Happy Halloween!

Ok, so I know I'm a little behind, but things just get crazy around here starting in October!  That means Blog Neglect!  And since it doesn't really slow down again until the first or second week into January, that means a lot of missed updates!  So I am trying to keep you somewhat current on our happenings here in Japan, but that also means you might have to hear about things a little late!  But I am determined to get them on here, so here we go!

Halloween isn't celebrated here among the general public and even Halloween decor is hard to come by.  But we really enjoy Halloween and we have tried to help bring some of the SPOOKY SPIRIT to Japan and enjoy it with our students.  This year we were fortunate enough to find 2 American Pumpkins for sale under $30 each!  The first year we were here we couldn't find any at all!  Last year you had to take out a loan to afford one and that was also after our failed attempts at trying to grow one!  This year we had our friends help us get our plant going, but then we had so much rain that it had mold problems, along with many other farmers crops.  So we had pretty much decided we would have to do without pumpkins during our japan stay, I just can't bring myself to pay $30 for a small pumpkin that molds in less than a week.

The Monday before Halloween I was picking up some fruits and veggies and what beautiful orange colored object catches my eye, but an american pumpkin!  It was stacked with the other dark green japanese pumpkins and I was so surprised I thought it was a mistake.  Zack and I walked over to see how much this little jem was and then we saw it, a second orange american pumpkin!  Now I was scanning the rest of the pumpkins and adjacent bins to find the source of these beauties and they were the only ones around.  I decided they had to be too expensive to buy and made Zack look at the price!  One look at his face and I wanted to know what outrageous number was on the tag, usually you can't pick up a small one for less than $3o and these weren't so small.  But then Zack grabbed both and brought them towards me!  300 YEN!  What?!  No, it must be missing a 0!  Really?  300 YEN each, which makes them around $ 3.60 each, Yipee, we get pumpkins!

Fortunately, there were two pumpkins, so we didn't have to fight over who got to choose what to carve!  This was also Holden's first time ever carving a pumpkin and Hos' first time in 3 years, so it was pretty much a new thing to both of them.

 

They both wanted to clean out the seeds from inside, but once they got their hands in there they weren't too sure they wanted to keep going!  Holden was happy to grab the seeds, then he said "EEWWWW!" as he strung them across the table trying to get them off of his hands.

With the lack of Halloween supplies, we had only a dull knife to make our jack-o-lanterns.  So the boys drew the faces with marker first, then Zack carved them while they got in the tub and got ready for bed.

Holden was stoked to have a lid that he could put on and off by himself!  He decided since he was going to be a Vampire for Halloween, his jack-o-lantern needed to be one too!

Spencer of course, opted for a dog!  And he and his dad were creative enough to even come up with a way to make ears, similar to his favorite SCOOBY-DOO!

Here they are with the finished products!  We were pretty happy with the results!  (Yes, that is a dog on Zack's lap, and normally it is a friendly dog, but this photo makes it look like an evil halloween dog)

Since we are talking about Halloween I thought I would throw in the two Halloween photos I got of us in our costumes, despite the 3 or 4 times we actually got to dress up and put them to use! 

So Holden pretty much took control this year and said that He wanted to be a Vampire, Mom gets to be the Witch, Dad gets to be the Big Green Monster (from a Halloween song we teach our students) Hos gets to be the Wizard and Auntie gets to be the Pumpkin.  Auntie took some freedom in the interpretation of Pumpkin and she was Super Pumpkin the Super Hero!  And the Pirate is our wonderful secretary/japanese mom Yasuko!  

Here's a little closer shot of Holden the Vampire and Hos the Wizard!  Happy Halloween!