Happy Halloween, Plus Swimming!

Phoebe is finally old enough for holidays! She looked forward to Halloween for a couple weeks and counted down the days this past week. On Thursday night, we carved the pumpkins the kids picked out at the Mount Calvary/Rainbow Child Care pumpkin patch. Dave and I decided not to bother with our own this year, so we just supervised. Amazingly, Phoebe is also old enough to wield the pumpkin carver herself. She drew a dog jack-o-lantern and cut it out beautifully. Benjamin scribbled with a marker on his pumpkin and Dave cut out the scribble. We also assembled a really cute vegetable skeleton (thanks to my aunt Martha for the “recipe”!). Phoebe tried on a portion of her Halloween dress so I’d know where to hem it whenever it got finished. (Usually that’s pretty early in the morning on the day of Halloween.)

I guess I should’ve taken some photos of Phoebe’s costume in progress. Let’s just say I was up till the wee hours three nights in a row. When they say a pattern is intermediate, they mean for someone who sews for the theater instead of for coture. Dave had the presence of mind to take this photo of Benjamin’s costume being painted:

On the day of Halloween, my office participated in the company-wide costume contest. Needless to say, we won.

As is our tradition, after school we headed over to the Brinkmans’ house to join them for pizza and trick-or-treating. The kids had a great time this year! Even Benjamin was delighted to take candy out of a bucket and try to keep up with the big kids. Sarah (20 months) was practically running the show after a house or two, and Phoebe and the boys got to eat plenty of candy. For some reason, the kids had to be prompted to say “trick or treat!” this year. We went to one house where they were giving out silver dollars and adult-size fancy candy bars.

The kids are both taking swimming lessons. Phoebe is learning how to float in Dolphins 2, and Benjamin is copying his sister: he’s a water bug! Here’s a photo from today’s lesson and a video. In his class they play ring around the rosy, and you can dunk your kid if you want to when the song says “all fall down.” Here you see Benjamin getting dunked and then shouting “more!” several times.

At the end of class, the kids are allowed a few turns on the dolphin slide. Benjamin is such a big boy!