the spider legs to his arms broke within 3 minutes. Michael couldn't have cared less, so I'll continue having my fun as long as he is oblivious to how bad I am.

We went to the Halloween party at the embassy again, and they go pretty all out in decorating offices for trick-or-treaters. I was concerned that it might scare Smalls and give him nightmares, but I let him go through anyway. That night he woke up three times scared of spiders in his crib. So, was it worth the fun? Do most kids get nightmares from stuff like that?

I made Ella's flower costume with pink napkins safety-pinned onto a pink bonnet. I hated having it on her though, so she wore it all of like 10 minutes. I didn't care because it was cheap and easy.

We had one group of 6 kids come trick or treating to our house. Halloween is not a tradition in Sweden, but over the years they have started dipping their toes in to the fun of it. So the kids were totally stoked when they saw me come to the door with a big bag full of candy. Anyway, as I went to hand out candy to the individuals, I noticed that just one kid in the group was holding a big basket, and they informed me that I was just supposed to drop the candy for everyone into the one basket. It cracked me up because that is just so, so, SO incredibly Swedish. It was just such a nice, lovely, fair way to do it and I totally wanted to teach them how to do it right instead. Poor kids will never know the pleasure of coming home with a bag stuffed full of more candy than their little brother.