Halloween!

Yesterday was Halloween. Yesterday was also somewhat chaotic.

Houston had a giant paper that he had to do by today. Katrina had Heart and Sole. And we went out to my parents' house for trick-or-treating. And that doesn't sound like it should have been chaotic, but it was.

We've been carpooling with Houston's and Zane's best friends (they happen to be brothers) this year, and that means that Houston's friend Chauncey comes home with us after City for an hour and a bit four days a week. That also means that the lovely quiet hour for homework that Houston had before the kids got home has gone away. I thought about trying to make them work on homework - or at least let each other work on homework if they needed - but Chauncey and Rowen are...not quiet. At all. And so Houston started working on his paper at about 4:00 and worked until we left to get Katrina at 5:00.

We picked Katrina up, and she was all, "I ran four miles today. I am exhausted." (WHY? Why would they even HAVE Heart and Sole on Halloween, let alone run 4 miles?! Don't they know there will be trick-or-treating? And lots and lots of walking?)

We stopped quickly to pick up some fast food and then headed straight over to my parents' house. It was 6:00 when we pulled up to their house, so the kids threw on their costumes and i helped Katrina put some pink in her hair, because she REALLY, REALLY wanted pink hair (you totally couldn't see it), and they ran off to go up and down my parents' street.

Katrina was a rainbow unicorn. She and Beth made matching costumes, and they were adorable. Zane was a spy. He was very sure that he was super-cool. And Houston was the Invisible Man. He was ultra tall and pretty awesome. (Houston got a million comments about his costume. People were all, "Whoa!" and "Awesome!" and "Hey Honey! Come look at this!" I saw one dad ask his toddler, "Where's that guy's head?" and the toddler looked up and backed away. Another group asked Houston where his head was (meaning his real head), and Houston simply pointed to the invisible head and kept walking.) The great thing about Houston getting a lot of compliments was that Houston got a lot of compliments and felt really great about himself. The sad thing was that everyone really only noticed Houston. Both Katrina and Zane lamented to me at different times, "I'm sad that nobody has commented on MY costume at all!"

While they were gathering candy in my parents' neighborhood, i got to hold little Eloise for a little while. I missed out on holding the babies on Sunday, so i was thrilled that i got to see them for a bit yesterday!

They came back and we headed half a mile over to my sister's house to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood. We started doing that years ago, when all of the cousins wanted to go together, and now the kids just want to keep that tradition up, even though it's just us and a couple of the cousins. It was almost 8:30 by the time we left for home again.

And Houston still had to finish his paper. I helped him, and he worked hard, but it was after 10:30 by the time he'd finished it. He was exhausted.

He was really, really looking forward to having a less stressful night. But today he had two more fairly major papers to do for two different classes. (I'm pretty sure he'd been told about these days or weeks ago, but he insists he didn't know. He's not the best at listening to all of the words people say, though....) And so today he worked on papers from the time Chauncey left until nearly 9:30.

Both of us are seriously hoping that he doesn't have more papers he has to do tomorrow....