Big Brother Ben (week 192)

Halloween! One of the joys of being a big brother is introducing your little brother to new things like his first Halloween. In the Carfax neighborhood, there are about ten of us who dress up every year and go trick-or-treating. We are old hats and start planning our costumes early. For Christopher, this is all a very new thing. In fact, every holiday is a new thing.

This year, mama and me made some new decorations for the house to celebrate the holiday. First, we made little ghosts out of white plastic bags and colored eyes and mouths on them to create scary faces. We also went to the pumpkin patch and picked-out some good candidates for jack-o-lanterns. We are still in the phase of coloring-on the faces; but mama says we will get to use the knives soon and scoop out all the sees like they do on Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. The icing on the cake though, is the ghost that we bought from the store that travels back-and-forth across a zip-line between the posts on the front porch. While his appearance is not all that scary, he makes a haunting ghost sound--which means you can watch him for hours. Christopher stands at the front window jumping, pointing, and clapping as he travels back-and-forth.

One great aspect of this year was that Grandma Paula and Grandpa Mike came to visit us the day before Halloween. They stayed with us so that mama and dada could go to the USC Homecoming Game against Oregon. Dada says it was a big game because Oregon was ranked number one in the country, and it was finally a chance for USC to get some revenge for all the times that the Oregon teams upset USC and broke his heart in past years.

Apparently, that didn't happen; but Great Grandma Solveig came to visit with Uncle Ron and Aunt Karen. We had a big dinner and a lot of fun together. The next morning on Halloween Day, we also went to breakfast down by all the boats and saw some giant starfish. It was super cool and a good way to warm-up my legs for trick-or-treating.

As in past years, we all went to Nathan's house for Halloween night and trick-or-treating. I was dressed as a ghost--my favorite--which consisted of a sheet over my head and holes cut-out for the eyes. Dada said we could eat as much candy as we wanted to just for that night which was awesome. We had pizza and passed-out candy while the dad's watched the World Series between the Giants and the Rangers.

When it got sufficiently dark, Jackson, Nathan, and I went trick-or-treating and collected candy from around the neighborhood. Although I considered it a successful run, dada said that the liberal allowance of treats led to one of the worst nights of sleep in years. There were also a number of tantrums, particularly about Skittles on the way home. I just think that it was the devils and ghouls that they put into the candy that made sleeping a night of terrors for everyone in the Keisler household.