It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part 2

This Halloween was one of the busiest I can remember. In addition to the neighborhood Halloween parties we'd already attended, we had several other spooky-themed events on the books, including an outing to a local pumpkin patch with our Emerson class. While Benjamin and BFF Nolan clambered all over the pumpkins, I couldn't help but think back to the previous year when we had visited this same patch...

What a difference a year makes, eh? I marveled at how much my little boy had grown. Back then, he was a chubby baby who could barely sit up.

Now, he's an intrepid little boy who is brave enough to venture into a faux cemetery.

Ok, maybe he's not that brave.

The Halloween festivities continued at class the following week, when the kids got dressed up in their costumes to go "trick-or-treating" through the other classrooms. We visited English language classes, a seniors knitting class, and a figure drawing class where, thankfully, the figure model wore a costume of his own - a pair of flesh-colored briefs. Though I was tempted to, I did not take a picture of him.

As he strolled through the halls wearing his punk outfit, blue mohawk, and devil-may-care expression, Benjamin looked like a miniature juvenile delinquent.

After trick-or-treating, the kids wrapped up the morning at a Halloween carnival set up by the teacher. One of the carnival games involved bobbing for powdered donuts. It took Benjamin a while to figure out how it worked, but as soon as he did, he was hooked.

He could not get enough of the sugary goodness! After bobbing successfully for his first donut, he went back for seconds. When I wouldn't let him have another one, he scoured the ground for crumbs the other kids may have dropped, but the slim pickings led him to make a face that - minus the powdered sugar residue - would have rivaled Henry Rollins' most vicious yell. Again, a far cry (no pun intended) from Emerson class one year ago:

Stay tuned for more on Halloween 2009!