A Georgia Girl in Germany

I was very thankful that I had off work on Halloween day, especially since the kids were off from school (end of the quarter, so teachers were working on grades). Plus, Saturday was a holiday in our state (All Saints’ Day), so I had to get all my shopping on the economy done Friday. It made for a long day, cram-packed with several must-do tasks including MacKenzie’s optometry appointment, finding unusual light-bulbs for the den, canceling my dial-up internet service, signing up for wireless internet with another provider, signing the house inventory with the landlord, going to the car dealership to get new bulbs for my dashboard, finding an electronic marten repellent for the van (more on that in a later post), making a last-minute stop to buy candy for trick-or-treaters, and heading home to carve pumpkins and make supper before heading out with my costumed kiddos. Fortunately, the school-age program on base was open, so Benjamin spent most of the day there, which allowed me to get my errands done much more quickly. MacKenzie kept me company during my excursions, and Zachary worked on a book report at home (trying to get a jump on the next quarter). Whew!

OK, so the fun started when all returned home around 4 p.m. and we cut into the pumpkins. All three of them wanted to carve their pumpkins, and quickly dove in. MacKenzie soon realized that the bigger her pumpkin, the more guts she had to remove. Benjamin’s pumpkin was too small to carve, so thankfully he agreed to color his with markers. He eventually made three faces on it since Zachary and MacKenzie were spending more time on theirs.

After a short while, MacKenzie convinced Zachary to trade pumpkins for the gut-removal process. He’s such a good big brother that he agreed. I actually think he had the better end of that agreement since the guts from the big pumpkin were much easier to grab and remove than in his mid-size pumpkin. MacKenzie complained of the cold (after all, they were outside in 40-degree temps for two weeks), but that was true for both of them.

Here are the finished products -- completed just in time to put outside for trick-or-treaters. We ate a quick supper (I actually managed to cook something more substantial than hot dogs), and the kids soon had their costumes on, ready for the evening.

When I dropped him off at the school-age program, Benjamin told me he wanted his face painted brown since he was going to be a bear. Fortunately, they also gave him a black nose and mouth. Just before we headed out, he asked me to wash the paint off his face since he didn’t need two faces, but I was able to distract him and we made it out the door without having to take time to wash his face (although he did ask me to wash some of it off from around his mouth during supper).

Just to clarify, Benjamin was a bear, MacKenzie was a witch and Zachary was “just someone wearing a robe.”

I think it actually worked out well that Benjamin had his face painted, since by the end of the night, he had taken the hood off his costume, going in the headless mode again. This now makes four consecutive years that he's ended the evening wearing a headless costume: 2005 and 2006 were headless Blue years, and 2007 was headless Pooh.

They really enjoyed going trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. There are enough Americans here that we could do so, yet not too many that the kids received an extreme amount of candy -- which I like! There were even a handful of German kids who got in on the action as well -- going door-to-door saying “süsses oder saures” (literally “sweet or sour”) to request candy.

Labels: Benjamin, Germany, MacKenzie, Zachary