Halloween and Other October Fun

We took a few pictures of Tanja with Snoopy and the kids; these were some of the winners. 

Derek has been spending many days building elaborate grizzly bear caves with blankets, couch cushions, curtains, and whatever else he can pull over.  Lydia is frequently a willing partner.  One benefit of distance learning and COVID is that the kids have grown closer together after spending so much time together and when they play nicely, they have a lot of fun.

I think this picture was from one day when they were playing school and Lydia and Derek were both working hard on their homework.

Snoopy is well loved and cared for in our family.

He has found his spot on the new couch in the family room, though he needs help getting up there every time.  When he wants to get on the new couch, he comes over to it, sits at attention in front of you, and stares at you until you pick him up and put him on the couch too.  Luckily, he can still jump up on the living room couch all by himself.

The kids each got a pumpkin to carve the week before Halloween.  Derek picked a spider design and Tanja carved it for him.  He wanted his to be a scary jack-o-lantern.  Lydia designed and carved a face in her pumpkin all by herself, with no help.  Karina picked a cool Halloween scene with an owl, pumpkin, and a "treats" sign and I helped her with the detail work while she carved out the bigger cuts herself.  I think all three did a great job.

Here's Lydia the Astronaut.  This was at a virtual Girl Scout Halloween party on the computer.

For Halloween, Tanja braided Karina's hair so when the braids were taken out, Karina's hair would be wavy and poofy so that Karina would look like Hermione Granger in her Gryffindor robes (a character from the Harry Potter series).

Derek was a very stylish pirate for Halloween.

Lydia dressed up in her astronaut costume.

Here are all three kids before we went out trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.  For this year, the neighborhood decided that to stay safe, trick-or-treaters shouldn't go door-to-door, but rather people that wanted to participate should set up tables in their driveways with bagged or loose candy for the kids to take.  Many people in the neighborhood wanted to cancel all trick-or-treating due to COVID-19, so we were happy that it happened at all.  Having tables at the end or driveways with candy actually worked out well for the kids, and meant less work to get the candy since they didn't have to walk up driveways and ring doorbells.  At the end of the night, the kids came home with more candy than we will allow them to eat like any other Halloween.

Here are the pumpkins lit up on Halloween night.  Spooky!

One of Derek's treasures from trick-or-treating was this set of vampire teeth.  He ends up drooling all over himself every time he wears them.

And of course, here is Lydia cuddling up with Snoopy.  She loves him very much.