Early Halloween & Another Wakefield Visitor!

We love Halloween and had to celebrate early as the kids have fall break during actual Halloween so none of their friends are around.  We had two spooky movie nights and lots of great food.  I never really got pictures of the girls and their friends but here are a few of our fun treats.  

Charlie had already carved his pumpkin and really wanted to carve something else, he ran to the corner store to see if the guy had pumpkins, but no luck, so instead he carved this watermelon & named him!

Our second Wakefield, MA visitor arrived via Budapest, Maddie Shea is studying there for the semester and dropped in to see Brussels.  We loved having someone from home and showing her all of our favorite spots and checking out a few new ones!

Maddie's Mom was Katie's 5th Grade teacher and now Katie got to teach Maddie about her favorite Belgian chocolates! Probably best if Maddie didn't follow Katie's lead exactly, she ate so many samples she had to wait for us in the car because her tummy hurt!

A new place we visited was a town on the Belgian coast named Blankenberge, where they had some Halloween events.  First was a childrens parade, then fireworks on the beach, and then they were having a bonfire on the beach and burning a witch-take that Salem, MA!

We made it just in time for the children's parade...

Some creepy witches kicked off the parade.

This is one of the giants that are in parades all over Belgium.

A float.

Behind the cool old car is a witch made of crepe paper, this is the one they burned at the beach later!

We even had marching/dancing storm troopers.

This guy was there to watch I loved his Belgium spirit so I knew he had to go on the blog!

 The "Fun Fair" in the Grote Markt turned out to be a carnival, we liked watching the people on the body shaker!

Charlie convinced Dad we had to try the shooting game, I liked the name of the booth!  Charlie was delighted to win a toy gun and told me later that now he has a new job he wants to do when he grows up, he now wants to be a sniper!

Here is what was left of the witch by the time we got all the way down the beach...we didn't quite realize how far of a walk it was to the bonfire and were slow leaving our nice warm dinner place! I was really curious about the tradition of burning a witch on the beach but hesitated to ask because everyone spoke Dutch!

Today was the Brussels Marathon, all the streets were blocked off around our house, we walked down to the finish line and got this picture after the runners had all crossed.  

Two last pictures... Charlie had Victorian Day at school and had to dress like he was from the early 1900's.

 He reported that the teachers were all really strict like they were in old times!

At a recent soccer game Katie had her own cheering section, here she is with her friends after the game.  Their friends all like to make the blog, so I had to be sure to get this one posted!

We hope you all have a happy Halloween!