Halloween

I am not a lover of Halloween. In fact, I hate most everything about it - the scary costumes and decorations and haunted houses, the abundance of junk that no kid needs, the asking for candy door-to-door, the over-crowded Harvest festivals, and basically, everything that Halloween stands for in general. I would love to just skip right over this "holiday." I am not so anti-Halloween, however, that I feel the need to take a stand against it and not allow my children to participate in any of the festivities. To them, it is just innocent fun, getting to dress up (which they do practically every other day as well, but on this day they actually get to wear their costumes out of the house!) and eat candy that they never get to eat. Why wouldn't they love it?

We debated whether to do the Harvest festival thing or go trick-or-treating, and ultimately left it up to the kids. Last year was the first year that we went trick-or-treating and they decided that that's what they wanted to do this year as well. I will admit, they were pretty stinkin' cute going door to door in their costumes and being so excited about the loot they were collecting. Addi was a little hesitant at first, but after the first few houses, she was leading the charge. They had a great time and loved spreading out their candy when we got home in order to pick the three pieces that they could choose from it. Jay also let them taste little bites of several other kinds, most of which they had never tried. It was a whole new experience for them (which Addi paid for the following day with diarrhea all day long).

Our neighbors informed them that after they chose their three pieces of candy they should set the rest of the candy out and the candy fairy would take it and leave a small toy in its place. (Thanks for that! :)) I'm not really on the ball though, and so Jake keeps asking why the candy fairy hasn't come yet. I told him that after Halloween she's really really busy and so it might take several days for her to get to our house!

Here are some pictures of the evening, as well as the previous day's pumpkin carving. Now, although I have given in to allowing them to participate in the festivities, I feel no obligation to go out and buy some costume for them to wear for one night only when we have perfectly good dress-up clothes around here. The kids have no idea that other kids go out and get new costumes every year just for Halloween. They think that everybody just pulls from their dress-up basket for a Halloween costume. So, Addi wore the same Cinderella dress that she got for her third birthday and that she also wore for Halloween last year...and was adorable, I might add. Jake had planned on being Batman, which he also wore last year. As I've mentioned before though, almost every piece of clothing on Jake's body comes from our neighbors, and Halloween costumes are no exception. Jack (our neighbor) was a boxer two year ago. So, can you guess what Jake was this year?...