All Hallow's Eve

Cassius and Maceo chose interesting costumes this year, and happily (in Cassius's case) stuck with them in the buildup to the big night. In past years, I'd get Cassius's costume a couple of weeks ahead of time, and then, at the last minute, he'd change his mind, throw on a wild coupling of various different costumes from our dress up bin, and voilá, weird costume! This year, he decided to be a knight in armor (shining armor, that is!).

We ordered a helmet for him and Kate made his buckler and swords. Mace helped me to make his: he learned how to spray paint, and he was good at it.

He works hard for his money/costume.

A few days before Halloween, there was the annual block party on Dad and Susan's block. The boys brought their football and made new friends.

They play a game I called 500 growing up, but they call it Moss after star
wide receiver Randy Moss who never played during their lifetimes. It's a bit of a mystery to me.

Here's one young football player taking a short break to sneak a cookie in. 

After being told by Dad that Cassius had eaten several cookies.
"How many cookies have you eaten, Cassius?" I ask.
[garbled by mouthful of cookies] "One," he replies.

Charlie Brown asks the hard questions.

From the block party, we went to a bar to meet some friends to watch a Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin tv special which the boys enjoyed and which mystified me because how could this have ever actually been on tv? There were such slow moments, such grown up jokes, and such terrible animation that I wondered if the boys would like it. But that Schultz magic worked and they were entranced.

Halloween night, Kate brought the boys over for some neighborhood trick or treating.
Cassius was a knight in shining armor.

Homemade cardboard armor added at the last instant.

However, the crest on Cassius's knight's helmet went missing the night before, and he was devastated. It took quite a while for him to warm up to actually enjoying trick or treating, but after about 20 minutes, the little guy was having fun. 

Maceo was dressed in a design on his own--a reverse vending machine. Candy went in and nothing came out. It was a fun costume and people were baffled by it.

The night was quite warm and we kept running into friends in the neighborhood, which was lovely. Sadly, our next door neighbors the Bigelows were not out. Houston is getting ready for knee surgery, and they were busy preparing for that. Every other year, they have specially prepared bags for each boy, filled with a variety of yummy candies and snacks!