We started the festivities with pumpkin decorating. Elijah is grossed out by many things, among which are pumpkin guts, so this year he opted out of carving a pumpkin and simply painted his pumpkin. He had his pumpkin painted to his liking before I even had my camera out.
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| My goof-ball and his pumpkin. |
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Tove is much more deliberate and takes his time. For him, the process is enjoyable.
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| Tove designing his pumpkin. |
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| Dad helped with the carving. No day is quite complete without using a drill. |
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| Tove added the details with paint. |
Cris painted his pumpkin Minecraft style. He broke out into giggles of enthusiasm several times while he was painting it.
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| Minecraft pumpkin. |
I cleaned the seeds from Toviel's pumpkin and then we roasted them and ate them all. Delicious!
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| Nom! Nom! |
Before we went Trick-or-Treating, we watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and had an appetizer of "Scaries". This cracked us up when we saw them at the store, so we got one pack to share.
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| Scaries!!! |
It was a very cold evening. I sort of wanted to take the boys Trick-or-Treating because I love to walk, but I sort of didn't want to take them because it was so cold and there is a lot of just standing around when you are going door-to-door. So I was a bit disappointed and a bit relieved when Cris said he would take them.
They were gone longer than I expected and came back to drop Toviel off. Then Cris and Elijah went out for Round Two, while Toviel and I sorted through and drooled over his candy.
Upon their return Elijah sorted through his candy and picked the candy he was keeping and the candy he was giving to the Sugar Sprites. We ended up with a huge bowl of candy to give to the Sugar Sprites.
Do you know the legend of the Sugar Sprites? In a nutshell, the Sugar Sprites are itty-bitty sprites who live in gardens and feed off the nectar of flowers. In the fall and winter, their food supply runs out and sometimes they do not make it through the winter. But many years ago they heard about how human children collect huge amounts of candy the eve before All Saints Day, so they started to come to the homes of children early in the morning on All Saints Day in search of leftover or discarded candy. They would often find enough sugar to see them through the winter. Now, many children leave bowls or bags of candies out for the Sugar Sprites to take. In return, the Sugar Sprites bring them little tokens of their thankfulness for the provisions they receive from these generous children.
Our boys take part in this custom, and leave a big bowl of candy with a note for the Sugar Sprites.
This year, Toviel wrote the note:
We left a huge bowl of candies for them:
In return the Sugar Sprites left them each a couple of Transformer toys and $5 each!! They are so sweet!
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| Gifts from the Sugar Sprites! |
Sadly, though, even though the note from the Sugar Sprites states that the candy will last them the whole winter, the reality is that it will probably only last a week or two and probably get eaten by just one Sugar Sprite.
