Halloween

Halloween seems like a month ago already. But it was just last Saturday. Weird.

Liam didn't have a costume this year. Just this "My 1st Halloween" shirt and another shirt with an alien on it that says "Be Green."


For the third year in a row, Anna was Yoda.

Here she is two years ago:


One year ago:


And this year:


She hasn't seen any of the movies and has no idea what the force is. I tried to briefly explain it, but didn't want to say too much because a) I didn't want to freak her out, and b) it's rooted in spirituality and religion and I don't feel like it's my place to instill those in her (seeing as how I have neither). And yes, I know, it's pure fiction. But I'm not sure she'd understand that at this point.


This year was Anna's first year of trick or treating. Obviously, a good deal of the candy given out at Halloween isn't vegan. That's a problem for us. But we want Anna to have the experience of going house to house in her neighborhood, saying trick-or-treat, taking whatever is given to her and saying thank you.

We really want Anna to grow up partaking in the same (or, at least similar) cultural experiences as her peers. We don't want to deprive her of trick or treating any more than we would want to deprive her of partaking in a Thanksgiving feast. On the face of it, it may seem like veganism would preclude us from these experiences or make them super difficult. But in reality, it's easy. It just takes a little bit of extra thought. Most decisions in parenting do.

So we decided that Anna would go trick or treating and she would then trade the non-vegan items for vegan ones. Her cousin isn't vegan, so he was willing to trade quite a bit of his vegan stuff for her non-vegan stuff. But he wanted to keep some vegan candies of his own, which left Anna with some non-vegan treats in her pumpkin. Of course, we had plenty of back-up candy for just such an occasion. We actually picked up a huge bag of assorted vegan candy at the Animal Rights Coalition.

So there you go. Vegan kid during Halloween problem: solved. Barely even a problem, actually.

Anna's cousin Noah didn't dress up as a scarecrow, he dressed up as The Scarecrow. From Batman. The face paint was applied after this photo.


Anna's uncle, cousin and uncle's girlfriend flew in from Colorado for my father-in-law's 60th birthday party, which was on Halloween night.








Where did that third kid come from? That's Sophia, daughter of our neighbor friends.


Here we are at the birthday party. I went as a Target employee, in case you're wondering. I used my old Target name tag from when I used to work one-hour photo there eight years ago.


Anna was up until 12:45 on Halloween night. I think that's the latest she's ever been up. From 10:30 on, she got more and more delirious. About a half hour before we left the party, she crashed (but didn't fall asleep) on a chair, staring blankly at a televised baseball game (is there any other way to watch baseball?).




So that was Halloween.