Our 13 year old suffered childhood trauma (his words) upon being told he was too old to go trick-or-treating this year. And our Chinese was insufficient to explain the quintessentially American way of celebrating Halloween to our exchange student. (I’m not sure our English would have been sufficient, either—it is surprisingly difficult to give a coherent explanation of Halloween to someone who has never experienced it.)

Nonetheless, we celebrated Halloween, American-style. Jim dressed up as a man-eating shark:

Our 13 year old was Star Lord (from “Guardians of the Galaxy”), our almost-16 year old was a Tardis (from “Dr. Who”) [the Tardis on her head lights up, by the way], and our exchange student was Artemis (at least, I think that’s who she was).

We inflicted ourselves upon friends who have two little boys, so our 13 year old STILL got to go trick-or-treating, under the guise of taking the boys around and arrived back triumphantly with a huge bag of candy. It’s all about gaming the system…