Trick or treat!! Todaraba!!

Anabelle has continually told us this past year how much she loved dressing up as a cow last year and trick or treating with her cousins in San Diego. So naturally ~ 2 months ago I looked into whether or not Halloween was celebrated by anyone in Israel. After reading blogs of depressed expatriates talking about how lonely they felt on Halloween and how it took them forever to find a pumpkin in a store and how it cost $30-$50 to buy a small one when they did, I declared that there would be no Halloween this year. Well, Maria had something else to say about that. She approached some of the Americans in our ward about getting together and celebrating Halloween, and she found out that most of the Americans in our ward (who are also connected to the Embassy in one way or another) were already attending a Halloween activity in their neighborhood. One of them invited us and all of a sudden Maria and Anabelle were scrambling to put together a costume for the event. Believe it or not it was close to impossible to find any store that carried children's dress up clothes and so most of Anabelle's costume was home made or already in her closet. We ended up saving a bunch on the costume...so we spent probably ~$40 to travel to that city so Anabelle could get ~$0.40 in candy. She loved it.. and we had a great time too.

Anabelle dressed up as a beautiful princess, complete with plastic... I mean "glass" slippers that were the ipitomy of fashionable... impractical, noisy, but very pretty.

When we got there we met up with some friends from church and started making our rounds.

She had a blast with her friends from church.

As you can see in this picture, I dressed up as a California grad student... actually I'd come straight from work since my work is right between our apartment and the train station.






Anabelle was sure to say hi to all of the dogs and cats on the way. The night was definately worth it, especially when we saw how happy Anabelle was.