Happy Halloween!

We had quite the Halloween celebration at the Hunniford household this year! Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I took great care in selecting Sam's costume this year. Some of you will remember how we terrorized him by forcing him to wear his ridiculously cute puppy costume last year. I didn't want a repeat, but wanted that kid in a costume! So when he came home fro preschool talking all about how Mrs. Gauthier wore a fire jacket on fire safety day - and kept talking about it - I started hunting down a fireman costume. The one I found was for 3-6 year olds, so it took some minor adjustments to get my small 2 year old into it, but he actually liked it!

So here he is in full outfit on Halloween morning. It was pretty cute, because he thought he was going to ride in a fire truck. Really glad I had other exciting plans to distract him with! The costume came with an ax (he is now quite good at fighting fires with an ax), a whistle (which he blew, yelled "time to come inside!" and stuck up his sleeve "Just like Mrs. Bathe!") and a walkie talkie - plenty of pretend play to be had.

We met some friends at Zoo Boo! The zoo has all kinds of special things set up for the kiddos, including some games, and chance to decorate a free "pumpkin," trunk-or-treating, etc. Let's talk about how wonderful it is that the did this on Halloween Monday!!!! Usually they only do this Friday through Sunday. Friday is field trip day, and Saturday crowds at the zoo are bad enough without a special event, but in the past it has been a nightmare for zoo boo. Monday it was toddler town everywhere, not crowded, and lovely.

We hit up a few trunk-or-treat locations and he loved on his "wollipop" for about an hour and a half, then kept begging for lunch because I told him no more candy until we ate lunch!

Sam actually got a bonus prize for getting a ring around one of the pegs in the ring toss, too!

Leo was an elephant, and later after they'd all ditched the costumes, Sam was too.


Sam passed out on the way home. After nap we had work to do! Outside to carve our pumpkin. Not gonna lie, he wasn't much help. He kept scooping the seeds and pulp back into the pumpkin! So we got a second bowl and he enjoyed scooping for one bowl to the other. You know what he is good at though? Washing pumpkin seeds! He loved sloshing them around in the colander, and at one point I realized he was taking my directions to "clean the seeds" quite literally. I looked over to find him lining them up on the kitchen sponge. Too cute :-)

Daddy got home a few minutes early from work, so as soon as the clock struck 6:00pm we hit the pavement for Sam's first official Trick-or-Treating. In years past he's gone to two neighbor houses, but this time he had the bag, the phrase, the whole deal. He was understandably nervous to knock on the doors, but quickly got the hang of things when he realized there was candy to be had. "We better knock on another door!" he would advise us. Generally he would say "please," so I had to remind him to say "trick-or-treat!" but everyone thought he was adorable! And only a few times did he ask to go home so he could eat his candy.

We had one negative experience. People, please please please think before you let your teenage son answer the door in a gorilla mask. I know its fun, but maybe no masks until after 7pm? Or maybe restrain your dog so he doesn't run out at my son? Am I too sensitive, or is Sam?

He wanted to eat all the candy right away. We, obviously, had to cut him off - yes there were tears. He asked for his pumpkin bag right when he woke up this morning (literally, he wasn't out of his bed yet) and wasn't too pleased to learn he had to wait until after lunch.

After bath and bed, Chris and I handed out about 225 pieces of candy. Some were from the neighborhood, some were coming in car loads from surrounding areas to our nice, safe, urban oasis. Most of our crowd comes after 7:30, and it was actually getting busier when we ran out at 9pm. I roasted the pumpkin seeds with a yummy recipe I found on allrecipes.com, and fell asleep watching TV. It was such a good day.

Here's your bonus picture: last weekend the real estate office down the street from us held their annual "pumpkin patch." They load their front yard with pumpkins and invite neighborhood kids over to pick one out. Sam and I walked down with our new (to us, its been well loved by another family) Sit 'n' Stand stroller, grabbed a pumpkin, a cookie and a balloon and were back at the house 10 minutes later. It was time well spent, and Sam promised the baby wouldn't mind if the pumpkin borrowed its seat :-)