Cyn and Red plus two!: October - Part 3...Halloween

Unfortunately, Halloween is not a big holiday here in Australia, but every year there are more products in the stores and I hear about more people going out trick-or-treating. We even had two come to our door this year...a record! Thanks to Costco opening in Sydney earlier this year we were able to buy a big orange pumpkin for carving (they generally don't have them in the grocery stores here). This was Calvin's first pumpkin carving experience and he was quite keen to get his hands on those carving tools!! He also enjoyed getting his hands into the seeds and squirting them out into the garden (daddy taught him that one)!

Helping scrape the seeds out

Daddy finishing off the carving

The finished product!

Calvin loved having the pumpkin in the house and kept asking me to light the candles, then he would blow them out and sing "Happy Birthday!" Hmm, perhaps the concept of Halloween hasn't gotten through to him yet, but we love his enthusiasm. :)

As we didn't think there would be much for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood we went to a Halloween event put on by Network Canada here in Sydney, with Calvin's good friend (and ours) Miss E and her family. It was on Sunday, in the afternoon at a large pub near The Rocks, which was nice because the adults could sit down and even have a drink, but not exactly an authentic trick-or-treating experience. They had decorated the place nicely and were handing out candy to the kids (as well as hiding it around), plus they had activities like mummy wrapping (wrap up in TP), limbo, coloring, and a children's entertainment group GOSEEK).

All Calvin wanted to be for Halloween was a fireman, no matter how many other options I gave him he just said no (except for a brief fling with the idea of being Batman, despite have absolutely no idea who that is!). When I would ask him if he wanted to be a cow, or a puppy, he would "Nooo, those are just animals" (in his, that's silly mommy voice), and when I asked if he wanted to be Thomas the Tank Engine, or Bob the Builder, he would say "Nooo, that's just for tv"...once again I think he isn't quite old enough to understand what Halloween is all about - no worries, plenty of years for him to get the hang of it! We dressed Cam as a Baby Vampire (using mascara on his hair - with rather odd results), but couldn't get the "blood" to stay on his mouth as it was washable marker and he is constantly drooling!