My {Halloween} Hero

It seems like longer than just 4 days ago that we were trick-or-treating. Macauley chose to be a firefighter this year, and our first outing was Saturday night at the zoo for Spooktacular. The place was packed and the decor might have been more suited to little, little kids, but we enjoyed some time with the Rhoads. Catherine went as a queen and her little brother Maxwell was her protective knight.
The kids spent quite a bit of time brushing away a quarter inch of sand from the top of a plastic tablet of hieroglyphics. There was a teenage girl, I guess an employee, sitting to the side dressed as a scary Dorothy and a guy in the Scream outfit. Just didn't seem to fit. And they just stood there. The "abandon all hope" sign is a slightly misquoted reference to Dante's Inferno, a story I teach.

The zoo animals were all in for the night, except for some flamingos and swans and these little goats in the petting zoo. There was another huge furry cow, kind of like a short, squatty buffalo, that was also up and at 'em. I didn't get a good picture (in fact none of the pictures I took turned out all that great) but little Max reached out his hand to it and in the cutest, low little voice said, "Hey, big."

We wrapped up with ride on the train and Macauley got his picture with a firetruck and some real firefighters. The guys seemed pleased at the costume choice he had made.

{My hero}

Around dusk on Halloween night, we headed out in our neighborhood for trick-or-treating. The weather was perfect and the kids just ran from doorbell to doorbell.

We took Rex and drove to Aunt Lindsay's house and walked a loop around her neighborhood then stopped on the way home at the house near Macauley's school that is always over-the-top decorated for every holiday. It's fun to see people who still have spirit and go all out for stuff. Our Halloween decor came down the very next day, and now I'm deciding if I want to put out the Thanksgiving stuff or just go straight to Christmas...