Who Is That Unmasked Man?

And why are Larkin and Finn kissing him?

Last week, Emile was called down to Irvine for one of his very occasional work trips. Apparently, one of his co-workers was trying to convince him to shave off his beard. When he offered $10 as motivation Emile demured, pointing out that Larkin and Finn had already been asked if they wanted to see what Emile looked like without a beard and declined. So co-worker proposed to give the kids the $10. Emile called us to see what they thought. Larkin and Finn decided that, as long as they could split the reward money, the plan was a go.

Amusingly, when we dropped Emile off at the airport, Larkin had mused that if Emile returned with no beard we might not recognize him.

24 hours after his return, we all still do a bit of a double-take when looking at him (as does he when presented with a reflective surface). The general consensus is that we are all ready for the beard to come back. Here is the 5-second-later follow-up to the above photo:

Not big fans of the stubble.

A Very Harry Halloween

We recently finished our mad dash through the Harry Potter series of books. I think it took about 3 months to read all seven. Phew. We watched the associated movie as we completed each book. The movies would have absolutely been too scary for Finn (and maybe Larkin), but because he knew what was going to happen it was not a problem.

I was not expecting the experience to be a lesson in literary critique and film analysis, but it did seem to work out that way. Every movie was paused and discussed exhaustively, comparing the movie's treatment to the book form and arguing the relative merits of each. I was amazed at the details Larkin and Finn remembered as we watched the movies... there were countless times that I was thinking, "wow, they really followed the book exactly in this section" and one of them would point out a subtle difference in the phrasing of a particular piece of dialogue.

Naturally, when Halloween rolled around, Finn decided to dress up as Harry Potter and Larkin as Hermione. I attempted to dress as the strict professor McGonagall, but Larkin informed me that even with a bun and cloak I failed in the stern department.

Emile figured he was already a pretty hairy potter so he didn't need to dress up at all.

In related news, our local co-op carried Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer this summer (very similar to cream soda). Pretty much as close as you can get to the Harry Potter Butterbeer without infringing on copyright issues. Finn, who normally doesn't like carbonated beverages, drank a whole bottle rather quickly, although he decided halfway through that it was actually the other Harry Potter beverage: Fire Whiskey.

Finn had been talking about wanting to pierce his ears for several months, so just before Halloween we took him to the good ol' Piercing Pagoda at the mall. He chose dolphins jumping over sparkly stones. After getting the first one done, he decided that one earring would be enough for now. A few hours later he was ready to turn around and get the other one done, but we haven't actually gone back yet. He had a brief moment of panic when he realized that Harry Potter didn't have a pierced ear, but we convinced him that since earrings were never mentioned in the books in any capacity it was entirely possible that he did. Otherwise, he has been *thrilled* with his new accessory. So now, in the spirit of '80s punk:

Larkin was super excited to design and carve a jack-o-lantern All By Herself this year. She was nervous about carving any curves, so she created an all-straight lines design. Finn designed his own and drew the lines on the pumpkin, but wanted me to make the actual cuts. Larkin's is on the left, Finn's on the right:

Their costumes were a success, although they heard a lot of things like "Hey! It's Harry Potter! And... that girl one!" One house had a party of teenage girls who were big Harry Potter fans and they all had to come out and hug Finn and Larkin. We left to pointed fingers and shouts of "Expelliarmus!" and "Avada Kedavra!"

All that, AND I got to stick my head in their bags of candy and inhale the scent of Halloweens past. Aaaaah, bliss.