Halloween

This isn't the blog post we originally planned -- that one involved pictures from DOL's Halloween parade as well as the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (FYI: Nora was pro-sanity; Owen was all about the fear). But my civic duty (and a very split jury) coupled with Allen's previous commitment to a White House tour with his dad (due to his new position as Deputy Associate Director of Environmental stuff at CEQ) meant that neither of us could attend Owen and Nora's (aka Woody and an elephant) costume march; and we only attended the sanity rally long enough to discern that attempting to attend might be construed as a lapse in ours.

But then came Sunday. Owen was so excited for trick-or-treat night that he insisted on wearing his Ryan Zimmerman costume (no relation, he's the third baseman for the Nationals) the entire day. Nora, having refused to wear the head piece of her elephant costume during the parade on Friday (if only the rest of the country had echoed her sentiment on Tuesday...) was dressed in the less obtrusive alien butterfly costume we inherited from Brad and Marlo.

Owen had practiced the art of begging for candy earlier in the day, but suffered a bit of stage fright when we started out trick-or-treating. Eventually he warmed up to it, but he was much more excited when he retired to Grandpa Fawcett's porch to hand out treats to the thousands of revelers gathered on East Capitol Street. Nora watched in amazement as Owen enforced a strict "one candy" rule and directed traffic along the walkway, at one point informing the crowd, "I don't see a line, I see a group."

By the time Grandpa Fawcett ran out of candy, it was well past the kids' bedtime (as Owen repeatedly informed us), so we headed home so the kids could finally get to sleep... and we could sneak some of Owen's bounty.

(click here to see all the pictures)