Happy Halloween!!

Hope all of you are enjoying an evening of dressing in creative costumes, walking around neighborhood streets filled with happy children and parents, and above all, collecting as much candy as one can possibly carry. Jackson experienced tonight the tradition I grew up familiar with - dressing in full warm clothing garb before doning the costume. Thermal underwear, fleece sweater, etc. and then thePower Rangers Costume. I dressed as a cat with fuzzy ears and a tail. Joe dressed as an American in Germany ;). We attended the Halloween event in town, Frankenstein's Haunted Castle. While standing in line for an hour, I noticed that everyone around me was dressed as a zombie or a witch and that's it. No one was dressed as a princess or butterfly or cowboy, etc. That's when I realized that Germans' idea of dressing up for Halloween only included the spooky themes. That made us a little awkward, but hey, we went with it. When we finally got our tickets and entered the castle for what I thought was the family version, it turned out to be just a little too realistic for a 4 year old's creative mind. I'm not sure if we even stayed 20 minutes before we determined this was not the right place for us. It was a shame because, for adults, it is the best halloween event I've ever seen.

We came home and decided to give trick or treating a try. This was fun and interesting too. We were successful in collecting candy, but we were the only people on the street, so it wasn't quite the same festive ambiance you will all mostly encounter tonight. Most doors we knocked on gave Jackson something, and he cheerfully said,"danke schon!" It was funny though because I could tell some houses were a little caught off guard, like "oh yeah, it's halloween and I'm supposed to give you something sweet. Hold on let me see what I have in my kitchen." - literally.

It was fun to sort the candy though and try all sorts of new things. We ate almost all of it in one night, except for the one marked, "Speed." We thought that one we should leave until day light hours...just in case.