Although short, the trip did cause me to miss a few things at home. I missed the trick-or-treating at the High School, which we have done with N now the last 3 years. L is still in his "too scary" phase, so C opted to leave him at home with a sitter. I also missed a conference with N's teacher. It didn't come as any surprise to us that his teacher said N is doing very well with his reading. He is not as advanced in his writing, but still doing well there too. All-in-all, a pretty good report. I made it back from my trip in time to go to a show at 5-Points. This was our date night for our Anniversary, which now and for the forseeable future, will likely be pushed back due to the proximity to L's birthday. We had an excellent dinner, and the show was good too. Of course it did conflict with the Cardinals game, but we made it home in time to see the last few innings of their victory.
The rest of the weekend was heavily focused on the boys. We were reluctant to let N use the gun part of his Ghostbuster costume, so I had the idea of making a ghost trap for him to use. This was one instance where saving some unique things paid off. Somewhere, C had aquired a miniature version of an interlocking lid storage container. It had been on the verge of getting thrown away several times, but I always thought it would come in handy someday. That day came this weekend. A little paint, some yellow electrical tape, and a few other miscellaneous materials from around the workshop, and pretty soon we had a ghost trap. I am still amazed that despite not actually seeing the movie, he immediately knew how to slide the trap across the floor to "catch the ghosts". Of course he wanted to be able to open the doors remotely, but I was able to convince him that was a little too elaborate. L's costume was a little easier. I found an image online of Slimer from the Ghostbuster cartoon, and printed it out on iron-on paper. One green t-shirt , the slimer iron-on, and a black sweat suit for underneath was all his costume required. L's perpetually runny nose was a nice touch of realism for the "slimer" motif though.
The costumes worked pretty well for the boys. I'm not sure most of the kids knew who the Ghostbusters or Slimer were, but then again, I didn't know who some of them were supposed to be either. We did a trunk-or-treat with C's moms group friends on Saturday morning, and then the real trick-or-treating on Halloween night. For that, we met up with some of the neighbors and all of us went together for one lap around the block. That was just about right for all the kids.
With the weather finally turning cooler and being forced to spend more time inside, N's (and therefore L's) interest in trains has been on the rise again. Saturday I set up a train set in the garage so they could play while I got some work done. It was a nice compromise of being able to get fresh air and see the sun, but being out of the wind. Them playing allowed me to finally got the snowplow mounted on Johnny. It's going to be a little painful to actually take it out the first time in the snow and scuff it up. Looks pretty nice right now though.
N played with the trains by himself just long enough for me to get the snowplow on, and then asked if he could invite the neighbor boy over to play. It didn't take long though before only having one of that kind of train became a problem. So, we had to go back inside to set up the trains that he has multiples of. Unfortunately, we spent most of the time N's friend was over trying to remember how to set up the train set. We made it up to him the next day by inviting him back over once it was all set up. The boys (and Dad) had a good time setting it up and playing together.
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