Halloween Happenings

Each year, Halloween gets a little more fun with Erin. This year she had her first experience really helping to pick out pumpkins and went on her first door to door trick-or-treating experience. We dressed her up as Boo (from Monster's Inc) and Jeffrey tagged along as a cute little lion.

Although we picked out some nice big pumpkins, we didn't get a chance to carve them because Erin's great-Oma came down to visit on her 88th birthday. How many toddlers have an 88-year old best friend? It's great. Anyway, we didn't get time to carve pumpkins because it was so beautiful on Sunday we went up to a local orchard on top of one of our local "mountains". We picked out some apples and wandered through the pumpkin choices. Erin and Jeffrey sat down in the middle of the pumpkin patch for a little break. Although I couldn't get them to look at me, they were certainly a cute pair among the pumpkins.


When we got back to the house, Tom spiced up the house with the smells of cooking applesauce. Erin did get some time to paint the small pumpkins she had picked out. Here's a sample of her artwork. She LOVES to paint and has been asking every day since then to paint more pumpkins. It's great that she loves craft time because when I was her age (and a little older) I never felt like participating in craft time much.

On Monday it was close to 80 degrees out in the afternoon. Erin and I planted some daffodil bulbs in the yard and Jeffrey lounged on the back stoop in his bouncy chair. After playing in the dirt, I encouraged Erin to take a little nap by reminding her that she would get to go out with her pumpkin basket and get some candy.

We headed into town to hang out with some friends from the theater group we are part of. They all sit around in their front yard and hand out candy, listen to music etc... Erin's favorite part of the night was getting to dance to Sid's crazy music. We took Erin trick-or-treating from there and hit about 15 houses.

I gave Erin two glow-sticks, one to carry and the other to wear around her neck. We practiced saying "trick-or-treat" most of the day. Erin would walk with us to a house and as she walked up the sidewalk she'd recite "trick-treat,, trick-treat". She would knock on the door (she can't reach most doorbells still). Then she'd wait patiently with her pumpkin basket out. Whenever the homeowner would come do the door, I'd prompt Erin, "What do you say?" and Erin would just smile shyly. Everyone thought that was very cute. Then as we'd head back down the sidewalk Erin would begin chanting, "trick-treat, trick-treat". My silly little girl. Jeffrey came along in the stroller and was asleep by the end of the adventure.

As soon as we got back to Sid's, Erin returned to her dancing ways and picked out a sucker from her pumpkin. It was a great night, if just for the fun of watching Erin get more and more excited about Halloween. I can't wait for next year.