Halloween 2008

In Austin, which is part of the Bible Belt (sort of shocking since the people in Austin are all about tolerance and laid-back, aging-hippy vibes), the schools have opted to not allow Halloween costumes on school grounds. (They don't want to be accused of glorifying SATAN or anything.)

You can imagine our surprise and delight to find that the schools here are WAY into Halloween. I mean, WAY. Each of my daughters' schools had a parade and a Halloween festival. (Of course, unless you were volunteering, you couldn't actually GO to the Halloween festivals. Since I'm so gimpy, I couldn't help out but the girls gave me glowing reports.) All of the teachers and staff dressed in costumes.

The parades were great. That's one thing about our new area: people here turn out in force for any kind of school function. My husband went to Ana's because I knew it would be very crowded and I'd not be able to walk to where the parade was being held from where I had to park. (Which, you know, was sort of an eye-opener to me and made me realize that maybe I need to face the fact that I need a handicapped parking sticker. More about that after I finish my bout with Denial.)

There were a lot of people. (as always, click to enlarge.)

It was really cold, too, so Ana had to wear a big coat over her costume. Which was a shame because she LOVED her costume. In case you can't tell, she was a devil --and for some reason all of the devil costumes in her size had fishnet hose and really short skirts. I tried to suspend my prudish motherly outrage after I saw her innocent joy. (But...sheesh.) (I actually bought some long-johns and offered to dye them red for her. She looked at me pityingly. "Mom," she said, "Those have HEARTS on them." Like, as IF.)

Of course, it doesn't help that my husband saw THIS picture of her and said, "We'll go to visit her at college and she'll be going to classes and on dates and she'll look exactly like that."

(Maybe with fewer horns but I get his drift.)

I went to Jane's school for her parade and avoided the whole parking and walking issue by just sitting in my car after drop-off and knitting until the parade started. Her parade even had a BAND leading it! Oh, look, they're dressed as disgruntled teenagers!Cute costumes!

They played the Munster's theme song. The kids were ADORABLE.

Especially this one little angel: (A mother of one of Jane's friends said that she had called out to Jane, "Hi, Jane!" and Jane had answered, "Bless you.")

Once home, the girls had the classic battle between good and evil:

A good time and much sugar was had by all.