Another Laotian Halloween

For the second time, we celebrated Halloween in Laos. It's not really big here... but we do our best.

My friend, whose fiancé works with Matt, really misses home and she wanted to make applesauce and paint pumpkins and pretend it was cold outside. Pumpkins weren't easy to find, so we settled for something like honeydew melons. (The applesauce was fantastic.)

This is the one my friend made.

Scott did a little face on one of his:

My first idea (crayon and paint)

My second idea. It's a honeydew dressed up as a jack-o-lantern! One side sad, one side happy.

I hosted a playgroup at my house for Halloween, and I thought it would be fun to do some jack-o-lantern carrots... but I only made one. ;)

 I showed some pictures of jack-o-lanterns to my housekeeper because I thought she'd think we were pretty crazy painting honeydews and she brought me a pumpkin to carve!

Then the day of Halloween actually came. The boys went to school in costumes for "Fancy Dress Day." They had to dress as either a plant, an animal, a profession, or wear a national costume. It was the same rule last year (I think they had way too many superheroes and princesses in years past), so while we were in the States we got a fireman costume and SWAT team costume. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures. And actually, Bobby wouldn't wear his fireman costume and wore a Chinese outfit we bought in Hong Kong that Scott refused to wear for last year's Fancy Dress Day (when he was an iPad fixer/Apple Genius)... what can I say? I did hear that Bobby put his fireman costume on once he got to school, at least for a little while. So I'm glad I forced him to take it with him to school.

The evening of Halloween, there was a party at the biggest international school here, so that's when the boys got dressed up in their costumes of choice: Captain America and Wolverine.

I dressed Marie up as Hermione Granger. When we were at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando in March, we were buying souvenirs for the boys and I wanted something for the baby. I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl yet, but I thought, either way they could be Harry or Hermione. So when I found out she was a girl, I had my sister-in-law's sister-in-law make the hat/wig and scarf, my mom made the robe, my friend in Idaho made the skirt, and I bought the shoes. We used the stick that comes with a wooden frog (a classic Lao toy) as her wand. So, her costume was a lot of work and a lot of money, but she looked dang cute!!

It was a fun day! But I hope next year we can go trick-or-treating for real, and that it won't be 90 degrees outside.