Halloween Pictures

Here are a few photos from Halloween night, as I sit in front of the TV in my dad's hospital room and watch the returns on Election Night. As it stands now, with a little bit of optimism Obama is the mama.

Here's an interesting after-Halloween story. A day after Halloween Jo had a deal for the kids. They could buy back their toys from the chore box with candy. The chore box is where their stuff that they don't pick up goes. The kids need to do a chore to get a toy back out of the box. Jo was offering one toy for one piece of candy. Vivian realized that this was a great deal. She spent all of her candy and bought back loads of her stuff. Evan? Not one. He held on to his candy and said screw the toys.

Lucky Man

We haven't had a babysitter all week. By Friday evening it was obvious that the family had spent too much time together. The kids finished dinner and Jo turned on a movie for them. The message was clear. Watch a movie. Eat your Halloween candy. Shut up.

But it never quite turns out like that, does it? Soon Evan was on Grandpa's lap stealing his nachos while they both watched Julia Roberts play the evil queen in Mirror Mirror (another great bedtime movie choice, Jo!).

And as I looked at the two of them (albeit through the optics of a DSLR) and then at Vivian and Jo on the couch across the room I was again so aware that I am a very lucky man.

The Two Peles

Vivian decided one day that she wanted to be Pele - the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes - for Halloween. She had visited the Jaggar Museum at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park a couple of times this summer and a painting of Pele by Herb Kane really caught her attention back then. She remembered it and that's what she wanted to be.

So Jo got all crafty and bought a wig and then braided the hair and bought flowers and made a flowery crown thing and converted a table lamp shade into a volcano candy bucket. And we had our Pele. And because when Vivian said she wanted to be Pele and I asked "The soccer player?", Evan got to be the other Pele - the god of soccer. He looks a little more like Kaka in this picture, but there is a photo of him with a fro floating around somewhere.

Monkey Bars

Vivian has been trying to get across the monkey bars at Ramsey park ever since we returned from India in May. She could never get past the very first bar. Then she did it all the way across. Just like that. And then she repeated it a dozen times just to make sure.