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Halloween 2020

All three of the boys have been into Despicable Me (particularly Despicable Me 3, which they call Me 3) and, by extension, Minions, for a while. The enthusiasm has begun to wane somewhat and has currently been overtaken by the Toy Story movies, but they were into the minions enough that we decided that’s what they’d do for Halloween.

To that end, Tristen bought overalls (though we realized when we were getting them dressed that we didn’t have any for Griffin) and ordered yellow shirts for Fawkes, Phoenix, and Griffin, along with two yellow hardhats with a single light on the front of them, which look kind of like Stuart, the cycloptic minion, to be used as sort of a minion mask. Fawkes and Phoenix came to call them their minion hats.

The shirts didn’t come in on time, so on Saturday, Halloween itself, we packed the boys into the van and went to Kid to Kid, and Tristen found some yellow shirts there.

We’d thought of taking them to a Halloween store just to see all the decorations and whatnot, but it took us longer to get out of the house than we’d planned, and the party store next to Kid to Kid had a line out the door. I assume that was so they could manage how many people were inside, but between it getting close to nap time, my lack of desire to keep them all waiting in a line, and consideration for people who actually wanted to shop, we took them on home.

When we got home, however, Phoenix didn’t want to be home yet. We had thought about taking them to a farmer’s market at Waterline Brewing because the people there were handing out candy, but we hadn’t grabbed the trick-or-treat bags when we left and Griffin was getting super tired. Tristen ended up taking Griffin in and staying home with him while I took the twins to the farmer’s market.

We had practiced trick-or-treating with all the boys a couple times. Tristen or I would be outside the carport door and they’d knock on it, say “Trick or treat” which was mainly kind of an “eee” sound, and we’d give them a piece of candy. They hadn’t totally gotten it down, but after getting over some initial shyness, Fawkes and Phoenix got it down well enough. Really, I was most impressed with how well they held their bags, as silly a thing as they may sound. Anyway, they ended up with a decent haul.

They weren’t wearing their minion outfits, by the way. They were in skeleton pajama shirts I had put them in the night before. I picked them out in honor of Halloween when I got them all ready for bed on my own while Tristen went to watched our nephews as Johnny and Torrie were going out. It was a pretty smooth night. Fawkes, as he will, got up and went to the door one time. I heard him though, and sternly told him from the hallway to go get back in bed. He did, and I didn’t hear any other movement from them or anything. Then I watched a few episodes of The Boys while Tristen watched something at the Romeros’.

We started off watching The Boys together, by the way, but there was one episode where a couple of incidents happened that she wasn’t a fan of, and having heard that there was worse later in the series, she told me to go ahead and watch it on my own.

Back to Halloween…

After everyone was up from naps we went outside to carve a pumpkin. Since we were doing a minion theme, I found a carving to do online. The boys all “helped” a bit, sticking spoons into the pumpkin to pull out the guts and hanging on my back now and then. I finally got it and it looked pretty good, I don’t mind saying, but them I fumbled it (I won’t lay the blame at any particular furry family members) and dropped it. I didn’t even get a picture of the finished product. I thought about trying to put it back together with toothpicks or something, but I don’t think we have any toothpicks and it was in too many pieces for me to spend time doing that as we were about to head out anyway.

We went to Laura and Craig’s first and hung out there for a little bit. Craig always really does up their house and we were glad to hear that a lot of people ended up going by their house after we left. With the pandemic going on, I don’t think anybody really knew what kind of trick-or-treat turnout there was going to be. The Romeros got there before we left, so we got to see them for a bit too.

Oh, I should mention that Tristen and I semi-dressed up too. Tristen was ostensibly Lucy, thought really she just wore a yellow tank top and overalls, and I was ostensibly Gru, but I couldn’t find a bald cap, a black scarf, or a prosthetic nose. When Johnny saw me he asked if I was the Terminator.

After trying to get the kids to eat some food we headed off to see Mary, Laura’s college roommate, whom we haven’t seen in quite a while. We then stopped by Drew and Lee’s house then headed home to get the kids to bed.

Torrie came over to repay us for last night, and we went back to Lee’s house to pick her and Drew up. Drew had invited us out to eat at Pinpoint. We initially declined because things are pretty tight at the moment, but he said he was going to pay anyway and not to be weird about it. Tristen had lamented not going out on a Halloween that was on a Saturday with a full moon, and we enjoy hanging out with them, and we hadn’t been to Pinpoint yet, so we went and we had a really good time (and really good food).

After we finished we decided to take a stroll around the block. There were a lot of people out, and hardly any of them were masked (though we were). It looked like a regular Saturday downtown, not one during a pandemic, and there were long lines of packed-in people waiting to get into some bars and clubs. I’d have taken a picture, but I forgot my phone at home on the charger.

Drew was exhausted and had to work the next day, so we dropped them off and headed on home. Tristen suggested watching The Haunting of Bly Manor. I was apparently pretty tired myself and was in and out of it a good bit. Tristen can’t go to bed after watching a horror show, so she watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show, which had been her thing of late.

For her part, Milly came up with a Dipper Pines outfit for Halloween. Dipper is a character on her favorite show, Gravity Falls. She thought about going as his sister, Mabel, but the outfit would have just been a sweater so people might not even realize she was dressed up. I’ve got to say, she did a really good job with it. Dipper has a birthmark in the shape of the Little Dipper (which is where his name comes from) on his forehead, and I convinced Milly to really commit and add that.

She and her mom went over to her mom’s boyfriend’s house and painted pumpkins. He has a daughter close to Milly’s age and they went trick-or-treating. Milly stayed over there and met for the first time in person a friend of Brynn’s that she group texts and plays Minecraft with pretty regularly.

The next morning was a bit… something. It was time to “fall back” with the clock, but obviously the boys’ bodies didn’t automatically adjust, so instead of being up at about 6:50, they were up at the new 5:50. But Griffin had woken up just a little while before that, and the twins woke up while she was in the room. She convinced them to all hang tight since the Hatch Rest hadn’t changed to green with tweeting birds yet, so she got to go back to bed for a little bit, but probably not enough to help her rest, as it was her turn to get up with them. (I’d gotten up Friday and Saturday.)

She did get to go back to bed after I got up around… I can’t remember what time it was. It was earlier than I normally get up anyway. She helped get breakfast ready then went back to bed.

Things were fine for a while, but I found my patience was really thin this morning. The kids weren’t really being bad or anything, but I just felt impatient. I let them play outside, but that didn’t go great, so I ended up pulling them around the neighborhood in the wagon. Tristen was up not too long after we got back. She took over once again and I went to do some billing work.

The yard has been in need of some upkeep for a couple weeks, but it was slated to rain. I was able to do some weed eating in the area at the back of the yard where we had some palette furniture (which had rotted and is currently in the bushes behind the fence). Tristen let the boys out for a bit, saying she didn’t think they’d come straight back to me, but I was like, “You’ve got three toddlers and you didn’t think they’d want to come see Dad playing with yard tools?” They “helped” me for a bit before going back inside. It was cute and endearing. I then mowed a bit. I got all of the back and the side of the front before I started to feel some rain.

The kids were napping when I got back in, so…

We were low on a few supplies so I offered to go to Costco, but Tristen said she thought maybe we could all go. It’s good to get the boys out places, and Costco is generally pretty good about making sure people wear masks, so I figured, “Why not?” So off to Costco we went after they were up from their naps.

I pushed Fawkes and Phoenix in a cart while Tristen strapped Griffin to her back. For the record, this was the last time for that. He pulled and ate her hair almost the entire time.

I used to bring the twins to Costco pretty regularly, but they haven’t been there since at least February, maybe early March. Fawkes kept looking at the ceiling and saying “Wooow!” Christmas decorations are already for sale and they enjoyed looking at those and the toys on the toy aisle. They also enjoyed going into the refrigerated parts and kept asking for the “cold.” If you think about it, as long as it’s been since they’ve been to any store whatsoever, it makes sense that everything seemed so amazing and new to them.

Then we came home, let them watch Toy Story, had some dinner. Well, they had dinner. I had a bowl of cereal and Tristen had some ramen a little later, then we mostly took it easy to finish up the weekend.

Outside of that, we’ve had a few new things happen lately.

We did end up trading in the Sorento for a new C-Max. It wasn’t the one Tristen picked out at first because there was some stuff that didn’t go through in time or something, but we ended up with a slightly newer one, thought it has more miles. It’s all black and Tristen wants to get it tinted like her previous one. She said something about getting some black rims too, so I told her we should name it Vader. She wasn’t a fan, but if I keep calling it that, maybe it’ll stick.

Laura, Tristen’s mom, gave us a king-sized mattress. We had a queen-sized bed and bedroom suite though. Tristen sold it on Facebook and we’ve been using that money to get new bedroom stuff. We got a really good deal on a headboard and footboard from Ivy Cottage, though we need to get some brackets to make it work with a frame they gave us to go along with it. We also bought a wardrobe and a dresser and need to figure out what we’re going to do with nightstands. Tristen likes having more of a Bohemian look than the more formal “it all goes exactly together” suite. I don’t have much of an opinion either way.

We need to tun the mattress. The side I’ve been sleeping on is very soft, so I end up rolling halfway over to where it’s a bit more firm. The space is nice in a way, but I like to snuggle and it’s harder to do now.