Halloween po polsku

This year we decided to all out celebrate Halloween in Poland. The past couple of years we have decorated, but this is the first year we (I mean the kids) dressed up, had a party and went door to door trick or treating. This was all due to our fantastic neighbor (and her daughter princess/pumpkin) who organized just about everything including making a poster to inform the neighbors o co chodzi and having the party at her place. Take a look at her fantastic jack o’lanterns. Thanks my favorite neighborka pod jedynką!

Lizzie has been aware of Halloween for awhile now. She has a lot of books about Halloween from my mother and decided a long time ago that she wanted to dress up as a strażak for Halloween. Lizzie is a big fan of fires, fire trucks and fire fighters. It all started when she was about a year and a half old (like Rosie is now) and our neighbors right next to us (but in fact in the next klatka) had a fire. We were sitting at home when we noticed a lot of smoke outside. I made a joke that someone had really burned their dinner, but when we opened the window and looked down we saw everybody from our street looking up at us and pointing including some firefighters. We decided to hightail it downstairs to see what all the commotion was about and that day Lizzie learned the word “fire truck”. This summer there was another fire on our street in the basement and Lizzie was so excited. She was dancing and twirling around singing “Pali się w piwnicy”.

We’ve been testing out this firefighter costume idea on Lizzie just to make sure that she really wanted to be a firefighter before we got her costume all sorted. That’s what happened with her pirate costume. She wanted to be a pirate until we put her costume together. Then she changed her mind. Strażak, however, has been going strong for a least 4 months now.

Our conversation:

Mom: What do you want to be for Halloween?

Lizzie: Strażak.

Mom: Maybe you’d like to be a pirate (thinking that I already have the costume)?

Lizzie: No. Strażak.

Mom: Maybe a princess (dream of all mom’s of little girls)?

Lizzie: No. Strażak.

Mom: Maybe a monster or a robot?

Lizzie: Maybe a monster strażak or a robot strażak?

Mom: (thinking how hard it would be to make a monster strażak or a robot strażak costume) I think a regular strażak would be fine.

So, Strażak it is.

We even trick or treated our own place.

And we can’t forget about our Pirate checking out the loot.

All our neighbors welcomed us so warmly that I was really surprised. I mean they knew we were coming, but they acted surprised and scared and thanked us for knocking on their doors. They also gave a lot of sweets, emptying the whole bowl on four little trick or treaters. If we ever go to the States for Halloween, I’m afraid that Lizzie might just empty the bowl at every house!

Instead of “Trick or Treat” the kids said this little poem.

My jesteśmy straszne zmory,
Bardzo groźne z nas upiory,
Jeśli nie chcesz się nas bać,
musisz nam cukierka dać.

Of course the party wasn’t all for the kids. We had some fun, too.

I hope that you had a safe and fun Halloween too!

Happy Halloween!