Our Life With Raymond: Halloween 2013

I wanted to get this recorded in “Our Life with Raymond” as this past Halloween was a complete blast. I will let the pictures do most of the talking...but Halloween is such a special time for Raymond. Seven years ago I got this crazy idea to make a costume to go around Raymond’s wheelchair, and have been doing it ever since. Why? I was asking myself that question this year, it was Sunday night, 4 days before Halloween, and I had still had not even started to work on Raymond’s costume. I was exhausted, but I grabbed two boxes from the garage and put them in the living room floor to stare at me. I just had to get it started, and then off I went. Most of you know we usually start off the morning of Halloween by going down to the local TV station, KGET to attend their Halloween Spooktacular Contest at 5am. It can get overwhelming sometimes, and the thought of skipping a year because it is too much work had come to my mind….but Raymond loves it….I couldn’t stop now.

Why? It is the one day of the year that Raymond’s disability can disappear. Any other time when we walk with Raymond into a crowd of kids, Raymond would usually be greeted with stares, whispers and many questions about his wheelchair, or “What happened to him, What’s wrong with him?” But when Raymond enters the crowd in his Halloween costumes….he gets…”Wow”, “Look at that car!” or ”Whoa….how COOL!” I love to see the smile on Raymond’s face when the kids come up to him asking questions about his various costumes, and just talking to him. You should see Raymond’s face light up.

I am so glad that I did not give into fatigue that Sunday night when I was staring at the two boxes, because this Halloween was truly amazing. Raymond won the 1^st Place Prize for the costume contest at this year’s Halloween Spooktacular which was Disneyland tickets, and we can’t wait to go. This year he was a “Bakersfield Police Officer” in his very own car, and daddy put flashing blue and red lights on the car so the crowds saw Raymond coming. Then off to school where we continued to have fun, his nurse joined me dressed as an inmate, and off we went for the annual Halloween Dance at East High they hold for the Special Ed Classes in the high school district.