Halloween Wackiness

So much wacky Halloween scariness in the historic district of Alameda! WAY better than any Oakland action, IMHO. It was Nate's first Halloween where he was interested in C-A-N-D-Y and trick-or-treating, and he was a-mazingly cute, there was really no documenting it properly!
Some of these jokers in the historic district lowered tarantulas from trees (fuzzy ones) which Nate loved! Look up and there's a Ninja in the tree, holding the string!

Other guys had dry ice, strobes and stuff in trees. Nate was extremely cautious about the first house pictured and shored himself up with some courage: "No! Too scary!" and then..."Candy!" and he lunged forth!

It was cool to see some of the interiors and some of the eccentric inhabitants of the houses, too. A couple of very gay gentleman had the most amazingly restored Queen Anne I've ever seen. Another neat little house, the one with the Ninja in the tree, had runes carved on the front door, an assortment of f'd up plants and stuff on the porch, and upon opening the door I saw the most amazingly stuffed front room crammed full of computers and electronics I've ever seen. Game designers? Hmmm...

Nate wore the same thing he did last year, he was NOT interested in dressing up:
Mommy: "You will be a pumpkin, let me fix you up!"
Nate (distressed!): "No! I want to be Nate, so we can be friends!"
So mommy slapped his old pirate vest on, with a bandanna, and he did the "trick-or-treat" very well indeed!
I ended up giving up most of his take since someone took all of our basket of candy by the time we got home, and there were many more kids to feed. A small piece of candy gets Nate through tough times, like having to go get dropped off at "Big school" if mommy needs to work an off day. Candy is magic.