Halloween '06 and My Dad's Party

I was shocked when I downloaded/uploaded/whatever the latest Halloween pics to my computer.

The folder 'Halloween 06' now joins its counterparts '03, '04, and '05. Hard to believe we've been doing this so long. Seems like just yesterday I dressed YaYa in a one-piece Halloween pajama back in the olden days of film cameras, circa 2001.

Just for kicks, here's some photos of the girls through the years.

This is 2003, where we had a Wizard of Oz theme. I'm the Tin Man.

(sorry, shoulda orientated that pic prior to Uploading it to AOL)

That's YaYa on the right dressed as Dorothy. Her friend Meadow is in the middle, and I think that's YaYa's cousin in the Barney getup.

And here's LuLu dressed as the cowardly lion.

Now for 2004.

Here's LuLu.

And YaYa.

I have no idea why the pics are different sizes. It was my first digital camera, a shoebox sized gizmo.

2005 I chronicled here on Slapinions.

I'm still waiting for the pictures from LuLu's trip to the pumpkin farm, but the Mrs. spent one evening carving the bounty they found there.

In Milwaukee Halloween is officially mandated to be the Sunday closest to the holiday, and during daylight hours only. It was fine for me as a kid, but my kids deserve supervised nighttime trick-or-treat. Therefore, we take up a friend's mother's offer to participate in a paid trick-or-treat event, this year on October 28th.

Roughly 600 kids pay $3 each to receive a treat bag and pin, and the right to trick-or-treat at night within a supervised neighborhood.

We started out with YaYa in the Barney get-up

Yes, we reuse our costumes. We are poor.

But she grew tired of it and switched to the Rapunzel dress we bought her for her birthday.

LuLu went as a witch

And Parker went as Toto, again a recycled costume. I'd have had better pictures of him, but . . well, I 'll explain later.

Garsh, I look good, no?

You'll note the kids are dressed for Arctic battle. It was supposed to be 30 degrees, so we dressed appropriately. We even brought blankets along for the stroller.

The evening started with a generous dinner at the Mother's house. There were a lot of kids.

Then it was out to trick-or-treat.

It turned out to be a mild night and the blankets went unused.

Two big memories of the night, aside from great times watching the kids have fun going from house to house; Parker stumbing down the road, YaYa stopping to chat with many of the people handing out candy, LuLu getting frightened of a scary house and me dragging her kicking and screaming to the door, just so her life wouldn't be ruled even this once by fear.

Memory one: we're two or three blocks in when LuLu announces firmly she needs to use the potty. So I take her on my shoulders piggy-back all the way back to the house where we started, use the potty, then retrace our steps and try to catch up to the rest of the family - occasionally stopping to trick-or-treat along the way. LuLu and I are getting close lately, she's just so cute.

Memory two: when LuLu and I were on our own we came to a house where a 3 or 4 year old boy dressed as a Storm Trooper was crying. The woman handing out candy said he was lost and had been on her lawn for more than 20 minutes.

Well, a short time later I saw a SUV cruising slowly down the street. I flagged it down, and sure as day it was the father searching for his son. When he told me what he was wearing I said "Well, I have good news for you. He's down the road about two blocks, over on your left"

He drove off - and went right past the house. So I ran, yes ran, down the road after him. "I'm too fat for this s**t," I said when it was over.

Father and son were reunited.

Now after the trick-or-treat we dropped the kids off at my mother in law's (where YaYa was unusually sentimental about us leaving) and headed off to Caroline's, a pub near downtown Milwaukee that featured a live jazz band. It was my father's belated 60th birthday party, and a good (and unusually large) number of his side of the family showed up.

I'm a fan of jazz and enjoyed it, but I was tired and Lisa was exhausted, so we made an early exit. But my Dad stayed til nearly 2 - and he had to work at 6. The highlight while I was there was the band seranading my father. He had a great time and couldn't stop talking about it at work the next day. Kudos to my sister Katie for planning the bash.

Alas, sometime in the night my camera - my beloved camera - started taking crazy shots, blurred and streaked. It wasn't discovered until the next day (I had assumed it was just the poor lighting on the trick-or-treat and in the bar). This is a bad thing for two reasons: 1) we are 11 days from embarking on the 1st Slapinions Family Vacation and I cannot afford a new camera and 2) half the photos of the trick-or-treat, all of my Dad's birthday photos, and all of the daytime trick-or-treat were useless.

Don't believe me? Here's the most usuable of these discarded pics, a fluke solid shot of (naturally) a lousy pic.

And the one usuable photo of Parker from the 29th's daytime trick-or-treat, showing the after effect of all that candy.

We didn't want to stay home and be bombarded by candy hungry kids (aren't we horrible?) so we split and did a little trick-or-treat around my Mom's neighborhood, then visited my Aunt Rosie, then headed to my mother-in-laws.

While there we handed out candy, or YaYa did. She was upset at the low turnout in the older neighborhood, but I helped her out by flagging down some customers for her. All three of my kids and I then played tag, hide and seek, and Zombie in the front yard. And YaYa played a trick on passer-by's. She hid on the ground under my coat adn then jumped out and yelled 'Boo' when I gave the signal. She scared the bejeezus out of one infant!

Afterward we toured a house my friend Emo had remodelled and put up for sale.

And just for kicks, the camera decided to start working again later in the evening, tho' I still half-believe it's just tricking me into leaving for vacation with a bum camera.

Here's two random pictures of my girls from the test shots: