…but, trust me, the pictures don’t do him justice. This was the cutest Halloween turtle ever.
Our friends and neighbors invited us to their annual Halloween party last weekend.
I have a little bit of guilt about Halloween. It’s an up-and-coming holiday around here, with more and more kids out trick-or-treating etc. One American friend of ours hosts a very cool, all-out Halloween party for her kids’ classmates, complete with a haunted house and games and imported candy.
This year I didn’t even manage to get a pumpkin carved. My guys are a bit too young to care, and I’m a bit too un-energetic lately to single-handedly make it happen. So anyway, to me, Halloween = work, and we all know how I feel about more work.
ANYWAY, we were invited to the neighbors for pumpkin soup and trick-or-treating, an invitation we very gladly accepted. However, despite all my best intentions, as of the morning of the party no constumes had been decided on. Which was maybe for the best — four-year-olds can be fickle. So at breakfast I asked Karel what he wanted to dress up as for the Halloween party (and then held my breath and did not make eye contact because the night before when I asked him he’d said ”a camel.”). ”A turtle. Are turtles the slowest animal in the wuh-ruhld?”
Insert sigh of relief. From two humps down to one. A turtle I could handle.
Incidentally, while Emil really is into drawing (or having us draw things — lately he wants us to draw people he knows, which, um challenges our artistic abilities), Karel has very limited interest in all things crafty. Every once in a while I’ll try to be a good mom and initiate a craft project, just to be the only one who finishes it. So while I had a vision of us working on this costume together, I was very well aware that that was more of a delusion than anything.
Anyway, we cut, colored, and pasted and magically had a turtle shell. He was so excited about green face paint that he was giggling while I put it on.
As it turned out, dressing up as a turtle was a pretty good choice for our first-born. He wasn’t well acquainted with some of the other kids at the party, so played the part and crouched under his shell, observing. While out trick-or-treating, he occasionally lagged behind which just looked really appropriate — Pokemon, princess, and witch, with a contemplative tortoise following ten steps behind.
Anyway, the kids were excited to be out and Karel was over the moon about all his candy. (”Mama, I am super-duper happy about all my candy!”) I was explaining to the other moms about how it is in the States — how the candy has to be individually wrapped, etc., etc. One man didn’t have any candy so he distributed bananas. We can’t give out fruit any more, can we?
The banana-man didn’t feel good about it either, apparently; 15 minutes later as the kids were standing on another doorstep on the same street, we see a car pull up. ”That’s the banana-man!!” I whispered to the mom next to me, who had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out he’d driven down to the store as soon as we left to pick up some candy, and was now delivering it. 🙂 ”But make sure to brush your teeth — I’m a dentist, so I’m a bit concerned about that!”
He can rest assured that the bananas were eaten, and the remaining candy is in a bowl on top of the fridge, where it could possible remain for eternity. 
Emil wore the dinosaur costume we inherited from the Ramseys, and it seemed to suit him well. He didn’t join in trick-or-treating, but I think being around the big kids and playing with balloons pretty much made his night. I accepted the oohs and ahs of ”you made that turtle shell yourself?? This morning? Using a berry-sorter?” WITHOUT bringing to attention the fact that that was the ONLY costume I had made, as Bjørn and I were the only adults not in costume, and Emil’s was pulled from a hanger in the closet. There are some weeks you just don’t look gift-praise in the mouth.
