Happy Halloween

Okay, first of all, what the HECK was up with traffic here yesterday and today??? It was like some bizarre alignment of the planets or disturbance in the gravitational field resulted in near-gridlock conditions around Pearl Harbor yesterday and today. Normally, it takes about 10 minutes to drive from ES's school to our house. We left his school after his piano lesson got out yesterday around 4:40, and by 5:15, we still hadn't even made it to the Makalapa Gate yet (only like a third of the way home). I stuck my cell phone out the window and took the picture on the left to help pass the time as I was bored out of my skull sitting there listening to ES complain about how hungry he was. Of course, we were in my car with no DVD player, so there wasn't anything to really entertain him as we SAT there. I tried working up a conversation with him, but it was the fairly typical, "What'd you do at school today?" "Nothing." At least I already knew they went on a field trip to the fire department that day, so I could ask him specific questions about the fire department. By the time we got the Makalapa Gate, I said to myself, "Self, this is absolutely ridiculous, let's get some dinner and wait out the traffic." So I called LW (she was like 5 cars in front of me) and we turned right at the Makalapa Gate and went to Sam Sneads to get some dinner and watch the traffic go by. By the time we left dinner at around 6:30, it was still congested and took us another 20 minute to get home.

This afternoon it was a little bit better, but not by much. It normally takes about 6 minutes to drive from my house to the boat or vice versa (via the Halawa Gate). I can do it on my bicycle in 12 minutes. This afternoon it took me 30 minutes. Yep, you read that right - I could've JOGGED and gotten home faster than I did in my car!

Today the rain might have been a factor. It has been raining cats and dogs and buffalo and sheep and elephants all day here. I snapped the picture on the right of the gushing water from our rain gutter on my way into the house.

So I just barely made it home in time to help get the boys in their costumes and leave for the Halloween kick-off at the community center in our Navy housing area. ES was a soldier. If you asked YS what he was, he would have told you, "my favorite Luke." You might have to have some experience playing the Lego Star Wars video game to understand this. As you get through each level of Lego Star Wars, you unlock different characters you can use with different skills or weapons. There are like five different versions of Luke Skywalker in the game - the original Luke with a blaster and no Jedi powers, the Hoth ice planet Luke, and others. YS's favorite character on Lego Star Wars is the Luke in all black with the green lightsaber and Jedi powers. So he dressed up as his "favorite Luke" for Halloween. Special thanks to my MIL ("Grammy") for making the black cape to go with the costume.

It still rained on us a bit while we were at the community center. We had a costume parade around the basketball courts so everyone could see the costumes. They handed out glowing necklaces to put on the kids so they'd be easier to see in the dark. There were some really cute costumes there. Two families had their twins dressed up as Thing #1 and Thing #2 of Dr. Suess / Cat-in-the-Hat fame. Actually, in the picture on the left, you can see the lady in the orange shirt holding Thing #1 (you can't miss the red suit and bright blue hair), and the dad to the right of the umbrellas holding Thing #2 in one arm and holding the hand of the Cat-in-the-Hat on his other arm. There was a really good Gandolf costume (the mostly white appearing costume on the right side of the picture), Chewbacca, two ladybugs, and a really cute Little Mermaid. Pirates were a pretty popular costume across the board, but no two pirates looked exactly alike. Much to my surprise, the most common costume I saw was Joe Dirt. There were three Joe Dirt costumes that I saw.

The best part though was when Darth Vader showed up with his red light saber. YS just lit up with glee as he got to play his favorite Luke and have a light saber duel with Darth Vader. They went at it for quite a while and had an absolute ball. If you can open the second picture below, check out how big the smile is on YS's face!

"A-haaa! I've got you now!
Wait a minute... aren't you a little young to be my father???"

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween!