Trick or Treat

I have to say that Halloween isn't typically a holiday that I enjoy very much, but this year may have converted me. We had such a wonderful day together.

It was still dark when the kids woke up, so we bundled in coats and shoes and went out together to light the jack-o-lantern (Winnie the Pooh in a honey pot, courtesy of Jacob).

Then we turned on some Halloween music and the kids danced while I made Spooky-Face Cheesy Grits for breakfast. 

Immediately after breakfast I got to work doing Abby's hair. She wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween and had given me lots of lectures about hair styling. Unfortunately she is stuck with me for her mama, and hair is not my specialty. But I thought that maybe, with enough time and YouTube videos, we could figure it out.

The first thing we did was curl her hair. This was my first, and possibly my last, time curling it with a curling iron, but she enjoyed the novelty of having curly hair.

Then it was time for the updo, complete with headband.

It just so happened that Halloween fell on a preschool day, so Abby's teacher arranged for the class to go trick-or-treating together. They met in costumes at the library, where they had a special storytime, and from there walked to the bank, Town Hall, and then the pizza place where they all got pizza!

Abby's preschool class

And if that wasn't special enough, Abby's teacher also treated her to an ice cream cone. Look at this thing! It's huge! Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Abby was in heaven.

Then it was just a matter of waiting until it was time to trick-or-treat.

I am particularly proud of TomTom's costume this year. I love doing family costumes, but Abigail really wanted to be Cinderella and I wasn't willing to convince her otherwise, neither was I willing to theme the entire family around her. I came up with this train idea early, dropped it because it seemed a ridiculous amount of work, then re-committed to it about ten days before Halloween. It was barely finished in time. And I was right - it was a lot of work! But it was absolutely darling and totally worth it.

You gotta love the comparison here between Abby's costume (beautiful, easy, but expensive) and TomTom's costume (homemade, time-consuming, but cheap. The only things we bought for it were his engineer hat and a can of black spray paint that cost 96 cents. It's almost entirely made of old cardboard boxes. One of our neighbors asked me where we bought it and when I replied that it was homemade she took a closer look and said, in astonishment, "Oh my gosh. The wheels are paper plates, aren't they?" Yes. Yes they are.)

But this is the balance of life. Two costumes as expensive as Abby's was an impossibility. Two homemade costumes as complicated as TomTom's probably would have killed me. So we had one of each and we all survived the holiday, AND the kids were happy. I call that a success.

We had a wonderful time once it was finally late enough to go trick-or-treating. We walked five minutes to the community center for the annual trunk-or-treat, which is always impressive and so much fun. Then we made our way home, stopping at each house along the way. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's usually a five-minute walk and there aren't that many houses on the way, but we were out for nearly two hours.

The train costume was a HUGE hit. At least three dozen people told me that it was the best costume they had ever seen. And little Thomas toddling around in it was the frosting on the cake. Here's how it went at just about every house:

Me: (after Thomas has received candy) Say "thank you! Happy Halloween!"
Thomas: 'ween!
Neighbor: Oh, you are so cute! Here, have some more candy!

Both kids got an enormous haul. It was unbelievable, considering how few houses we actually went to. We let them each have two pieces before getting ready for bed. It was way past their bedtime, and they both fell right to sleep.

At the trunk-or-treat

The next morning the very first words out of Abby's mouth were, "I'm so sad it isn't Halloween anymore." Frankly, I kind-of felt the same way. Good thing we have so many other things to look forward to!