spiderman and bumblebee

no, not Bumblebee from Tr@nsformers, the black and yellow striped kind.

First, let me answer Ben's question: The Kingd0m does not officially celebrate Halloween, but compounds that are mostly filled with expatriates, would usually have some sort of a shindig, or organize a trick-or-treating parade to show off the kids' costumes. Most of the international schools also celebrate halloween on some level. This year, the British school allowed the younger kids to come to school in their costumes instead of uniforms. The kids in the american school, who dont wear uniforms anyway, wore their costumes to school.

I have never bought costumes for my kids because we dont really celebrate halloween, so they were embarassed to join the trick-a-treating last year.
This year was a bit different, though.
It just so happens that one of my egyptian friends who had moved away this summer gave a spiderman costume to Ihsan. Izani got a bumblebee costume from Che'Ngah (My sister who does not blog) last year and he finally could fit into it. Ilham had bought a Bekham football shirt in florence (pasar malam punya lah) and said he could just put on shorts and a his football boots, and Anis - well as you saw in the previous post, she wore the kebaya bandung we bought her in Jakarta.
So this year, the kids begged and begged to go trick-a-treating.
I was reluctant, thinking about the bags and bags of useless candy they'd be bringing home and the cavities it would produce. And how the kids would be on a sugar high and be hyper for the rest of the evening.
But two of my neighbours' kids kept calling them asking when can they come out and they keep asking me can they go please please please????
So I gave in.
I told them to stay on the sidewalk and watch out for cars. I told them not to eat any candy till they come home and show it to me first. I told them to stick together. I told them to only ding-donged those houses with their porch lights on (that was the agreed code thru-out the compound).
Gosh were they excited!! They picked out the biggest supermarket plastic bags they could find in the kitchen and happily skipped out the door.
About an hour or so later (my compound is not that big) they came home all happy and sweaty and rosy cheeked. They showed me their loot. A bag of chips each (which I let them eat right away). A few galaxy bars. 2 mini-bags of m&ms, 2 mini bags of skittles, assorted toffee and hard candy, lotsa gum, a chocolate cookie (?), and lots and lots of lollipops.
Suffice to say I dont have to buy anymore candy for the rest of the year and hopefully next year too.

p/s izani didnt go trick-a-treating. He stayed home with me.