Not too cool for a late Halloween post.

wish i discovered this shirt before halloween. i'll make sure that next year it will be me posing in it for a post-halloween blog post

Halloween. We survived! Barely! It was almost a disaster! Maya even called it her worst Halloween ever! (granted, her disappointment lasted for only about 10 minutes, but she made it very clear to us with every fibre of her being, just to make sure we got the message).

First of all, Mark and I are NOT huge Halloween fans. Not even tiny ones. Well, I pretty much roll my eyes every time I hear that 'H' word. I know, I know, kids love it, adults get to pretend they are kids and eat an extra pound of candy, I get it. What I don't get is the whole scary aspect of the holiday (is it even a holiday?). But then again, I'm that strange abnormal person who doesn't like horror movies either. And I didn't grow up celebrating Halloween (we are not big on Halloween in Europe), so I don't have all those warm and fuzzy memories from my childhood about my parents and I going trick-or-treating in our 5-storey apartment building, or having our carefully carved pumpkins smashed on the street, or spending a small fortune on scary decorations and costumes.

Why am I saying all this? For posterity, in the first place. I write this blog with my children in mind. Some day I want to be able to put all my posts into a book so they can't blame me for not keeping some kind of journal. And also because there should always be a second opinion about everything, even Halloween. And since everyone else seems to love it, it's my duty to rain on all the excitement surrounding this day. And lastly, they need to understand one day, that aside from all the typical things that parents do or sacrifice for their children, we went an extra mile and made sure they had a normal Halloween.

Speaking of which, it rained here on Halloween (well, almost. we went trick-or-treating on Saturday night). At first we thought that it was going to be just the right kind of cherry to top our already disastrous day. But in the end it didn't stop us, and we actually had quite a nice time walking down the wet streets and collecting all the candy surplus, since not everyone was hardcore enough to be trick-or-treating out in the rain that night. And I just happened to have another one of my infamous headaches, which meant I took some Exce&rine before heading out (I'll translate it for you - 130 mg of caffeine), which conveniently kicked in at just the right moment, when Maya was being very adamant about letting us know that this was going to be her worst Halloween ever.

We got home about 1.5 hours later, kids with bags full of candy, me feeling energized after a refreshing walk (and from all the caffeine still running through my veins), Ivy barely being awake from the long nap she took on our walk. In the end, it all worked out. Yet somehow it felt like we had a 36 hour day, and it was hard to believe that Elijah's half-hour long screaming fit happened only a couple of hours ago...

I realize that no Halloween post is complete without costume photos, but I'll have to save them for another time. After all, it is almost 2 a.m. here, and I have this strange aversion to very lengthy posts. Besides, the battery in my camera only lasted for one shot that night (figures, after all our hard work we put into the costumes), so we only managed to take photos of everyone on Monday night, while visiting grandparents and celebrating a birthday in the family. But like I said, I have to save all that for another post.

As for that one shot that I managed to take before the battery died, it's petty much worth all the shots that we missed that night...