Halloween

The only butterfly among the ghosts, vampires and witches

When I told Hubby that the Babies had been invited to their 1st Halloween party, his immediate reaction was, "But it's not Italian!"

True, but the family organising it is half American and Halloween is certainly very American.

I accepted the invitation as I've accepted every invitation thus far and I must say that we are quite overwhelmed by the number of parties going on every week. Not to mention the budget for presents. But best of all, one had better be available to sometimes stay on and help out as the monsters guests may be too young and numerous for the host family to cope with.

The Babies, I must say, seem to love attending parties. They are not shy and would forget me the minute they step into the other house. I should be relieved, but at the same time, I'm a bit pissed off that they should so easily forget their mother. Then it probably helped that they are usually invited together nowadays - as I still remember Baby Girl crying at Bday parties in Stuttgart where she was often invited without her brother.

I didn't have any scary costumes for them nor any talent for making one. So I just dressed Baby Girl up as a Butterfly and Baby Boy as a Pirate. They were happy as long as they were dressed up and had no clue what Halloween was about anyway.

My contribution to the party - egg tarts

The party was held in a big villa and I thought to myself at one point that it was ironic going around knocking on doors for sweets when all the villas in the neighbourhood had been designed to precisely keep intruders away. The main door is usually a few hundred metres away from the gate, for example.

Kids trick or treating in front of a fortress villa

The P family is a famous Modenese family. They run a family-owned business. I'm usually quite allergic to very rich people but I really like L, she is nice and friendly, has absolutely no airs and is very approachable.

And she had the smart idea of warning her neighbours about what we were going to do on Halloween and even providing them with the sweets to give away!

Baby Boy had a difficult time during Trick or Treat though as he's so small and never managed to get near enough to the box of sweets to get more than one sweet each time. And Baby Girl even though she may be near the box would never take more than one in each hand, unlike some kids who literally grabbed handfuls leaving nothing else for the rest. Anyway, I'm not complaining about it either as it was horrible seeing all of them stuff themselves sick on candy. And I do not know how but some adult must have taken pity on Baby Boy because he ended up with a pumpkin bucket of sweets from I've-no-idea-where. I had to spend the next few days screaming that my 3 kids trying to stop them from eating all the sweets in one go.

One of the neighbours was so friendly they actually prepared a little feast for us when we turned up : pizza, drinks, chips and of course sweets. We were also invited into an old couple's house where they roasted us some chestnuts in their fire and seemed really happy to see the kids. I'm not surprised, nothing much ever happens around here.

And I of course didn't expect anybody to turn up at my doorstep. You'll need to walk quite a bit before you can get to my door.