Halloween 2023

There isn't a lot to say about Halloween this year.  My girls have always been fairly good at knowing what they want to be so that is easy for me.  Piper wanted to be Ms. Frizzle and Felicity wanted to be Ariel.  The ward did not hold a Trunk-or-Treat and we did not have a sponsor to get onto the Embassy Compound so we couldn't trick-or-treat like last year.  We decided to drive all the way down to the base to go trick-or-treating on Saturday but they changed the date last minute and decided to hold it on Sunday.  Normally, we would just say no and do something else but we decided it would be okay to trick-or-treat this year on a Sunday since there was no pumpkin patch, trunk-or-treat or compound access this year.  The girls enjoyed it and it felt like an American experience.  We bought one single pumpkin earlier in the month thinking we would be back for groceries before Halloween but we did not make it back and I was unwilling to pay thirty dollars for a tiny pumpkin here in the city.  The girls didn't seem to mind though and carved their pumpkin together on Halloween.  We didn't have any candles so we stuck a headlamp inside and put the pumpkin by the entrance to the building.  The Japanese neighbors all enjoyed the pumpkin and some even stopped to take a photo.  It is definitely not a Japanese tradition to carve pumpkins.  At least, not a common one. They also got to dress up a few weeks before Halloween for a Halloween themed birthday party.  We had to hop on the train and ride an hour north so the girls got a lot of looks and smiles.