Halloween

October 31, 2024

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I love any excuse to dress up like my favorite characters and eat copious amounts of candy. Ever since high school though, it's been bittersweet. My grandma passed away on Halloween my junior year. And 10 years ago today we lost our daughter, Olivia, just nine weeks after she was born.

I prefer to commemorate people's lives on the day they were born rather than the day they died. But it's unavoidable to think about my grandma and Olivia today. As a parent of two young boys, Halloween is a fun day! So I need to put on a brave face for my kids and make sure that they have a memorable one.

Owen in a blue car, dressed as a construction worker and Ryan dressed as an astronaut.

Both Owen and Ryan's classes (preschool and kindergarten, respectively) had a Halloween parade, where all the kids and teachers marched around the school in their costumes, waving as they passed by. It's pretty damn adorable, really. But it was hard not to think about Olivia, who would have been in 5th grade this year. What costume would she have picked? What would her favorite candy be?

I see parents and grandparents watching with pride as their kids go by and wish that my grandma could have met my kids. She would have loved them so much.

Instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, I'm going to get in my Jeffrey Lebowski costume and take my kids trick or treating and hope they don't notice when I siphon off some of their candy.

Extra Life

This Saturday, starting at 8am Central I'll be playing video games for 24 hours straight to raise money for Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, in Olivia's honor. This is my 11th Extra Life and I'm proud to say that we're on track to reach $50,000 raised over that time. I'm so grateful for friends, family and strangers who have generously contributed to our cause.

I'll be streaming live on Twitch so you can watch me play and offer words of encouragement.

If you'd like to make a donation, you can do so on my Extra Life page or by clicking this button:

Donate

Any amount you can give is greatly appreciated. You can also help us out by sharing our campaign with your friends and family.

Thanks so much for your support. I hope you have a great Halloween! ♥️

I'm Mike Aparicio, Principal Design Systems Engineer at Turquoise Health. I'm interested in helping companies large and small improve collaboration between design and engineering through the use of design systems. I specialize in creating custom CSS frameworks that empower engineering teams to get from concept to production quickly, while writing little to no CSS themselves. I write about web design and development, video games, pop culture, and other things I find interesting. I live in the Chicago area with my wife, three sons, and two dogs.

You can find me on most places on the Internet as @peruvianidol.

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