at the church trunk-or-treat
with Sassafras handing out candy,
Hamster, Pickles, and Bud in the back

friendly anonymous trick-or-treater
in front




My o-blog-atory Halloween post

Bud was a care bear. He asked to be a ninja turtle, so since I'm such an awesome mom, I bought him one as soon as costumes went on sale. Like in August. So he could play dress up and get plenty of wear out of it. Then the dog chewed about an inch square out of the shell, and Bud wouldn't wear it anymore. It was ruined he said. Luckily, every year my wonderful mother and sisters patrol the after-Halloween costume sales for Christmas presents to fill our dress-up bucket. A couple years ago, Mom bought Bud a care-bear costume. It's blue, his flavorite, and has a little heart on the butt. It's also too small for Bud now. But it was in the dress-up bucket Thursday when we went trick-or-treating. And it was dirty, and Bud wouldn't wear anything else. Not the awesome leopard, not the skelly-bones, not even the moccasins and fleece tunic I made Pickles last year.

So I tried to get a good shot of the black socks (he wears black socks cause they're cool and easy to tell apart from Pickles' red socks) in the pictures. You can see the black socks because the care bear costume goes halfway to his knees. And halfway to his elbows. The legs are sort of pulled down in the pic. When he was walking, they would really ride up.

But he was happy. Which is good, because it annoys me when kids are crying in places they're supposed to be having fun. Just ask Pickles, who has had a melt-down at the zoo, the library, the movies, a hockey game, 2 aquriums, and any museum we have ever visited. We love him, bless his heart, he's just sensitive. So we were out with our care bear, our tiny ninja, our big ninja, and our kid who pulled whatever he could find from the dress-up bucket and called himself a wild thing. See, Pickles had a ninja costume too when we started, but could not, and still can't, find it.

BTW, Pickles wears red socks because when he asked for them, I looked everywhere for the stupid things. The only red socks that are sold for kids are athletic. Pickles wanted crew, like he was used to wearing. So I bought a bottle of Rit dye and boiled a pack of socks for an hour so they would be sure to be red and not pink.

While we were out trick-or-treating, a tiny Batman ran up to Bud and said "You're a care bear. I hate care bears," and ran off. So me, being a mama bear who totally had Bud's back, yelled "YEAH? WELL HE HAS MORE CANDY THAN YOU!" I wanted to push him down and steal his candy for totally dissing my cute little care bear, but his mama bear was standing there too, and you don't mess with corn-fed Midwestern women.

Also, this is how much I paid for gas yesterday. Too bad it was polluted with corn ethanol, but this IS Iowa.