Our very nice friends from Church who work for the Embassy invited us with their kids to trick or treat. There is a neighborhood where lots of Embassy folks live that observes an American style Halloween. Colin loved running around with the kids. Really, how can a kid not love trick or treating? Jane was not quite into yet but was happy to have some run around time out of the stroller.
We love Colin in both these pictures: His maniacal smile, his arm in the candy bag in the first shot, and unwrapping some loot in the second one.

On our way home, since we had not really eaten dinner and were starting to get Halloween gut rot, we got off the metro a couple of stops early to get some awesome kebabs. For Colin we have called the above building the Halloween Tower. Actually called The Palace of Culture, it was given as a "gift" to Warsaw from Stalin. It is also know as Stalin's Male Private Part (this is a family blog, so even though the word I should really use is an actual anatomy word, I'm trying to keep it clean). The building is a little creepy. I would expect to see Batman flying around it.

This is the park right by the opera house (where we posted the sunny morning photos the other day.) It was lovely to see it in the dark. Not too hard to see things in the dark these days with the 3:45 pm sun set.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is part of a palace ruined in WWII. It has been interesting teaching our 3 year old about WWII, and a little intense. We get asked lots of questions since we are in the never ending why stage. Colin's brain has concluded from our discussions about what happened in Warsaw that Heavenly Father has put Hitler in a VERY long time out for hitting and spitting (Colin's #1 and #2 reasons for time outs). It is also a good chance to talk about how we need to be nice to everyone and how wars really hurt people and make us sad.

A couple more photos from the cemetery, including a photo of our friends the Lewis's. They have been great and strangely, our lives intersect in many ways. It just took Poland for us to find one another.

This tree was only lit up only by the candle light from the graves.

Memo to myself: hat makes head look like a cone head. Buy new hat.

We dress up in costumes, consume massive amounts of sweets, disembowel pumpkins. The Polish actually do something meaningful. Maybe it's not fair to compare Halloween with All Soul's day (Zaduski)- after all, Zaduski is actually Nov.1st. But these candles in the huge central cemetery of Warsaw do kind of kick Halloween's butt.

Some graves were clearly very celebrated people, but I honestly did not see a single grave without at least one candle on it.

There was some filming going on, so I took advantage of their floodlight to take this shot.

We enjoyed a wonderful evening with our friend's, the Lewis's. A big Gnocchi feed, long walk to the cemetery, and hot chocolate. Colin is not into complying with photography these days. Halloween photos to follow.

For limited packing space, the kids Halloween costumes are basically pjs this year. We brought Colin's pirate hat so he can be a ghost pirate and Jane is just a cute 1 year old in Halloween jammies. While we were waiting for our laundry on Monday night and out of night clothes, we let the kids have a Halloween pj preview. I was finally able to peel Colin's skeleton off him on Thursday so it could be washed and ready for Saturday. (His skeleton glows in the dark and it is very fun.) We are excited because some friends we met at Church have invited us to an Embassy Halloween party and trick-or-treating. We are also excited for All Souls Day. We plan to head over to the big cemetery to see all the candles. We were at Carrefour (it is like a French Walmart, very big) and their seasonal section instead of being full of costumes and candy is all candles for the cemeteries. I love cemeteries anyway, it should be very cool.

If we had had the space to pack it, I would have put Jane in Colin's monkey costume from a couple years back. (and borrowing Jeanette's idea, I was going to have Colin dress as the Man in the Yellow Hat to trick-or-treat with his George sister). This was Colin trick-or-treating at the Kansas City Zoo in 2007. I think Brian and I have only been in our home for Halloween for 1 year of our 6 year marriage. (2004 Chicago I think, 2005 Seattle, 2006 Connecticut, 2007 Kansas City, 2008 California, 2009 Poland)

Here is Jane happily watching Dora. I got the a Dora Halloween DVD that has taught her how to say "Trick or treat". Both kids are Dora obsessed, but possibly more Jane than Colin. Dora brings her intense joy and allows me to wash dishes while she is occupied. Jane can count in Spanish and loves to yell "salta" and has a very sweet "de nada".

(In the background you can see our toy kitchen. It is really fine and quite a clever unit with a fridge under two heating elements, a sink and another cupboard. Very clever use of space. As much as Colin bounces off the walls in our two rooms here, the benefits of living in the theater and in this great park of town far outweigh a couple of inconvenient aspects. We are happy to be here. )

Brian blends in well with the Fall colors.

The last two mornings have been sunny. We only admired the sun from our window yesterday morning and then spent a gray and misty afternoon out, but thismorning we got ready quick and headed out before Brian had his morning rehearsal. We had been saving bread to feed the birds. It is so lovely to see some sun!

This is the park right next to the theatre. There are many lovely willows.

I was thinking about our rooms with a view recently and looked back at some old photos. Above is our current view. We are near a bus stop and Colin likes to watch the busses. I heard him chatting to himself one day at the window about the good and bad busses. I suppose we should find out what the monument is at the end of the street that we can see from our window. (But we can't read the plaque.)

Here is our view from our third place we stayed in Paris. We had 4 different living situations in 4 weeks, which was a little intense. This was a great apartment at Cite Universitaire. Colin could watch trams from the window.

Our 4th place in Paris was a bit of a nightmare on some levels (former servant quarters although nicely re-done- very small with no kitchen table and a hot plate that did not even boil water and up 5 flights of little stairs when I was about 25 weeks pregnant with Jane). Good view though, Eiffel Tower and all. I also love chimney pots.

Here is our view in Mexico City from the high rise hotel we started out in. Protests were a nearly daily occurrence in the city center.

Oh Mexico City, why are you so big?

Our view from Tel Aviv. Our neighbors seem to need a jungle view.

We went on a walk yesterday across the Vistula River, accidentally stumbled upon the Zoo and this new park to play in (new to us, actually quite an old park). I got Jane this cute little jacket and think she looks very darling. I would buy the kids all new clothes here since I love the European kids clothes, but they do not need much. (Just a few souvenirs).

Going, going, gone. The parks here have a lot of sand that always comes home with us.

This spinning toy left my head spinning for quite awhile. I can't spin like I used to.

I kind of gave Colin a bowl cut yesterday, but we are working on it.

Here is the gate to Wilanow, where many of the other recent photos have come from. It really was a beautiful day, it has been gray and rainy ever since.

Richard and Asia were our tour guides. It was very fun to meet up with them and amazing to have people who could communicate with other people in Polish and read signs. We exist so simply on our 5 word Polish vocab.

I got one shot inside the castle before a very grumpy lady told me not to take photos. She was really quite rude about it and said there was a sign posted when we came in (which was a very small sign, easy to over-look when you have two kids). At first I thought she was going to follow us all through to make sure I did not take any photos. What I really wanted to do was take a photo of her as she was a piece of work. All through France we could take photos in galleries without flash, and I think even Versailles allowed flash photos. Come on grumpy lady! We got lots of glares with our kids in the castle from other workers and only one lady smiled at us.

There are many other photos I will have Brian post because he took most of them. And Jane is up. She likes to see and touch the computer a little too much.

Some of Colin's photos at the castle. Granted we are a little biased, but we think they both are very beautiful children.