Halloween at our house

Pumpkins

We opted for paint this year and I came up with Fran:

Mackenzie labored over hers:

… and it looks like I need to walk out to the front porch and get a decent picture of the finished product!

She learned much about the mysterious messiness of paint.

Caitlyn was less concerned about mess or the final product but she sure enjoyed the process of creation.

Daniel looked on benignantly from his high chair. When I have a two year old mellow enough to simply observe painting… sometimes I let him do just that. 🙂

The Costumes

Caitlyn was Cinderella again this year, and my favorite moment of the day was when Scott came home from work and found her missing white glove.

Her “trip trops” are not touching the deck in that shot.

(Those are her “trip trops” because she loves the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff and those are the perfect shoes to trip trop over the bridge on the tile floor in our kitchen because they’re noisy!)

The average joy level in our family has definitely increased since Caitlyn joined it.

I couldn’t get enough of Scott helping the princess don her gloves.

Ready for trick or treating!

Ever the practical girl, Mackenzie was deciding between Minnie Mouse and Elsa and reasoned that her Elsa dress would fit her next year, whereas this might be the last year for Minnie because the ears already fit snugly.

I adore how perfectly six she is. She is as yet unencumbered by a desire to be cool or fit in.

I hope she remembers she’ll always fit in with her family. 🙂

I told Cinderella that Minnie was “it” and they were off.

The ability to feel instant and complete happiness is something I’ve been trying to learn from my kids this year.

Emotions were running high and when Cinderella tripped and came up crying, Scott headed off the meltdown by making her laugh. His sense of humor and sense of fun has averted many a would-be crisis over the years.

Daniel said firmly, “No sank you” every time the girls or I made a move to put any semblance of a costume near him. But Scott worked his magic and Super Dan was in existence long enough to be captured on camera (and no longer).

The Trick-or-Treating

Daniel happily sat in the stroller the whole time, munching on the occasional apple slice we handed him. He didn’t seem at all concerned that he wasn’t wearing a costume or accompanying the girls to all the doors*.

Caitlyn also hitched a ride in the stroller, and seemed by all appearances (between houses) much too tired to be able to walk until Scott announced we had arrived at another “likely house”. Then she dashed out of the stroller and barreled up the walkway like it was her job to be first to the doorbell, which she couldn’t reach – a detail that apparently struck her as inconsequential.

At one house, one of the people opening the door and proffering candy was a boy wearing a scary mask. Caitlyn was waiting for that door to open with breathless anticipation, but when she saw how frightening that mask was, she just turned silently and sadly away and started walking down the driveway. The boy whipped off his mask and I coaxed her back to get her candy**, but I was laughing over her reaction for several blocks afterwards.

At another house, the patient and repetitive training we’d given the girls about trick-or-treat etiquette was evident: The woman who answered the door commented that she didn’t get very many trick-or-treaters and she started to gather quite a large amount of candy to put in each bag. Caitlyn exclaimed in a scandalized voice, “Oh! You can’t just grab a whole handful!”

*I learned the next day that Daniel had definitely been watching closely on Halloween. I was sitting on the couch folding socks and Daniel walked up to me holding an open bag. “Tick teet!” he said with a winning smile. I obliged and dropped a pair of socks in his bag, after which he proudly walked off to find sisters to trick or treat from as well.

**This year the girls could eat up to three pieces on Halloween night, and kept their age in pieces to eat in subsequent days. So Mackenzie chose 3 + 6 and Caitlyn chose 3 + 4. This approach was a win for us. The kids felt like they got a major candy fest on Halloween and their stash was out of the house within a week.