Halloweekend, Hurricane Sandy

We celebrated Halloweekend with lots of spooky food.
Black Rice and Orange Tofu

Spooky Witch Soup (Asparagus Soup)

Spider Web Cake (Banana Three Layer Cake) that we took to Nick's school and shared with his fellow fiction writers. Atlas calls layer cakes "big birthday cupcakes."

Brains! (Beet and Spinach Pasta)

Saturday we went to the zoo. All the kids were dressed up and adorable.

They had games, a Trick-or-Treat trail, a DJ for a kids dance party (where Atlas did some super sweet dance moves) and lots of fun things to do.

That night was the ward Halloween Party. Atlas loved having balloon sword fights.

There were lots of other games and treats.

Ward parties here are so fun cause our ward is so small. That means you know about everyone and whoever you don't know, you get to know. There is no sitting at a table and blending into the background here, which is what I would usually do in a large group.

Unfortunately, I totally dropped the ball on costumes this year, which isn't like me. I had a billion good ideas for costumes, but they all required money, time, and a sewing machine. Having a new little baby to care for and Nick being so busy has limited the time I have to get stuff done. I was a bit sad and have made a goal to own a sewing machine by next Halloween so that I can make the best costumes ever. For the party though, Nick and I just put on some skeleton make-up, but really we were pretending to be a Scandinavian metal band.

For Halloween night we pulled together some different costumes about 30 minutes before heading out to go trick-or-treating. I was Sonic.

Nick was Duke Silver.

Luckily we had a Mario suit for Atlas that his Aunt Cassie sent to him last year. He loved being Mario and was super excited when he got to wear his costume to preschool.

Cosby wore a hand-me-down tiger suit and looked great in it.

Atlas is at a great age for trick-or-treating. He was so excited. When we would walk away from houses he would say (about the person who handed out the candy) "they are so nice...... I love them." Going out on Halloween night with your kid is as fun as doing it when you are a kid yourself and trick-or-treating in Providence is lovely. The weather was great and I love having an excuse to walk up to these beautiful old houses and see into their pretty entry ways. Halloween is alive and well in New England, there is none of the trunk-or-treat crap so the streets are chalk full of cute kids running around in costumes and the leaves are lovely. It's magic. I have always loved Halloween. I wanted to stay out forever but Atlas and Cosby had both had enough in little under an hour. Atlas wanted to go back home when we were about 4 blocks away from our car and wouldn't hit up the houses in the path on our way back, which nearly killed me cause I was having too much fun. Also, it was hard to watch Atlas consistently make the wrong candy choices. The person would hold out a big bowl of candy for him to choose from and all of it would be great except there would be like one giant Tootsie Roll or something in there and Atlas would pick the Tootsie Roll. I have so many things to teach this child.....

Hurricane Sandy left us unscathed. The coast line of Rhode Island took a bit of a beating, but we are far enough inland that we were just fine. People around us lost power, but we didn't. Atlas and Nick had school off so it was mostly just 2 days to hang out at home and watch a crazy rainstorm out the window, which is actually quite nice.