Halloween Costumes

Happy Halloween!

Just keep trick or treating… just keep trick or treating…

Is there anything better than a group costume? As you might have noticed from F’s birthday, she’s a bit obsessed with fishies and the Finding Nemo/Dory movies. So it didn’t take much to convince the rest of the family that we should dress up as characters from the movies.

There was no question that F gets Dory, the blue fish. I love my fuzzy nemo costume and am going to need to find a way to make this my costume every year. If you haven’t seen Finding Dory, you might not know E’s character Hank. Tom is Bruce the shark, and Gideon is either Squirt or Crush (one of the turtles).

Halloween 2023

It’s currently after Thanksgiving and I still haven’t loaded Halloween pictures on my computer yet, which shows you how behind on everything I am. I have 7 Christmas trees up in my house, at least, so some priorities are in tact.

Like the rest of the year has been, October was super rainy. We missed out on a couple Halloween events because it was raining, which was too bad. We still managed to have fun and dress in costumes a few times, and I’m not sure the kids misses anything since we added a few new events.

3 Tigers and a Horse with a Purple Nose

As tired and overwhelmed as I am, there’s one thing I am throwing all my energy into. Making magic for the kids. I have a bunch of unread emails I keep meaning to reply to, and projects half done or not started, but I already have two Christmas events booked and ready for us, and I think Halloween went pretty well too!

There’s a thing we have to do as parents, where we decide what events to go to and what events to skip. We had a lot of extra events we decided to pass on this year because they were too late at night or going to be too crowded or long, and we decided it was going to be overwhelming for the kids. They got plenty of magic, though. Pumpkin patches, corn mazes, trunk or treats, and plenty of candy. We wore our matching PJs and did crafts, but of course the main event was Halloween night!

Trick or Treat

This year everything about Halloween seemed up in the air. The pandemic is still raging on, the weather looked questionable at best, and our normal Halloween plans were no longer an option. All that added up to a big question mark about how we were going to spend the holiday. Nothing new there, I guess. Every holiday for the past almost two years now has been a mix of disappointment and change, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

Halloween Costumes!

As a parent of two toddlers (I need to stop calling the big one a toddler, huh?), I’m always looking for ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Holidays are times where those things come to a peak. There are big expectations, a lot of excitement and emotions. So instead of trying really hard to get a good picture of them in their costumes when all they want to do is get candy and everyone is tired and tantruming, I did it a little different.

The week before Halloween.

The Halloween Post

I’ve realized there are a lot of people with a lot of strong opinions about Halloween. And most of them (or at least the loud ones) believe that Trick or Treating should always be on October 31st, after dark, regardless of the weather. It could be a hurricane, tornado, ten feet of snow, and they expect children to put on their costumes and ring their bells. The thought of moving it to a Saturday when parents don’t have to work and cars don’t need to be on the road is the dumbest idea anyone has ever had.

Maybe because my Saturdays usually aren’t that busy, or maybe because I have an hour commute home and actually had to take time off of work to make sure I could be all the places I wanted to be on Halloween, but I would LOVE Saturday Trick or Treating. In fact, I’d love it from 3- 5:00 in the evenings if you’re asking.

Not the Best Holiday Track Record

Remember Easter this year?

I actually didn’t. Just the other day I was asking Tom if we made it to sunrise service on Easter, and couldn’t remember why we didn’t. Oh yeah, we were all super sick. We’ve actually been doing really well since then, even managing to dodge a few outbreaks of hand, foot, mouth at daycare!

Stretching Out the Holidays

Is November 7th too late to still be talking about Halloween?  

I can't remember the last time I've spent so much time talking about this holiday, but having a kid will do that to you I guess.  

It does make me really excited for the upcoming months.  E's also really enjoying looking at bright lights lately, so you know I'm already counting the days until I can put up Christmas lights.  He's going to freak out.  It's going to be amazing!

E's First Halloween!

Just because the theme with parenting seems to be "Nothing ever goes according to plan," our Halloween plans changed last minute due to a wind storm that knocked out power across New England, and caused trick-or-treating to be postponed in a few local towns (including the one we were going to visit). 

Or another way to look at it is that our Halloween celebrations are going to be extended!  (and probably cause Thanksgiving to sneak up on us...).  So while we haven't gone trick-or-treating yet, we'll get to it soon.  

Holiday Expectations

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I became obsessed with future holidays.  They'd be so much more fun to experience with children!  When Easter rolled around, I was so jealous of friends who had babies already.  I felt like I was missing out!  

And so I set my sights on Halloween. We'd have a baby and it would be amazing.  I couldn't wait to make it fun.