Carved Pumpkin, Meet the Tropics

This is what happens when you carve a pumpkin in the tropics and leave it outside:

We carved this pumpkin on Saturday, and Oliver kicked it off the walk this morning because it was caving in on itself. It's actually been sitting on our counter for over a week before we carved it. I wanted to wait because I knew it wouldn't last long. Even I was surprised at how quick it collapsed, though. I think the one we did last year stuck around just a tad bit longer.

Halloween was really fun. The way they do it here is set a couple hours for trick or treating. Bahamians that work on the base are allowed to bring their kids on to participate. Last year, it seemed most of them were without costumes, but this year, I saw most of the Bahamian kids in some kind of costume. There also seemed to be more of them than Americans.

We don't really do the whole traditional knock on a door to get candy routine here. Instead, most people sit outside their houses, some with rather elaborate Halloween displays, and some with their neighbors, making it a one stop for several different buckets of candy. Some were handing candy out from golf carts, and a few were dressed up in costume trying to scare people. Hardly anyone said trick or treat because of how mobs of kids just walked right up and the adults passed it all out with a few comments about how cute everyone looked. One house we went to had a chair with looked like a fake gorilla sitting in it. I turned to my right only to find the gorilla right in my face. I started laughing, which was probably not what he was going for, but it was because the mood was not really a fright night, but a fun block party.

For the most part, we didn't do homemade this year when it came to costumes. The boys have been longing for some dress-up clothes, Wyatt especially, so I decided to buy a couple Melissa and Doug costumes for them. I bought a Police Officer Costume for Wyatt, and Oscar was styling in a Train Engineer Costume. They are in the playroom now for daily play.

The one homemade thing we did, though, was mostly Oliver's handiwork. Since Oscar wanted to be a "passenger", Oliver built him a train out of cardboard and our wagon. He decorated it with construction paper as paint is not easy to come by here. I think it came out fantastic, and by the attention we got walking around with it, I think others did, too. We had to pose for a few pictures along the way.

All in all, a really fun holiday for us this year. The boys came home with full pumpkins, and now we have to deal with sugar overload, eek. We buy candy very rarely, so this is the most they will see all year.

Oh, one last note about the candy: Last year, we got ours in the States because we had an opportunity to do so before Halloween. This year, we stayed put all month, so we were forced to pick up a couple bags in the store. There were about eight different candy bags to pick from, and I found it funny how many times I recognized the kind of candy we had bought in our boys' buckets. It was clear who had bought stuff in the States and who hadn't. Not something I would have ever figured out before moving here.

Also, I don't think I will ever get used to sweating while trick or treating. It's kind of weird.