Halloween!

I got a handful of pics uploaded from Halloween. I put all the ones of Alden, with the various incarnations of The Mohawk, all in one place, plus a few new ones, from the school parade and the costume contest, hell, I even threw a few of us ugly old grownups in there, too.

You can find them here, if you're interested.

Alden took first prize of his grade, at school, and he was among the winners of the 1st-3rd grade age group for the townwide contest (they didn't have first second and third prize, they just picked a handful of winners from each group). We had a blast yesterday, walked three miles in the parade, then we went trick or treating all over my mom's neighborhood. Stopped for some food, then went back to our neighborhood closer to dark.

A house down the block had this enormous haunted house set up in the yard, it was great. Good scary stuff, untypical, too. Not your basic dummies, and people jumping out. I really liked it, because they had a few baskets here and there, for donations to the American Cancer Society. That really made it, for me. Using their yard, and what had to be thousands of dollars worth of props, and hours of manpower for a good cause. There's another guy that does that, here, has all these awesome holiday displays that people come from miles around, to see, and he donates to the Boy Scouts. We have a really huge yard, one day, I aspire to that. I want to have a setup like that, maybe with donations for the SPCA.

While we were trick or treating, we fell in with this group of kids that Alden knows from school, and the neighborhood. One of the kids, a kindergartener has a hip disorder. He's a tough kid, too. His mom whispered to me, as we were walking "I'm really glad you guys caught up to us, he was about to give up. With Alden here, he's all excited again." That alone made me smile, but what really touched me, was that even though there were about 5 kids, running from house to house, Alden hung out with the little guy the whole time. When he was tired, and just sat on the curb, Alden sat right with him, and engaged him in conversation. He waited, and walked slow, and was just being so patient. No one prompted him to do anything like that, no one even told him that the kid had a handicap. You couldn't really tell, except for the orthopedic shoes. There wasn't any big deal, about it, or anything, it was just easy concern. He just sort of stayed close to the kid the whole time. "Are you tired? You want to sit? Should I tell them to wait for us?" Yeah, I was really moved by that. One of those unexpected little moments in parenting, that's like a karmic payoff. Really great indication of his personality, I think, and hopefully a glimpse at what he's gonna be like as an adult.

So, yesterday was a fabulous day, all around, and now we have about eighteen lbs of candy to try to get rid of.

[Listening to: Rock N Roll Band - Boston - (3:00)]