Our No-Halloween Halloween

 

Fred and Scooby-Doo

When your daughter is running close to a 104 temp, Halloween is not an option - and let me tell you, it is no fun breaking the news to a feverish child who has been waiting for months to debut as Scooby-Doo. But she took it like a sweet girl, helped by the tons of candy dad brought home (!). We let them dress up and I took pictures. Isn't Buddy's wig crazy!?! Even with brushing and some trimming, we could not get it under control, and he ended up looking more like a crazy cross-dressing sailor than Fred! Especially once he put his rain jacket on over the get-up. I love his "Dead Fred" look below.

So what do they do for Halloween in Italy? Well, the Italians typically don't celebrate this very American tradition, although it is popping up more here. The childrens' school had a giant Halloween party like nothing I've seen before, elaborately decorated, and it was rare to see all the Italians children dressed up. (Peanut couldn't go, but she wore her costume to see her favorite doctor, Dr. Odell.) Completely to our surprise, we actually had a 1/2 dozen trick-or-treaters in our parco, which is rare. I don't know of anyone else who experienced this. 

The military deemed Thursday night the official trick-or-treating night on base. Even those who don't live there go, and that was where we were headed just before realizing Peanut was running a raging fever. On Friday the military hosted a "Spooktakular" event with live music, haunted cabins, and other festivities geared more towards teenagers.

The kids helped me decorate a cake for their Halloween party. My list from school, which often gets lost in translation was "cake, Fanta, cups-plastic" for Peanut's class, and "chip, orange" for Buddy's. After some clarification, I learned Buddy needed a bag of chips and orange juice, not the fruit.

 

Peanut and Buddy have been watching lots of the old classic Scooby-Doo shows, and I find myself really loving them again too. They decided many months ago on Fred and Scooby-Doo, and have been "playing it out" for months. I typically like to put together home-made costumes, but with no Michaels or Hancock's Fabric around, it would have been near impossible for me, so hence the store-bought costumes in a bag.

The cake we made was completely all from the box: two boxes of chocolate cake mix, and two tubs of orange frosting. I dyed white icing green for the stems. It's basically two bundt cakes put together with a layer of icing, and two cupcakes made from the cake batter, placed in the hole to make a stem. I wished I had done orange icing myself, to get a deeper orange color, but the kids still had a blast decorating it with Halloween sprinkles I just happened to find (and remember picking up on sale last year at Target.) Hope your Halloween was great!