• Our family always bonded over getting the house ready for Halloween.
• We couldn’t wait until decorating season began in October.
• This year, my kids didn’t want to join in. So I did it myself.

Halloween is a big deal in our house. Or, as I discovered this year, it used to be.

I was never stumped about what to buy for my son’s birthday in late September. At the top of his list would be somewhat useless things, such as fake live wires that hiss and shake, or pricey licensed products, including a replica proton pack from the Ghostbusters franchise.

He loved to visit the local Spirit Halloween store and pick out his gifts for under a certain amount of cash. It was great to see his face light up when he reached the animatronics section, stamped on the touch pads, and recoiled as a giant spider or demented nun jumped out.

But not this year.

My son didn’t want to go into the Halloween store

This fall, a week before his 15th birthday, I literally had to drag him out of the car when we parked up. He wanted to stay inside to play on his iPhone, a tactic he pulls whenever we try to take him for a short hike.

His dad confiscated his devices, and he reluctantly entered the store. It was a treasure trove of killer clowns, decapitated pigs’ heads, and Harry Potter merchandise. My son showed about as much interest as a rap fan at a country music festival.

He rallied for a while, looking in the mirror at himself in a Jason Voorhees mask from Friday the 13th. Then he decided on Michael Myers and rushed to the checkout as if he couldn’t wait to get out.

I once made a 160-mile round trip to pick up an animatronic purchased on eBay

In 2024, he spent 90 minutes choosing between the scary, sleeping scarecrow and a one-armed zombie called Rick Ratman, who had rodents coming out of his head. He opted for the latter, which he proudly positioned on the stoop.

He joined a haunted, moving tree that I’d bought on eBay — it involved a 160-mile round trip to the seller’s home in a neighboring state— and a giant, talking triffid from Home Depot.

It’s a tradition to install a new animatronic ahead of every October 31. Kids from the neighborhood ride past on their bikes to admire it. Some have been known to photograph or video it, and that’s why I bought a 6ft screeching night owl statue on special offer last month.

I told everyone that October 5th was Halloween decorating day. It was one of the highlights of the year, second only to putting up our Christmas stuff.

My teenage daughter said, ‘Less is more, Mom’

As time passes, my 17-year-old daughter has become less hands-on than her younger brother. But she still got a kick out of draping black lace fabric around our lampshades for that sinister Victorian seance look.

This year, she didn’t even want to do that. She said that our decorations were tasteless and tacky. “Less is more, Mom,” she scoffed before bolting to Starbucks with her friends.

It wasn’t too long ago that she’d sit at the kitchen table making “mummy lanterns” from Mason jars, gauze bandages, fairy lights, and googly eyes. She’d excitedly bake headless gingerbread men and splatter them with blood-red icing.

Excuse the horror pun, but it was my son who stuck the proverbial knife in my heart. I dragged in the boxes of decorations from the garage. He sat on the sofa playing Nintendo without looking up from the switch.

I asked if he wanted to help twist the bendy spiders’ legs around the staircase. “You do it, Mom,” he said. This was a stark contrast to when he was younger, and it was a ritual we enjoyed together.

“Shall we assemble the owl?” I asked. He shook his head. Eventually, I forced him into the front yard to hold the ladder while I hung up two corpses in cocoons.

It wasn’t the same as previous years

It wasn’t much fun putting up the decorations by myself. I missed the banter, the laughter, and camaraderie of family. Our au pair and his friend came to the rescue by building the new animatronic and zip-tying the skeleton to the swing on our tree.

But it wasn’t quite the same. I know that many children become more distant toward their parents as they grow up. But as I stuck another AA battery into a groaning plastic chandelier, I felt sad that I was losing my kids — or had already lost them —over time.

Do you have an interesting story about parenting to share with Business Insider? Please email Jane Ridley at jridley@insider.com

• Jack Buser, global director for games at Google Cloud, said AI is changing the industry.
• Buser said AI is streamlining business operations and speeding up projects.
• “AI can be used to create entirely new gameplay experiences,” he said.

Gamers have been waiting over a decade for the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. It is probably the most highly anticipated game of all time.

AI could speed things up.

Google Cloud’s Global Director for Games, Jack Buser, said AI has arrived at an important time for the gaming industry, and could help developers release new and better games more quickly.

“We’re just very, very fortunate that AI has arrived on the scene at a time when the games industry really needs it more than ever before,” he said recently on the “Strictly Business” podcast.

While layoffs and a post-pandemic decline hit the gaming community hard, Boston Consulting Group said industry revenues are expected to reach $266 billion by 2028, driven in part by the adoption of artificial intelligence. Major gaming companies like Ubisoft and King are already using AI in their operations.

Buser said one of the key impacts AI could have on the industry is ramping up the time it takes to go from an idea to a release date, something fans of the GTA franchise can almost certainly get behind.

“It is not unusual to find video games that take years and years and years and years to develop. Some take a decade to develop. It’s wild how long it can take to develop a video game,” Buser said. “And oftentimes, that’s because in development, the time it takes for you to get an idea to reality in a game — it’s what they call iteration time — can be quite lengthy. But with AI, you’re able to actually get your ideas into the game much more quickly. You’re able to accelerate that iteration loop.”

Buser said AI’s potential impact on gameplay is what excites him the most.

“This is where AI can be used to create entirely new gameplay experiences, right? So, we’ve actually seen AI land first in development and analytics, but where it’s ultimately going to go is this idea of providing experiences for players that simply would have been impossible before. Probably the most famous example of this is what we call a smart NPC,” Buser said.

Buser said NPCs, or non-player characters, typically rely on preset responses and actions when interacting with users in a game.

“Oftentimes, the way games are designed today and in the past, you would go up to one of these characters and they would say something to you. Then you get to choose like two or three, four different things to say back,” Buser said.

With AI, Buser said NPCs could evolve.

“However, with AI, you can actually make these conversations in natural language,” he said. “You can talk to a player in the game, they stay within character, and you’re actually having an ongoing dialogue with them as if it’s another human being, but it’s not.”

• I’m a Quebec local, and I only recently visited our Bas-Saint-Laurent region for the first time.
• The drive to the area from Montreal was scenic, and we enjoyed exploring the shoreline.
• This region is absolutely worth visiting, though you may want to pack a rain jacket and boots.

As a city dweller living in Montreal, I know there’s still so much of Quebec that I have yet to explore.

My French-Canadian home province is roughly three times the size of France and has 17 regions. This summer, I checked a new one off my list: Bas-Saint-Laurent.

My partner’s brother and his wife were born in the maritime region and travel there every summer with their young daughter. This year, they invited us to tag along and discover its beauty for ourselves.

Even our drive to the region felt incredibly scenic.

To reach this region, my partner and I drove 400 miles outside the city along the south shore of the lower Saint Lawrence River, nicknamed “Bas-du-Fleuve.”

It’s in this area that the river widens into a gulf that flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The water is vast — a mix of fresh and saltwater — and breathtakingly beautiful.

The drive from Montreal to Bas-du-Fleuve takes roughly six hours if you go straight and take the largest highway.

It’s a little longer if you opt for the slower, more scenic route and make stops along the way like we did. Trust me, it’s worth it.

The drive gets especially pretty after Quebec City, where the views of the water begin.

The area is known for its fresh fish, local meats and cheeses (hello, cheese curds), and craft beer. So, we made stops at Tête d’Allumette, a microbrewery with a beautiful terrace overlooking the river, a smoked fish store called Marché Des Trois Fumoirs, and a specialty cheese store called Fromagerie des Basques to stock up on local goodies.

We eventually arrived at Motel de la Mer, which looks out at the river, where we all stayed in an apartment-style accommodation.

We found plenty to do in the area.

Our first morning in Bas-Saint-Laurent was rainy, so we toured the Onondaga, a 295-foot submarine that traversed the North Atlantic from 1967 to 2000. It’s also the first publicly accessible submarine in Canada.

We also stopped next door to visit the Empress of Ireland Museum, an exhibition about the greatest maritime tragedy in Canadian history.

Then, we met up with the rest of the gang for brunch in downtown Rimouski, the biggest city in the area. We filled up on eggs, crepes, bacon, and good coffee before walking around the city center and popping into cute local shops.

It was especially wonderful to walk along the shore.

Later that afternoon, at low tide, we walked along the nearby shore, taking in the views as we looked for interesting rocks and shells.

When the tide is low in this region, parts of the shoreline become exposed, and you can actually see and explore the sea floor.

When the tide rises again, that same shoreline is resubmerged. There are different high and low tides each day, and their timing and height vary.

We also enjoyed having fresh seafood.

That evening, we picked up dinner from a casse-croûte, a locally used term for a small, casual establishment that serves comfort food.

I had a lobster roll and fries while my partner had a lobster poutine.

We were highly impressed with the quantity and freshness of the seafood.

The nearby provincial park is beautiful — but beware of the fickle weather.

The following day, we headed out to Parc national du Bic, a beautiful provincial park nearby. We had a picnic and then started walking along the shoreline before turning onto one of the many hiking trails in the woods.

The weather started off gray and cloudy, but eventually turned to heavy rainstorms that left us quite wet. We laughed it off and still had a good time.

This region regularly experiences rainfall (in part due to the St. Lawrence’s oceanic influence), so be sure to pack a great rain jacket and boots if you plan to visit.

We also experienced the area’s famous sunsets.

The spectacular sunsets alone are reason enough to visit Bas-du-Fleuve.

Some even refer to the region as “the capital of sunsets” for its western-facing vantage point combined with the beauty of the river, which makes for stunning sundown sights most days.

The location of our motel provided us with a great view of the sun setting over the water as it dipped below the horizon, lighting up the sky.

There’s so much beauty to be seen in Quebec.

My stay in Bas-Saint-Laurent was rainy (of course, the sun came out and stayed out as soon as we left), but also incredibly memorable.

It showed me how much beauty there is to explore in this giant province I call home — and it made me want to share what I saw with others.

Though Montreal and Quebec City may seem like the obvious choices when traveling to this part of Canada (for good reason), you may also want to consider venturing beyond the big cities to witness what this one-of-a-kind region has to offer.

It took California a century to produce a pistachio harvest. Now, it’s the world’s top supplier. But as the Dubai chocolate trend fuels demand, and California droughts intensify, growers are fighting to keep up.

• I threw my daughter an elaborate birthday party for her first birthday.
• I rented out a restaurant, bought a large cake, and hired a face painter.
• I did it all to show off on Instagram, but I realize it should’ve been about my daughter.

I threw my 1-year-old a birthday party that was too over-the-top for a baby that still eats things off the floor and likes to play with the dog’s food bowl.

I rented out a local neighborhood restaurant for her first birthday. We had an open bar, matching outfits for the whole family, a photographer, a face painter, a balloon artist, and even glitter tattoos. Her birthday cake was two layers tall. We had a ton of desserts, pizza, pasta, and quesadillas. We even had a Build-a-Bear instead of traditional goodie bags for each child to take home.

Why did I do it? Because I only plan on having one child, and I wanted to give her everything. But I also did it to show off on Instagram.

The joy of the birthday party was short-lived

Once everyone left the party, I was surrounded by leftover and half-touched pastries, cake, and pizza. There were balloons all over the restaurant and glitter all over the floor from the face painting.

I was tired, my feet hurt, and I had to pay a $1,200 bill that I was already regretting.

The next morning, I woke up to text messages and Instagram DMs, thanking me for the invite to my daughter’s birthday party and letting me know what a great job I did. The validation felt amazing, and I was so happy that everyone enjoyed themselves.

Then the notifications stopped. The Instagram posts slid down the feed and away from my algorithm. Life went on. And my bank account? It hadn’t recovered for weeks.

I’m always comparing myself to other mothers on Instagram

When I felt at my most down, I decided to give myself a lot of grace. As a modern mother, social media makes you feel like you’re not doing enough — all the time. I felt this way before becoming a mom, and I feel this way even more now that I’m a mom.

Every time I open my feed or scroll through Instagram, I come across another mom showing off her perfect balloon arch, a themed dessert table, and a backyard full of rented bounce houses.

When I started to judge myself for going too far for my daughter’s birthday, I reminded myself that I had nothing to prove, and my daughter was well taken care of.

I now know I threw that party for all the wrong reasons

I can truthfully say that the party wasn’t about my daughter. Yes, she was celebrated by the most amazing people in our lives.

But it was more about me trying to prove something to the world. I wanted to prove to people on social media that I’m still “fun,” that I can still throw a party, and that motherhood hasn’t taken over my whole identity. I wanted to prove that my daughter has everything she could ever want.

But motherhood isn’t a performance, a highlight reel, or a perfectly curated Instagram post. It’s messy, loud, and exhausting.

If I were to do it again, I would skip the restaurant rental and just have close family and friends over for some good food and a great time. And the best part? My daughter would love every minute of it.

• Ireland plans to make a basic income for artists permanent in 2026.
• In a three-year-long pilot program, officials paid local artists $1,500 monthly.
• Recipients in the pilot said the basic income payments improved their daily lives.

As Ireland’s $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it?

With four months to go, they say the answer is yes.

Earlier this month, Ireland’s government announced its 2026 budget, which includes “a successor to the pilot Basic Income Scheme for the Arts to begin next year” among its expenditures.

Ireland is just one of many places experimenting with guaranteed basic income programs, which provide recurring, unrestricted payments to people in a certain demographic. These programs differ from a universal basic income, which would provide payments for an entire population.

Basic income programs of all kinds have been around for a long time, but have seen renewed interest since the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of the AI revolution. Some of the world’s top AI leaders have called for such programs to alleviate the loss of income in the future if the technology ousts humans from their jobs.

Ireland first launched its basic income pilot program in 2022, when some 2,000 artists began receiving a weekly stipend of €325, or about $370. Although officials initially scheduled the pilot program to end this August, Patrick O’Donovan, the minister for culture, communications, and sport in Ireland, extended it to February 2026.

Citizens who participated in the pilot program said the payments improved their daily lives. A report published by Ireland’s government in May said the payments reduced financial stress, allowed for professional growth, and boosted mental health.

A government press release this month said the 2026 budget would include a provision to make the country’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot permanent in 2026.

“The Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme, which I extended this year, will end in 2026, and I will bring a successor scheme to Government with the intention of embedding a permanent basic income in the Arts and Culture sector,” O’Donovan said. “This scheme is the envy of the world, and a tremendous achievement for Ireland, and must be made futureproof and sustainable.”

Maura McGrath, chair of the Arts Council in Ireland, praised the decision in a statement.

“The Arts Council particularly welcomes the continued investment in the Basic Income for the Arts, which provides artists with the stability to develop their practice, innovate, and contribute meaningfully to Ireland’s cultural landscape,” McGrath said. “We are ambitious for the arts sector and will continue to work with Minister O’Donovan and our Department colleagues advising on the optimisation of opportunities for artists, arts workers and audiences.”