Fun While it Lasted

I am pretty darn proud of the kids' Halloween costumes. Last year we went to one of the big Halloween megastores in town to look for a few accessories, and I was so overwhelmed by the experience (too much disposable cheap crap in one setting) that I vowed this year I would not set foot in one. I held true to my declaration and instead spent a few late nights at Michael's and plenty of time in the local blast-from-the-past fabric store (reminds me of stores in the very small town - which was always a few decades behind the times - near our cabin when I was a kid in growing up in the far northern reaches of Idaho).

In typical fashion, I waited until the last minute, especially on Ashagre's costume. I'm pretty sure Ashagre was convinced he wasn't going to have a costume because I was going to drop the ball. A few late nighters over the last few nights leading up to Halloween and I got it all put together. (Lucky for him, the thread in my sewing machine was the same color green as that found in the Ethiopian flag because I don't remember how to load a bobbin or change the thread and didn't have time to figure it out.) Here's the princess and the Ethiopian Olympic runner prior to their school's Halloween parade.

We ended up joining some of Elsa and Ashagre's friends from school last minute and the small pack of kids had a blast roaming the streets together. Ashagre stayed true to costume the entire night and sprinted from house to house. While some of the other kids were literally crawling along the sidewalk at the end, he never slowed down. It's a little hard to run in princess shoes, especially when they're a half size too big, but Elsa did just fine tracking down her own stash of candy. All in all, I'd say the holiday was a big success and fun was had by all.

We did a pretty good job of getting the kids in bed at a reasonable hour and they really didn't eat that much candy; however, it did nothing to prevent the post-Halloween fallout today. Our kid that struggles especially has a hard time after really fun family events, and Halloween is no exception. Said kid got in some fairly big trouble at school today for some pretty horrible behavior and then managed to end the night in a raging tantrum as well. It's times like these that you wonder if it would be a better idea to just not do the big fun things at all. Maybe they're just too much. Maybe we really do just need to make things simpler, their world smaller. But there's always that part of me that screams no. That argues we can't live a life in fear of the fallout. That that these kids need these experiences, the opportunity to be kids as much as they need to rage afterwards. So instead of calling off the next big event I find myself sitting here trying to remember why this kid acts the way they do, find compassion within myself as I remember the why, and resolve to use better strategies when the fallout occurs, since, inevitably, it will.

It's November 1st. Come on November, come through for me. Let's make this rage the last for a little while. Let's keep the weather cool and crisp and let's find a minute or two for me to sit silently relishing in the special kind of light that only fall days are colored by.