Thursday Thoughts: Halloween

Confession time: I'm, what I like to call, a bit of a Halloween Grinch (or a Halloween Scrooge, as I recently heard someone put it).  Each year on October 1st I am gung-ho to put out the few Halloween decorations we own and to start dressing the girls in their Halloween shirts and bows and pajamas.  But come the end of the month, around October 25th, I am so ready to get the whole thing over with.  Here are some reasons why I think I'm such a HG (Halloween Grinch):

• I don't care to dress up in a costume.  I know lots of people who plan out their costumes months in advance, and who often create a costume theme for their family.  I wish I wanted to do that, because it seems to make Halloween so much fun and the pictures I see are always adorable.  But I just don't have it in me.  In fact, now that I think about it, I've never attended, or even been invited to, a Halloween party (aside from class parties in elementary school, ha!).  Perhaps my HG status is not as secret as I thought...  (Wait, I take that back.  I was invited to a Halloween party in 2009, but I used my pregnancy as an excuse not to go!)
• Speaking of costumes, I don't get much of a thrill out of dressing the girls up in costumes.  This was our third Halloween with children.  In 2010 Sydney was a Navy cheerleader.  In 2011 Sydney was a Navy cheerleader again, and Lorelei was...two weeks old.  (I was a super HG last year.)  To be honest, they would have both been Navy cheerleaders this year, but Sydney has outgrown both costumes, and Lorelei is too big for one and too small for the other.  I don't know why I don't get into it...perhaps it's the stress of capturing a perfect Halloween picture that turns me off.
• I don't like buying expensive Halloween candy.  I am aware that many stores run great sales on their Halloween candy throughout the month of October, but I never seem to capitalize on that, and always end up spending top dollar for candy the day before Halloween.
• Speaking of candy, I don't like handing it out to trick-or-treaters.
• Speaking of trick-or-treaters, they're not my favorite either.  Perhaps something is wrong with me, but I just don't enjoy hundreds of kids (because that's how many will ring your doorbell when you live on base) coming to my doorstep.  I especially don't care for those adults.  You know who I mean: the parents of the two-month old baby (and no other children) who come to the door wanting candy, as if they're going to save the candy from their child's first Halloween and feed it to them once they're old enough to eat it.  Get a life, people!

Okay, now that that's out of my system, we had a wonderful Halloween!  Really!  Our church put on a Fall Festival, complete with a chili cook off, a cotton candy machine, a train ride, a fire truck, face painting, carnival-type games, and "trunk"-or-treating!  It was so nice to be able to attend as a family (Chet has been gone the last two Halloweens), and Sydney really got into it.  (I think my enjoyment was doubled because I knew I was getting out of handing out candy at home.)  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story...

Here are the girls in their matching Halloween cat pajamas (these were taken at Grammy's house in West Palm Beach):

 

Here they are in their Halloween "day" outfits:

And the "costumes".  Like I said, I wish I could have made them both Navy cheerleaders, but I was super lazy and slapped a tutu on both of them and called them "ballerinas".

I didn't even get a good picture of Lorelei yesterday, but she wore the same thing last night that she wore at her party in WPB, so here are a couple of pictures from her party:

 

Chet and Lorelei on the train:

Syd on the train:

Face painting:

Lorelei watching face painting:

Syd looking for her next source of candy:

 

We didn't talk to Sydney about the whole trick-or-treating concept beforehand.  Right before walking up to our first "trunk", I told her, "You have to say 'trick-or-treat' and they will give you candy."  She picked up on that instantly.  At first she wanted to hold all the candy instead of putting it in her bag.  She also started eating candy right away.  I think she subconsciously knew that it was a once-a-year thing, so she was shoving as much candy into her mouth as quickly as possible in order to make the most of the occasion.  She also had a death grip on her treat bag.

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!  On to Thanksgiving!