Halloween 2013

Halloween 2013 was pretty low key compared to last year. Only one stint of trick-or-treating compared to last year's three, no base or story time activites... and we didn't even get a pumpkin this year. Wah wah. It wasn't for lack of trying though. The base grocery store's pumpkins were all rotten by the time we wanted to get one (ewww) and I couldn't quite locate the cut-them-yourself pumpkin patches that I've heard are in the area. Oh well, thankfully this year Ellie didn't notice. For the record Ellie (if you read this when you're older), I'm really sorry and truly gave it an honest effort, but we'll try harder next year -- and I'm far more confident that we'll be able to find those pumpkin patches after we'll have been here for over a year.

Anyway, all was not lost come Halloween morning. Ellie helped me make pumpkin pancakes and it seems we have a little cook in the making because she loves to help in the kitchen. Mixing mostly, but she gets very excited when I ask if she wants to help and begs to get her special step-stool out.

And it just wouldn't be right to eat those pumpkin pancakes on anything but an orange plate and matching orange cup for milk. I'd say we were off to a good start!

Later that afternoon, Ellie helped put the finishing touches on her costume...

...this year she was a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans!

I would say this was 60/40 my idea/her idea. When I asked what she wanted to be for Halloween, at first she said she didn't know (her response of choice lately), then immediately retracted and said, "A duck!" I reminded her that she was a duck last year and maybe she could be something different. I asked what her favorite thing is and she shouted, "Jelly beans!" She still has fond memories of going to the Jelly Belly factory over the summer. A quick google search later and I found a cute idea for a costume. I showed the picture to Ellie and it stuck. She would be a bag of Jelly Bellies!

Lucky for me it was a really easy costume to put together: one of our travel-sized space bags, some poster board for the packaging, a print out of the Jelly Belly logo, and those long balloons used to make balloon animals. I feel like this kind of luck is going to run out eventually, so I'm savoring how easy it all is right now.

We went trick-or-treating on base on a very cold evening -- so different from trick-or-treating in shorts last year! We ate a quick picnic in the back of the car and got Ellie geared up to get some candy.

Another reason I loved this year's costume was how it fit easily over her big winter coat. We met up with quite a few friends and after a quick photo-op, first with her friend Kyle (he's in the middle and is our sponsor family's son),

and with Quinn and Lyla,

it was time to get the show on the road!

The base set-up makes it easy to get candy: most of the housing is apartments, so everyone gathers outside and basically you go through the line and get candy. Not quite the classic door-to-door method that I grew up with and that Ellie did last year, but it got the job done in a short amount of time. There are some single-family homes in another area that we'll try next year. Ellie did get a full-size candy bar for her costume!