Alice has been looking forward to Halloween since her first time trick-or-treating last year. She was looking forward to it so much that on Halloween morning, she woke up at 5am, saw that it was dark out, and decided that it must be time to go trick-or-treating, so she started shouting for us. Zac went in and tried to convince her that it was not yet time for trick-or-treating, but she still cried and whimpered herself back to sleep.
When she awoke later at 7:30am and saw that it was light out, she cried again because she was convinced that she had missed trick-or-treating. We eventually got her to trust us that trick-or-treating was still going to happen that night.
Halloween was complicated this year by the fact that our friends, Kristen and Dale, were having their Wedding-Halloween party that same night. The wedding started at 7pm, but so did Trick-or-Treating. It was an easy decision, really, in that Alice would feel a lot of agony if she missed Trick-or-Treating, whereas our friends would not miss us much if we weren't at their wedding ceremony. Nevertheless, we decided to compromise and attend the wedding reception after Trick-or-Treating.
So we needed some sort of wedding attire-costume hybrid. Our mall has a Halloween store, and a new play area, so we began the evening of Halloween at the mall. Alice loved climbing on everything, and Simon enjoyed pointing out every "Star!" in the colorful carpet.
We got home, ate a quick supper, handed out a few pieces of candy to the early trick-or-treaters, then suited up the kids for an evening of candy gathering.
Alice really loved trick-or-treating: She liked the porches with jack-o-lanterns, she enjoyed being out at night, she had fun seeing the other kid's costumes, and she only got scared once at a house with a light-up football player with a moving arm. She did pretty well interacting with the strangers, but we spent the whole evening trying to convince her to say thank you to people's faces, rather than while turning around and walking away. Zac and I were annoyed by the houses that had their lights on but did not pass out candy (Don't they know how this works?). We took turns carrying Simon, and he was really happy and interested the whole time. Both kids carried their green glow-sticks all night, and even when we got home Simon cried if you tried to take his away.
We got home around 8:15, and let Alice have one piece of candy, while we quickly gave Simon his bedtime snack and bath. Lily, the babysitter, arrived at 8:30 and Alice wasn't the least bit shy. We put Simon to bed before we left, and gave the babysitter the instructions for how to process Alice.
Then we went to the wedding reception, wearing our newly-bought masks. We had a good time catching up with friends without the distraction of children.
