I just realized that I never got around to posting Halloween pictures this year. Can't let a year go by without documenting the costumes! This Halloween was a bit of a bust for us this year with all three kids getting sick over Halloween weekend, which put a bit of a cramp in the festivities. This was our first trick-or-treating year in Iowa, and I was very excited to see the return of the Halloween jokes. I didn't realize that this is an Iowa-specific tradition until I moved to Chicago where no one had ever heard of it. There was an article in the Des Moines Register this year explaining that the tradition of telling jokes on Halloween developed in Des Moines in the 1940s. Kids had gotten out of control with Halloween pranks and were doing things like causing streetcars to run off their tracks and egging houses. A woman who was a leader of the park district or something similar in Des Moines announced that they would move trick-or-treating to the night before Halloween and call it Beggar's Night. They also implemented a rule that kids had to tell a joke, do a skit, sing a song or do something else to earn their treats. Over the years the skits and songs have faded away, but the jokes remain.
Here was AJ's joke this year: "Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?" Answer: "Because he didn't have any guts!" Davey was too little to tell a joke, so we coached him to ask people if they wanted to hear a lion roar and then give his best imitation. He makes a pretty convincing lion. Davey was also at the age where he had opinions about his costume, and not all of them are logical. He insisted on being spiderman and wearing AJ's Buzz Lightyear wings from last year's costume, so we called him the flying spiderman. He got quite a few comments on his schizophrenic costume.
The photos are of Grandma Julie and Julia answering the door on Beggar's Night, AJ and Davey trick-or-treating and Davey at school on wear-your-costume day.
