Halloween

Happy Halloween!...kind of, but Ivy wasn't so sure about Halloween by the end of the night.

As Halloweens go, it started out innocently enough.  A surprise/unexpected visit from Aunt Pamela started the day out.  The rest of the day was sort of haze, as we already planned out Ivy's costume we didn't have much to do on a Sunday but laze around.  One guess as to what Ivy was for Halloween - drum roll please - Red Fraggle.  Big surprise, right?!  I found a cheap red turtleneck at Freddies (thank god they start putting Christmas stuff out at Halloween time!...only kidding of course, but it did help) and Whitney came up with the rest.  She, thanks again to our nations need of the early arrival of Christmas consumerism, bought some red garland for Ivy's hair and tail.  A perfect poor persons Halloween costume....

We headed for the library a couple hours prior to the arrival of Pamela's train.  Always a good way to kill some time and introduce Ivy to some new books and a little social interaction.  Unfortunately, the Salem Public Library tends to lean toward playtime more than it does to the discovery of reading, learning, etc.  The children's section is filled to the brim with toys and playthings that kids naturally navigate toward more so than the books.  Sad Salem, sad :(.  They even have a "Discovery Room" which consists of toys - cars, rugs, tricycles, etc.  Anyhoo, we stayed while time lapsed waiting for the train.

Ivy, as is her way these days, was super shy upon Pamela's arrival.  She tends to sink back into her baby days and uses her baby-talk and pretends not to understand the spoken word.  It takes her a good 30 minutes or so to get back to her normal self.  Hopefully this will pass soon.  We arrived home and started the dressing up sequence:

The process of getting her ready was quite an exercise in patience, for Whitney :)  Ivy wanted so bad to be dressed as Red Fraggle but didn't want to have to go through the work.  Whitney won out and soon it was time to go Trick-or-Treat.  And Ivy couldn't have been more excited...

The first house we went to went well...and then there was the incident.  The second house went all out for Halloween, such has I have never seen before.  ( I figure in small cities like Salem, what else have you got going on?).  There was a little boy dressed as a zombie holding a lantern wandering the fenced yard in a daze.  He was brilliant!  I tried engaging him in conversation but he wouldn't break character.  Ivy was not scared yet.  The lady that answered the door, attired similar to Elvira handed Ivy her treats after a reluctant "trick-or-treat" from Ivy and all was still fine.  Then all hell broke loose.  A bush leaning against the house suddenly came to life by outstretching it's limbs and slowly walking toward us- something that surprises all of us!  And then the real kicker, 6'5" skeleton/ghoul draped in black stepped out of the garage toward us.  Ivy pretty much lost it at this point.  In the skeleton/ghoul's defense, he did seem to feel bad and tried to wave in a friendly clown-like way, but it was too late for little Red Fraggle.  Here's the video aftermath.  Poor little girl.  We tried everything to soothe her.  I even opened a mini candy bar gave it to her.  Between sobs and swallowing said candy down, she begged to go back to Salem (Salem to her means home - she thinks our apartment & apartment complex is Salem, not the city).  We actually got her to go to a few more houses but had to avoid any that looks even remotely "scary".  Every house that she deemed safe, she'd say..."that one looks ok...(sob sob),.."  We eventually had to call it a night, only 30 minutes into the holiday night it was over.

Oh yeah, and Whitney had to call the police on a domestic dispute happening at the apartment building next to ours.  Gotta love Salem!