Hawaiian Halloween

There was actually, really, not all that much "Hawaiian" about Halloween, except for the difference in temperature.  And actually, that felt like a big difference to me.  It basically caused me to forget that Halloween was even coming close and therefore, two days before Halloween, we had no pumpkins.  Mike mentioned that I should look for them when I went to the commissary, but I had a bad feeling we would not have luck there.  And, we didn't.  No pumpkins found at the commissary.  So, we run the groceries home and put away the cold stuff.  I google to find where the pumpkin patch is around here and then, just in case, I decided to call there and find out if they still had pumpkins.  The lady on the phone told me that they had delivered them to a bunch of different supermarkets around.

Thank heaven we just bought a GPS.  I feel like a free woman!  I can go anywhere and not feel lost!  It is pretty wonderful.

Anyhow, I put in the supermarket and off we go, again.  Well, Hawaiian streets, shopping centers, and stores are not well-labeled.  It is very difficult to see stuff from the street, especially because everything here is in some kind of three level shopping center or building.  So, the GPS is warning me that the store is coming on my right and as I am driving by the entrance to the parking lot, for the life of me I cannot see a sign that says Times Supermarket, so I keep driving.  Well, I come to the second driveway into a parking lot and realize that the stupid store has got to be in there somewhere.  And now, I am on the top level of the parking structure and the store is not on that level.

Well, I am totally not above flagging someone down to ask them where the heck the supermarket is, so that is what I did from my parking spot.  Oh yeah, of course the market is on the bottom level of the building, just a quick walk down two flights of stairs and then down an escalator.  But hey, figuring out how to get back to the parking lot just seems like too much work, so out of the car come the boys and we head off down the stairs.

Praise the Lord, we see pumpkins right when we walk in the door of the market.  And nice, round, orange ones too.  We get them and I warn the boys that they are going to have to stay right with me and Max is going to have to be SO careful on the escalator, because Mommy has these two huge pumpkins and a pregnant belly to haul back up to the car.

We make it.

We decide to carve the pumpkins that night and just keep them in the house, as we had been warned that leaving them outside in the Hawaii heat is just asking for a rotten pumpkin before Halloween night.  Let me just say that when the boys realized I never got them pumpkins, nor did we visit the pumpkin patch, they acted very disappointed.  Hence, the hike to the market.

Well, we begin with the pumpkin carving, them in their cute aprons and all that jazz.  Mike cuts the tops off the pumpkins and he and I stick our hands in there to show the boys how it is done...  You would think at least one out of the two would like the gooey pumpkin guts, but no.  After all their desiring of a pumpkin neither one would even stick their hands in and get dirty.  Mike said next year, we are getting pumpkins only for the seeds...

 

Doesn't Max look like he is having just loads of fun?

 

Anyway, the pumpkins turned out fine, as you can see.  And there are the boys, taking all the credit.

We put the jack-o-lanterns on the porch Halloween night.  Superman and Thor joined them for a picture. The boys had fun trick-or-treating and I sat my pregnant belly down on a chair and let the neighborhood kids visit me for candy.  They came back with way-too-full buckets of candy and we do a little inventorying...  We put the chocolate stuff in a big bowl and put it in the fridge.  The other bucket sits out.  Max is doing really well not asking for more than he knows I will allow, lol.  He is the kid who has woken up from a night's sleep saying, "Mommy, last night, I dreamed of candy."  If only good-for-him food was something like candy, maybe we could get some meat on his bones.

I enjoyed seeing all the kids in their little costumes.  The little ones were the funniest.  I put candy in their buckets and they would just stare at my bowl, like, maybe if they waited I would go ahead and throw in some more.  The night ended when I ran out of candy, which was, conveniently, just about the same time as the boys arrived home with their loot.

And now, we can officially move on to the month of Thankfulness.  I better work on our Thanks tree!!