Ghosts, Goblins, and Ghouls

Well, my second-favorite holiday has just passed and I figured I had to share some photos and highlights. The great thing about Halloween is that there are no over-inflated expectations to be crushed and you get to eat tons and tons of candy. Oh yeah, and you get to dress up like an idiot. On purpose.
The Language Center held its annual Halloween Party which this year was organized by our new colleague, Matthew. One of the more amusing things that night was that Jay, dressed as you see as Mr. Incredible -pictured below -(yes, that is a pair of my black stockings fashioned into a mask)

spent much of the evening locked in deadly combat with my friend and colleague Michael's son, Lucas who was dressed as Superman.

The party went well and I'd have to say the highlight for the boys was the "Boxes of Doom" as Matthew termed them. When Jason got wind of the plan to have "Exin Xiang" ("Disgusting Boxes" in Chinese) he pounced on the idea with a fervor that I rarely see from him. Not having the tradition of Halloween as a child, he was not constrained by the usual limits that hinder the rest of us. One of the foreign students in the EZ Cafe offered up the usual suggestions, "How about, you know, cold spaghetti for worms and um, peeled grapes for eyeballs?" Jason just shakes his head, are you kidding? This is yet another excuse to head to the pet store.

He bought two bags of "disgusting things". One bag, mealworms. The other, maggots. I tried to explain that this was over-the-top, out-of-bounds, too much but he would have none of it. Just try to imagine the shrieks and screams of the students as the worms curled around their fingers at the bottom of the box. Although, Matthew did introduce the boxes by pulling a dead rooster head out of one of them so I guess they should have known that he was pretty serious about the disgusting factor.

Of course, then there were my children pulling the worms out of the boxes and playing with them. And of course, guess where the worms ended up at the end of the night. That's right. On my diningroom table. The next morning the fish in the ponds in our courtyard got an extra-special treat.

Josh was a creepy vampire as you can see here. He was also the champion bobber for apples. It did very interesting things to his makeup. On Halloween, I actually got to go to Josh's class and read Halloween stories. He acted absolutely overwhelmed with embarassment the entire time - nevermind that I was dressed as a witch - complete with pointy hat, jack o' lantern earrings and necklace, and black fingernails - but you never know with him. Perhaps he was secretly pleased?

We'd spent most of Sunday morning making no fewer than 80 treat bags for the big day. Josh's classmates seemed to get a kick out of them anyway. I figured Rudy's classmates would be almost too big for treat bags but they still seemed to enjoy them.

My Spanish students got candies out of me as did anyone else who ran into me that day. I carried my jack o' lantern full of treats with me everywhere and anyone who could muster a "Trick or Treat" would get a candy.

Okay, okay, enough blah, blah, blah. What you really want to know is, "Heather, what were you for Halloween?" And the answer is: I was an elementary school student. I wore Rudy's school uniform - complete with a Hello Kitty backpack and a pair of glasses. What is scarier than having a son who is big enough that you can easily wear his clothes? Here I am (second from the left - the painfully white one who looks like a little boy) with three of the lovely women who work in the Language Center Office.

Happy Halloween!!