Ian's Halloween 2010

Here he is, the cutest little chimney sweep ever!:



Doug taught him to say "Sweep your chimney, sir?". This was a costume of opportunity. I was determined not to buy a costume that he would just wear once. He likes to wear this hat of mine, and it made me think of a chimney sweep. Snowpants, black face paint, and a broom borrowed from our neighbors made for a super cute and comfortable costume! I will revel in this success, since I'm really not good at this type of creative improvising :)

Our neighborhood has started doing Halloween parades, which have been a good way to kick off trick-or-treating. Here Ian and I are waiting for the parade to start:



The neighborhood won a visit by Wool E Bull (the mascot for the Durham Bulls), so he marched in our parade with us. Ian said "I don't like the cow. He's scary.", so we kept our distance (along with a much older child who was so scared she was sick).



As happy as I was with Ian's costume, this was the best of the night. This dog lives across the street and uses a wheelchair (yes, they make wheelchairs for dogs to support the back legs! - this dog has no use of his back legs without the chair). This hot dog cart pulled by the "hot dog" dog that fits perfectly on his wheelchair is the cleverest idea I've seen:



Ian visited four houses of families we know to trick-or-treat. He had an idea of what was going on this year and enjoyed going around a bit. Other than Madeline's house, where he was given three pieces of candy before we escaped the determined small candy giver, all the other houses were creative and had things other than candy -- he ended up with three little containers of play-doh, one bag of peanuts, and a hackysack. It turned out very nicely, as we let him eat two pieces of candy (Mommy taxed him one piece for taking him around), and didn't have to figure out what to do with all the potential other candy that we wouldn't have wanted him to eat. He had fun giving candy to the trick-or-treaters that came to our front yard (yeah, we were *not* creative, we'll try harder next year), and he got a ribbon from the neighbors next door for Best Costume. Best of all was playing with the balloon we put out to signal that we were giving out candy (cool as our 'hood is, there are houses it's best to avoid, and the balloon system seems to work well to sort them out). All in all a very fun Halloween!