On September 30th, Hazel's Halloween began by helping with the annual decorating of the neighbor's yard at the end of our street. Fall in Alaska is pretty much almost winter, so Hazel dressed herself appropriately for the weather - hence the mismatched gloves. I like the hat over the balaclava.
This neighbor's yard turns into a graveyard for the month, with ghosts, skeletons, witches, ghouls and witty sayings on too many headstones to count. Hazel's job is to collect the almost dead flowers from nearby yards and place them at the foot of the stones and any other appropriate place she can find. Helping with this project usually means that she ends up less afraid of creepy Halloween decor, but we did end up with one dramatic, teary moment when I made the mistake of explaining what "buried six feet deep" means. (It was on one of the tombstones). This is Hazel's favorite tombstone. Hopefully she doesn't have an image in her head of what it would look like.
See the flower in the middle of the web?
Neighbor Emmy high-fiving the skeleton, who has a bloom in his coffee cup.
Playing in the leaves with Brady.
Thought I'd include a few of Hazel's random dress-up moments for the month. This is an upside down doll's tent re-appropriated for a rain hat?
Looking like an early 80's blond Pat Benatar?
Thanks to teachers' inservice days and parent conferences, we took a quick trip to my folks' house and were very happy to borrow some of cousin Havalah's costumes to try on. You all know this beauty from Wonderland, I'm sure.
Havalah surprised Hazel when dropping us off at the airport by giving her this rainbow colored, ethereal fairy dress. Hazel was over the moon to bring it home with us.
Hazel was happy to hand out candy for the first 45 minutes until Daddy arrived home to man the door, and then we bundled her into two pairs of socks (under her very cheap, flimsy moccasins), long underwear, turtleneck, snow pants and finally her "Indian princess" dress. She picked this hat to wear, because it looked like she had two black braids, and she also wore a headband with a red feather. She was plenty warm without a coat, but one shoe did fall off a couple times and her sock got wet. Nevertheless, snow and freezing temperatures didn't stop her (or the 800 other youth) from trick-or-treating, and she could have gone on long after we stopped (which was after two blocks). She then continued to hand out candy at the door for about an hour - so excitedly, jumping up and down and opening the door long before the kids were actually headed up the stairs to our porch. There were some creepy costumes, but she only refused to put candy in one bag belonging to a fellow (?) in a long black hooded robe, with cobwebs around his face. Personally, the creepy, crouching, dancing werewolf was the one that I disliked... and the Scream masks with dripping blood in them. Yuck!
Neighbor Cowboy Brady.
Hazel's vote for the cutest pumpkin of the night.
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