Halloween (or: Just Another Reason Emerson Loves America)

I hope your Halloween was filled with everything you love about the holiday: Almond Joys, KitKat, and Reece's.

Mine was filled with Davy Crockett

Indiana Jones

The Candy Queen

and Princess Boogers (sidenote: originally, Harper was just going to be a generic princess. But thanks to a little cold this weekend, she has been crowned Princess Boogers.)

We had so much fun on Halloween this year. We started off by having some chili and checking out some costumes at some friends' house. Emerson spent the entire time we were there holding claim over one of those Little Tykes cars. The red ones with the yellow roof? She got in it, and did not get out the entire night. She had us bringing her hot dogs and Capri Suns in the little car, for fear that someone else would take it.

Dane and Aidan spent their pre-trick or treating evening slowly shedding pieces of their H-O-T costumes and trying not to get in trouble playing with their toy weapons. And Harper? She found ways to occupy herself at the party. She also found ice to eat out of the cooler, chips to eat off of the grass, jelly beans to eat off of the ground, and someone else's Capri Sun to wash it all down. I don't know why she has a cold right now ;) I promise, we do actually feed the girl. I think she was just so excited at seeing all of these treasures down at her level.

After eating, we gathered all the kids we could find to attempt our annual group photo.

It was ugly. Real ugly. My favorite costume of the night was my friend's 3-year old boy, who was wearing yellow tights under green underwear, topped with a yellow shirt with a big blob of green on it. And YuckyMan was born. He's on the right side of the photo sitting behind Batman.

We, along with Val, Izzy, Joel and Uriah, headed back to our neighborhood for a bit of trick-or-treating. This was Emerson's first Halloween, and Harper's first time to actually trick-or-treat. I brought Harper's stroller with us, thinking surely she will get tired and want to sit and drink her milk. I could not have been more wrong. That girl would have gone another hour, trotting up to each house with her Daddy on her hand. Trotting barefoot after awhile, since at some point during the night she pitched one of her red sparkly shoes out of the wagon.

Emerson, predictably, loved trick-or-treating also. I always wonder what she is thinking as she experiences things like this for the first time. Does she think this is what we do at night now? After dinner today will she run and put her pink costume back on, thinking we are heading out for another "Candy Walk"? She and Harper rode house-to-house in the wagon, charming everyone that came to the door with her heavily-accented 3 year old version of "Trick or treat!". When we got home, all of the kids dumped their candy on the rug, and all of the parents did a quick "safety inspection" of a couple of chocolate bars. I'm still not convinced that any of the Almond Joy bars are safe for my children's consumption.

And yes, that is a baby shower gift bag repurposed as a candy-collector after my failed attempts to locate last year's Halloween buckets.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween! Bring on November!