Accomplishments

Last week we had several accomplishments.

1. I successfully helped my children celebrate Halloween.

Kenaz and I made his Wolverine costume. And Akiva and Mom made his Ghost costume (his idea…he wanted to be scary).

This may not seem like a big deal. But I was worried because I didn’t know where anyone was doing trick-or-treating. Two years ago we just had some trick-or-treating among friends in our apartment complex, but they all moved away (and we to another complex). Last year they got dressed up, but we just went to a party at a cafe, so no trick-or-treating. This year I got a little crazy about this, which made Haga a little annoyed. And I’ve been too busy to get things done ahead of time. In the end, on the Sunday before Halloween I found the location – an upper-end housing-house complex filled with Western expat managers – by chance when the girl who sold me my cellphone (Samsung Galaxy S2…rocking my StarTrek LCARS custom made theme) called me and asked me to help her translate for her customer, who happened to be an American who was celebrating Halloween that day. After I received this call, I took the kids to Taiquandao, then we rode out to the housing-complex. And on the way the e-bike ran out of electricity.

When we finally got to the housing-complex, everyone wanted to take pictures of the boys. Maybe because their costumes were very…DYI. Some people put on some pretty good haunted house displays, complete with dry-ice smoke and spooky music. A lot of kids…most older than the boys… where going around. 75% were vampires. A few older women were milk-maids. And of course a few princess. Akiva and Kenaz really got into the spirit of it and knew for the first time how its supposed to be. Akiva in particular wanted to stay out and make sure we hit every single house. He wanted to hunt. And we agreed next year we are going to bring some rotten eggs with us.

In the end, they brought in a good haul. Not a huge haul by American standards. But it was good. The kids were very excited and will remember Halloween for now on.

2. In other news, before our Halloween adventure, Akiva became a Blue Belt in Taiquandao

(Akiva is in the collumn second from left, in the back)

And Kenaz, who just turned five, is a Yellow Belt!

We will have another big accomplishment to publish on this next weekend, so stay tuned!