Werewolves in London

To say that the spookiest day of the year isn't as celebrated in the UK as it is in the US would be a vast understatement. This was no more clearly evidenced than when our building's porter indicated to us that trick-or-treating was simply not permitted in our building. Bah, humbug! Killjoys aside, we quite enjoyed our first London Halloween. In fact something about this city flows naturally into the perfect backdrop for this holiday. Gratefully we happen to live in a special pocket of London, sort of an American microcosm, which does its best to embrace this day of ghosts and goblins. We quickly learned this corner of town is no secret as droves of taxis deposited eager trick-or-treaters like cruise ships unloading passengers into port (and I'm not kidding, one house we know reported over 800 sweet-seekers). Because we had joined up with London veterans for our trick-or-treating outing we knew to hit the sugar route early. We began at 4:30, which was clearly none too early, as we were finishing up our candy quest just as the streets were becoming too crowded to navigate and our fingers were becoming ice-lollies. We didn't make it to Kate Moss's house or to Ewan McGregor's, or the many other notables who live in our area, but we did see a whole lot of unbelievable, star-worthy London homes on our treat tour. To finish off the festivities our group gathered at our place to survey the loot and to, of course, enjoy a Monroe-family Halloween tradition, pizza! Dallin, Madeleine and Trevon dressed up as a Harry Potter-themed trio, Harry, Hermione and Hedwig. Hedwig was happy so long as a lollipop was hanging out of his beak. He and I joined some friends at a toddler party earlier in the day, where the day's sucker drool marathon began. Later in the day Madeleine had fun marching in a Halloween parade at her school as a princess before she became Hermione for the evening.


Ghost Bowling


Spider suckers!


Sucker #2


The Princess at her school Halloween parade (check out the lion digging for gold)


Trick-or-Treaters


Harry and his red-haired friend


Madeleine and Madeleine (seriously, and their moms both chose the same tricky spelling for the same reason, and they were born the same year within a couple of months of each other, and they both go to the same school, and they're both in the same primary class)


Harry and Hermione


Hedwig (sucker #3) and his falconer










Checking out the stash