Halloween

 Halloween was quite different this year with COVID restrictions in place. Trick-or-treating was strongly discouraged in all the areas around Toronto, so we planned indoor trick-or-treating instead. Earlier in the week, we made some Halloween cookies and saved some of them to take over to friends' houses. So in the afternoon, I took the kids to deliver the cookies and Austin stayed home to set up stuffed animals with treats behind each of the upstairs doors. It was a nice way for the kids to see a few of their friends and show off their Halloween costumes. 

I got lucky this year and each of the kids was thrilled to wear one of the old costumes that I had made in previous years. Except Asher of course who didn't fit in to any of the old costumes. He decided to be Totoro (a "forest spirit" who looks mostly like a giant fat bunny and smiles really big- he's a character from one of our favorite family movies). Leif chose the blue dragon costume Asher wore last year, Heidi chose the tiger costume Asher wore several years ago, Natalie was the pink carebear that Heidi wore many years ago, and Trevor changed his costume choice several times, finally deciding on the green carebear that Leif wore the same year Heidi was a carebear. 

After we dropped off cookies and visited friends, the kids and I picked up a few pizzas from Little Caesar's (there are only a few here in Canada) and headed home. It took quite a bit longer than I had anticipated, so the kids needed to eat by the time we got home, so we let them watch "Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" (another of our family favorites this time of year) and eat their pizza before trick-or-treating. As always, Trevor was a good sport about having a different dinner and was a good sport about the treats. I got mostly things he can have, but a few of them he couldn't, but he didn't seem to care at all. We lighted the jack-o-lanterns as an afterthought a had the porch lights on, just in case some kids were out trick-or-treating, but only one set of kids stopped by. It wasn't as exciting a Halloween as usual, but it was nice and the kids got their fill of treats.