Saturday, October 25, 2008

Trick or Treat (a preview)


Every year, Corin's firm has an afternoon of trick or treating for the kids of its employees when the kids get to come in costume and go trick or treating office to office. We usually hit about 3 floors and the kids come away with quite a haul. This year, the event kinda snuck up on me. As is my custom, I ordered Halloween costumes on line really early. Evan is to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (yes, they are still around) and Pressley is to be a fairy. Their costumes came weeks ago, but when I took Evan's turtle shell out of the package, the green coating on the shell stuck to the inside of the bag and it was ruined. Pressley's little fairy costume was cute as could be, but was snug as a bug in a rug. So, back they went. I re-ordered them in plenty of time for Halloween, but not so much wiggle room before the Kilpatrick trick or treating. The costumes came on Tuesday or Wednesday and Evan's costume was fine. Now Pressley's costume was big enough for her to wear a shirt under it if she needs to on Halloween, but it was about a foot too long. This is how it happened that Pressley and I spent all day yesterday at my mom's house. Because she is a saint, mom agreed to help me hem the thing. (She tried to get out of it by offering to lend me her sewing machine, but when I reminded her that she never taught me to sew, she was stuck...) The costume has one layer of satiny dress under two layers of tulle. Oh, and the hem is shorter in the front than in the back. We arrived at mom's house sometime after 10:30 yesterday morning because we first had to go and collect the ballet slippers I had called all over town to find. I mean, who has ever heard of a fairy wearing pink crocs?? So, we had to have the slippers, right? Anyway, we got to mom's house after 10:30 and the first thing we did was make Pressley try on the costume to pin it. She chose to spend the rest of the 3 and a half hours at mom's house in nothing but a diaper and her new ballet slippers. Oh, and a bow in her hair. Try as we might, we could not get that child back into her clothes. We (and by "we" I mean mom) finally finished the slap-dash alterations with just enough time for me to race to get Evan from school at 2:30. I finished a couple of minor things when we got home (and Pressley was sleeping in the car in the garage), and then we were off to Corin's office.



Now, Evan has been looking forward to this event for days. He remembers the last couple of years, and what kid wouldn't be excited about gathering so much candy with so little effort. It is not cold (or wet). There are no porch steps to climb. No doorbells to ring. Just the occasional forced "trick or treat" and/or "thank you." But, for some reason, the child never changed his expression. He says he had fun, but he face never betrayed that.






These were taken before my camera battery died. The rest of the photos were taken with my camera phone and are mostly too blurry to be cute.

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