Something Better than Election Coverage! What the Keyes did on Halloween!!!

We weren’t sure what there is to do in Ottawa for Halloween so I googled it and found a bunch of parties but as far as “family friendly” things, there weren’t a ton. In the morning Little Dragon, or should I say BATMAN and I went to the Bayshore Shopping Mall (which is one of the only kid activities I found on-line)and there were crafts, a costume contest and lots of little boys and girls wearing adorable outfits. 

First, I must say, driving on the 417 is insane!! As I have mentioned before, I am not too eager to drive around in a new city. A new city where everyone drives at whatever speed they want. For instance, I go 70km in a 50km zone to keep up with traffic and have people honk at me and zoom past going 90km or faster. It’s worse than the Autobahn, I swear! I haven’t seen ANY photo radar nor speed lights. Anyways, we almost got hit by a lady that was merging in our lane (we were in the middle lane) and she wasn’t looking at all! At least I saw her mouth “Sorry.” So scary! I felt my heartbeat in my mouth for a few minutes.

Anywho! We made it to the mall accident-free, but unfortunately, we just missed the costume contest. I knew Little Dragons’ costume wasn’t creative enough to win (it was an outfit in a bag which I ordered on Amazon), but I wanted to see what did win so that maybe next year we can be in the running. I wanted to deck out the stroller to look like the Batmobile, put flashlights for headlights, you know the works, but I didn’t have enough time/energy to take on such a feat. I am thinking we will do this in the Spring when we go to Comicon as they have this comic book convention in both Ottawa and Calgary (as we aren’t sure if we will be here or Alberta for the summer, it depends where Dave can find employment). Comicon has costume contests for both adults and children. Trust me, I have thought about this for a while. We were even thinking about dressing up David like Alfred, Batman’s butler. We’ll see!

This is Batman's action shot. Look at those fists of fury!!

 

We strolled through the mall. It had a nice easy layout. Three stories and circular which is way less confusing than the Rideau Centre. The Rideau Centre is a wannabe figure eight I think, still not sure what shape it is. At most retail places at the Bayshore Mall the employees were dressed up and greeted mom’s and babies/toddlers with candy. We didn’t get any candy but rather stopped in at a dental office and got Lewis a baby toothbrush. So cute! 

David had been at the library the last couple of days until 11pm so that way on Halloween he could spend the evening with us. It was really nice having him around. That night, we went to a community event on the Gatineau side. It was in a little park/community hall a few blocks from our house. We found out about this from a bright orange sign that was posted on our apartment building's front door. I was really impressed with the effort that was put into this event. They had a haunted mansion, a science booth featuring fluorescent liquids, hot chocolate, a slurpee machine,  colouring, some weird things to touch that were in bowls and bags so as to let your imagination run wild (kids thinking olives were eye balls, etc). My favourite part was that there was a young DJ dude dressed as the Count from Sesame Street! 

We had a grand entrance as David was holding Little Dragon and went up to a group of older ladies on the outskirts of the party and said in French, “Batman is here!” or something like that. David LOVES to show off our son any chance he gets. You will notice this is quickly becoming a common theme in our life/blog. The grandma’s laughed and exchanged words with Dave, and then they said, “It’s more like BatBOY, Batboy!” Ha ha ha. Oh the French!  Later the ladies found us again and brought over their daughter and grand-daughter. David translated and told me that they thought Dragon was the cutest baby and they had to show the rest of their families the Little Batboy. Awww! It’s not just me who is totally infatuated with this little beast. 

So that’s our Halloween in a nutshell. Yup, we thought we had a pretty awesome Halloween UNTIL we saw our Ottawa friends’ picture they posted on Facebook. They trick-or-treated at 22 Sussex Drive and got a picture with the Prime Minister! I am not a Harper fan in the least bit, but I still think that is pretty awesome idea. Also, the Governor General’s house is open to the public to trick-or-treat and pictures. Next year we will do this; mark my word, next year! I have to take advantage of everything Ottawa while we are here. I am already thinking about potential Halloween costumes for Lewis, perhaps dress him up as a mini Stephen Harper and put him in a nice suit with a grey wig and glasses? Or dress him up as a Canadian flag and have his little face painted red through the maple leaf part? The goal is to have a memorable costume that gets a chuckle from the Prime Minister. Oh the possibilities!