Happy Halloween!

This was Jayden’s first year trick or treating and I can honestly say it was both a trick and a treat for us. Esteban took the day off so he could be home with us in the evening and I left work early because it’s Halloween, a national holiday, right? We took the kids to the pumpkin patch at our church, but it was slim pickins, as could be expected on Halloween Day and all. We took a few pictures and left without a pumpkin because there was no way we could squeeze in pumpkin carving at this point. Jayden had fun rolling them around. Here they are posing for a shot.

We went back home and while Jayden had a quick dinner, I rolled out my dough for the Halloween sugar cookies I was going to make. The dough was not working with me and I had a rough time with it, but I got it rolled out and cut out my cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, bats, and ghosts. I baked them off and left them to cool, while I tended to Jayden.

Toy Story just so happens to be one of Jayden’s favorite movies right now. He sounds so cute when he says “Woody”. So it worked out great when I found the Woody costume. Now, Jayden would not be Jayden if he didn’t fuss about one thing or another. I go to put on his Halloween costume and he’s carrying on. He was not being a very good cowboy at all. He actually started to cry and then he wouldn’t put on his hat. Oh well, never mind. Here he is showing off his costume to the neighbor. I was begging him to put on his hat and trying to take his picture, but he ran away from me and hid behind the magnolia tree.

Around 6:30pm, we decided we better get going. I saw the neighborhood kids get started so we decided to head out as well. We get Maya and Jayden loaded up into the wagon and start our treck around the block.

We get to the first house and Jayden refuses to get out of the wagon. Then I pull the wagon up the driveway of the first house and he refuses to go to the door without Maya. Now I have to figure out a way to get the wagon all the way to the front door. We rang the bell and it was a neighbor we knew. He offers Jayden the bowl and Jayden actually tries to take the entire bowl. LOL Ok, now he gets what we are doing so I try to wheel the wagon down to the road and suggest to Esteban that they cut across the grass to the next house. No way! Jayden starts to scream, “Maya, Maya!” Oh brother! So now I’m pulling the wagon up and down each driveway. If I took him to the door, he would call Daddy! If Esteban took him, he was calling Mommy! So it was a family affair. Because he was getting so many compliments, he started to wear his cowboy hat. He couldn’t say trick or treat, but he said thank you and night-night!

It started to get dark really quick. I was almost thankful because now you could easily see who had their lights on and who wasn’t interested in trick or treaters. Now we started to skip houses, but do you think it sped up the process? No. It seemed to take an eternity to make it all the way around the block. But finally we did make it and we quickly got set up in the garage. Here's Maya in the highchair. She had a great old time on her first Halloween!

Here are brother and sister. Always together and always enjoying each other's company. Well, almost always. Two minutes after this shot, we put Jayden's hat on Maya and he almost keeled over!

We got Jayden settled with a lollipop from his bag of goodies. Maya was happy because finally she was getting fed her baby food. We put on the stereo and I sat down with a tall glass of ice water and the candy bowl close at hand. Jayden was greeting all of our guests and very interested in their costumes. We got quite a few trick or treaters. I was pretty happy since I was worried that we had missed them all while we were going around the block. Everything died down around 8:30pm so we went inside.

I quickly began to take care of Maya’s diaper and nursed her to sleep while Esteban took care of Jayden’s bed time rituals. Finally, we had our dinner around 9pm and I mentioned to Esteban that I was really happy. I always plan lots of stuff and it never works out like I imagined it would. For the first time ever, I got to do everything I wanted. We went to the pumpkin patch! I baked my cookies! We went trick or treating AND got back in time to give out candy. The only thing we didn’t do was decorate the cookies, which was fine because that leaves more fun for another night. I can’t wait for next year!