Halloween and All Saints Day

Stone is now determined to develop his Artistic skills - I have walked into the kitchen several times to find him drawing just for fun! He's also now starting to write, and at his request Lindsay showed him some tricks for coloring in the lines. As painful as it's been, this will actually be great preparation for Kindergarten next year (and I never had to think about those skills for the girls - they were fine-motor maniacs - so it hadn't really occurred to me to have to teach him.)

Portrait of much-missed baby cousin Drew

Aliens

Carving pumpkins on rainy Halloween Eve

In order of Carver, Amy, Erik, Stone (with Dad's help), Lucy, Sophie (with Mom's help), Lindsay (recognize him?)

Day-time view of our pumpkin family

There are no school Halloween parties or parades, but we found out that local kids meet at a downtown plaza at 6:00 in the evening. Apparently kids dress up in creepy costumes (no cute princesses or Star Wars characters) and go around asking for candy from stores. No trick-or-treating. The kids were tired after school, so they voted to stay home and watch Halloween movies ("The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"). My favorite part was trick-or-treating: Erik went into our bedroom and shut the doors; I shut myself into the family room, and the kids went back and forth between us, knocking on the doors to trick-or-treat. We answered the doors in a different character each time - I used the white blanket you can see in the photo to be an old hag and then a Greek goddess.

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Today (November 1, All Saints Day) the entire country was on national holiday, so we went to dinner at our friends' house, the Koh Family. Their 22-year-old daughter is the one who babysat our kids while we went to Portugal. The husband is from Singapore and the wife from Spain, and they are fantastic cooks of both types of cuisine. We prepared the kids for a long dinner where they would have to be mature and well-behaved, and I could not believe how well they did. We always expect good behavior from Lindsay and Lucy and of course they were great, but I have never ever in their lives seen Sophie and Stone so calm, polite and still. Stone particularly was quite solemn and answered so formally and politely when he was asked questions - I saw some confusion on his face when everyone would laugh at his sincere, mature answers... I remember feeling so insulted at his age when adults would laugh at me. Anyway... he was amazing and it was like a window into a wonderful future for our family when we can sit and enjoy each other's company as independent human beings!!

The Kohs live about 8 miles away - which is an hour by slow-moving bus, so we stopped at a park on the way home to let the kids run around. This is Sophie's favorite monument - we pass it every day on the way to school. She loves explaining the meaning to people: the two pillars represent Ferdinand and Isabella, the ship is Columbus' ship, and the lion is Spain with his paw on the Earth, representing Spain's domination of the world thanks to Columbus' Spanish-funded voyage.

A favorite park near the school - just today I was thinking there won't be many times in my life that I watch my kids play at a playground with a Moorish fortress in the background.

Tomorrow we take the kids on our last weekend trip for awhile - it's been a whirlwind for the past few weeks as we try to make the most of our time here - there is so much to see, so close and so inexpensively!! Tomorrow at noon all six of us fly to Marrakech, Morocco. Lucy is on her iPod right now looking at Google images of Moroccan snake charmers and severed goat heads. Exciting!!