Fall and Halloween

Fall is here and I'm in love with it. Our walks have turned chilly and the leaves are gorgeous. Reuben has learned to say "Pretty!" When he finds something aesthetically pleasing he brings it to me to appreciate and exclaims Pretty! like the beautiful leaves below, rocks, rotting bits of wood, pieces of trash off the sidewalk, chewed gum.... you get the idea. I've learned our opinions on beauty diverge at a point.

We celebrated Halloween which took some effort. Reuben Miriam and I all got the flu. It was horrible. Public Service Announcement: Get your flu shot! Because the flu this year is a nasty one. With all the disease our Halloween festivities were mainly stuffing the kids into their costumes and keeping them in them till the cried loud and/or hard enough to evoke our pity.

Here's Reuben rolling around the church gym begging us to take his lion costume off.

And here's Miriam devastated to find herself dressed as a bear cub.

Eventually, we managed to find costumes each child could stand. Reuben fell in love with his glow in the dark skeleton pajamas and refused to take them off. Here he is trick or treating.

Miriam didn't seem to mind a clown wig. I think because it's not so different from the mess of hair she usually has on her head.

I had two, okay, now that I think about it four favorite Halloween moments:

1. Aaron went upstairs and stomped around and growled like a monster which scared the socks off Reuben. Here he is pointing upstairs and nervously telling me about the monster on the loose.

2. Reuben has taken up ghost hunting. Our neighborhood does a great job decorating for Halloween so our daily walks Reuben uses to "find ghosts" as he puts it.

3. Reuben was nice enough to share his candy with me. He even went the extra mile and chewed it for me. He decided he really likes licorish but he couldn't figure out how to say it. So he spent the day after Halloween following me around and demanding "More Licor! More Licor!" which sounds pretty bad in public.

4. Reuben likes to tangle himself up in Miriam's play mat then call for help. On Halloween night he was entertaining himself in just such a way when I answered the doors for some trick or treaters. Their eyes got big when they saw what looked like a small child tied up and plaintively calling help! help! Help!

Bwa ha ha ha!

You can see a corner of the gym in the picture below. And below that is a video of Reuben trapped.