Happy Halloween!

We had a great time celebrating Benjamin's first Halloween. The weather was clear and comfortably cool so we took Benjamin trick-or-treating. As Benjamin will have to enjoy the candy vicariously through us, we decided just to stop at a couple of houses. The guy at the first house studies entomology at the U of Illinois, so he was excited to see a bee costume. Next on our route was Grandma Zusman! After she very generously gave Benjamin lots of candy, we all stopped at one more home.

Here we are at the last place we stopped at for trick-or-treating.

Benjamin and I are standing on our street with the first house we visited behind us to the right.

At Grandma Zusman's home.


Our baby's first Halloween! He looks very happy that he got lots of goodies.

The following pictures were taken to appease me as a Classicist and most likely may not be readily familiar to most people. Most people are familiar with Hercules (a.k.a. Herakles) and his many labors, but many do not know that soon after he was born he had to wrangle two snakes sent to his crib by Hera. This demonstrated how strong Hercules was even as a little baby. Although, perhaps this was in the Disney movie, which my students love to discuss when they learn the more traditionally accepted versions of the myth. Since Benjamin is obviously the perfect age for this and as he is indeed the son of 'Zeus' (the nickname Steve's students call him on account of his last name), we decided to get some pictures of him as Hercules as his second Halloween costume. So, dressed up in a cloth diaper, Benjamin is taking care of the two evil yet cute plush snakes that we have placed in his hands. I really must give credit to Professor Garner for giving me the idea to have my own child pose with toy snakes, as he loves to show the undergrads a picture of his own son in such a fashion.

In this video, you can see the live action version of Hercules and the snakes.