Henry's First Halloween

I (Zach) am such a Halloween fan that we knew we had to do something big for Henry's first Halloween.  My parents gave us the idea of going as Popeye, Olive Oyl and Swee' Pea.  Thanks to the annual church rummage sale in our neighborhood, we put together pretty terrific costumes.  I couldn't find a novelty pipe anywhere so I made one out of an actual corncob and a chopstick, and Alicia sewed the ruffles onto her and Henry's outfits. 

We went trick-or-treating on Embassy Row.  We had wanted to do this since we've been in DC.  It was fun to see all the Georgetown students in their costumes (a lot of Sarah Palins and costumes of everything from sexy cats to sexy Strawberry Shortcake).  For some reason they all loved our costumes.  We heard, "Is that a real baby?  Where did they get it?" and had about ten "I know this sounds really weird, but can I get a picture of you guys?"  The Derrs will be all over Facebook and MySpace!

The actual embassies were pretty dissapointing.  We've rescued some of these countries from invading armies, we've given them billions in foreign aid and to pay us back . . . they close their doors to us on Halloween or give out candy until 4:00 pm.  Pretty bad diplomacy if you ask me. The best was Romania, we went in the embassy and they had jars of peppermint candy that looked about 3 years old, and next to the jar were two dudes smoking cigarettes.  Korea was great, they let everyone walk through the embassy and had tons of native candy they gave out.

We then had lots of friends over for the famous Derr chili, rootbeer and scones.  We made two kinds of chili: white bean and a red chocolate chili.  The starving troops devoured all of it and angrily demanded more.  We had the first shift, people with kids.  They left and we had a little break and then came the next group (pregnant people and people without kids).  We had some great costumes, we had Juno and Bleeker, 80s aerobics instructors, a pair of Mavericks, a bachelor, a golf pro, a dragon, a few ducks, Dorothy and a princess.  (Sadly the kids picture on the couch wouldn't load onto here). We have such great friends and were so happy to celebrate Halloween with them.