Happy Halloween

There should be a rule that Halloween should not ever be on a Monday. It just doesn't seem... right. I have come up with a few tips for parents to have a successful evening with toddler trick-or-treaters on Halloween, especially on a Monday!

Me with my cutie toddlers on Halloween!

Tip #1: Get ready early and then wait outside until you see {hearing suffices} even just one other child out and about. Do not hesitate to begin trick-or-treating!

What is the "appropriate" time to begin trick-or-treating? When it doesn't get dark until after six o'clock and your children have to get ready for bed at seven, you don't necessarily want to wait for Halloween. So take my advice, get started early. I think we started around 5:30pm this year.

Tip #2: Lower your expectations. Like waaaaayyy down.

There's regular trick-or-treating and there's toddler trick-or-treating. If you have never been trick-or-treating with a toddler, you have to lower your expectations about what you will accomplish. First of all, they walk as slow as they have ever walked before. I'm not sure if this is because they are distracted by the lights and noises and other people out and about or if it just feels like they are walking slower than usual, but... oh man. And then you get to a house. You answer roughly 17 questions about who lives there and what decorations they have and are they real and what candy will they have and if they will have a dog and will it bark before they go up to the doorbell. You repeatedly tell them to say "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" at each stop. The sweet people on the other side of the door love to let your indecisive toddler choose out whichever candies they desire. So you wait while they pick out three candies, one at a time. So finally after an hour, you've made it down the street. You decide to push bed time a bit because, well, it is Halloween and all. Plus, they are getting the hang of it all and it is going a little faster. But then, you realize that you have to walk back to your house. And they are getting tired and walking slower and to top it all off, now they do not wish to carry their candy because it is too heavy. Heavy in toddler is equal to about 30 pieces of candy. Your saving grace is that they realize that they need to go potty which forces you to run home, officially putting an end to the Halloween evening. Except when they cry because they realize they cannot go back out to ask for more candy. Which leads me to my next tip...

Checking out the decorations.

Tip #3: Use the restroom before leaving the house. Like immediately before.

Tip #4: Take pictures before you go trick-or-treating.

I know they are excited and hard to contain but trust me it will not happen if you do not do it before hand. You will be ready for them to go to bed more than they are ready for bed and that is saying a lot. 

Here we are! My little ballerinas.

Tip #5: Bring something to take video.

You are sure to find one house in your neighborhood that scares the daylights out of your child. You honestly won't know whether to be upset because c'mon they should know better or to laugh because it is a hilarious reaction to witness first hand, but either way you will laugh about it later. For us, it was a house with a pre-teen boy in costume who was sitting on a bench by the door. His dad was encouraging the girls to get closer and when they did, he jumped and yelled BOO! The girls screamed and were absolutely terrified. They talked about it for days afterwards. The boy came to our house to trick-or-treat later and apologized for scaring them. I don't think he anticipated quite the reaction that he got! I learned this the hard way and do not have a video to share...

Tip #6: Encourage your neighborhood to have adult trick-or-treating.

One house in our neighborhood had a margarita machine for the adults. How genius is that?? If we could all get on the same page and have a house on every street offering a beverage or a snack for adults, this whole Halloween thing could start at 4 and go until 8, in my opinion. But hey, if anything is going to make trick-or-treating with toddlers on a Monday better, it's a margarita!

I'm not even going to touch on how difficult it is to teach kindergarten the day after Halloween. I'll just let you imagine it. But, like I said... Halloween on a Monday is just icky.

To wrap it up, here are some pictures from their school's sweet Halloween parade of costumes:

Wondering where Pops is...

Pumpkin Carving

We have learned the hard way that in Texas, pumpkins rot really fast after you carve them. It's just not always cool enough for them to keep very long. Therefore, we waited until right before Halloween to carve our pumpkin this year.

We had been to the pumpkin patch already and chose a big pumpkin for carving. The girls helped ever so slightly to get the pumpkin goop out of the inside, but both were hesitant to touch it all that much. Really, they just used the spoons! They did just have baths, so I guess I'm glad they didn't get totally messy again...

We tried to separate out the pumpkin seeds while we scooped so that we could bake them when we were finished! This always makes me feel like "What am I doing??" but after roasting those seeds... it is so worth it! The girls ate them up eagerly, too. Seriously: rinse, dry, add olive oil, salt & paper.

The girls helped choose the shapes for the faces and so after drawing them, Justin cut them out with a big knife and there you have it! A not-scary face jack-o-lantern.

And Grandma helped, too!

Now, we are ready for some trick or treats!

October Fun

Just some more October fun in pictures:

Justin & I got to go to some weddings for friends!

We went to Boo at the Zoo as a family. We had never been before. I'm not sure I would suggest it, especially for young kids. It was hot, it was super crowded, and the candy portion was a little lackluster. We would have rather go on our own and just see the animals. It was an excuse to put the ballerina costumes on though!

Business as usual at home & school:

It was so warm this October!

Choosing a pumpkin from the patch at school.

Measuring that pumpkin!

We were able to attend baby Daniel's baptism! The girls had fun playing.

And for the grand finale... I showed them how to dance to thriller!! Well, the basics. It's the cutest!

October is so much fun!!

Pumpkin Patch

The girls {well, really just Nora} have been asking to go to the pumpkin patch for awhile. I knew from filling out my calendar for the month of October, that wouldn't be happening until later in the month because of other busy times for us! Well, we finally got to get out to the pumpkin patch this weekend.

It was, I suppose not so surprisingly so, incredibly busy. I was expecting busy but not this busy. We waited a while to get into the parking lot and were a little disappointed that the hay rides were selling 2 hours or more away from the current times. I guess I'll need to figure that part out ahead of time next year... But we did arrive!

Like the many other crazed normal mothers, I had dressed my kids in adorable matching outfits anticipating picture after picture of cuteness while at the pumpkin patch. And as other mothers can relate {or don't tell me if you can't} my kids were totally NOT into taking a picture. They did, however, have a lot of fun looking and feeling on all the pumpkins and surely getting into the backgrounds of other peoples' attempts at cute photos. And I suppose that is more important!

Out of about 30 pictures, these were the best I got. 

So, we started with looking around at the big pumpkins and the little pumpkins and the pumpkins that were all kinds of colors and shapes. The girls were determined to find a pink pumpkin. We rode the little tractors around and sat on the big tractor. We discovered that there were lots and lots of bees by the trash cans, and so avoided them at all costs. Nora made sure we ran quickly by the trash cans if we had to pass one...

No one had interest in the corn maze and so we headed towards the hay house & the farm animals. They liked the hay house most. Nora seemed startled by the quick movements that the donkey made and was determined not to let her sister get close to the fence at all.

We finished our trip to the pumpkin patch by choosing a pumpkin for carving and the girls each picked out a small pumpkin to take home. Even though no one was able to find a pink pumpkin, everyone was happy! So happy in fact, that I was able to get a picture of each girl holding their pumpkin, looking at the camera, & smiling. In one shot. It's like they miraculously remembered how to do it! Hmmm... Now, we will have to hold them off on carving until closer to Halloween!!

State Fair of Texas

The State Fair of Texas is a HUGE festival complete with all the fun things a fair has to offer: food, rides, games, shows, and lots of attractions for everyone. We have gone to the fair the last few years with the kids. It takes some time to get out there and get situated, but it has gotten increasingly more fun for the girls over the last few years.

There are a lot of rides for kids that are about three and up. Janie met the height requirement on the little rides, so they got to do some of the rides together. They LOVED riding the rides. There was one race car ride that had them going around corners pretty fast and I wasn't sure if they would be into it, but they were! It helped to have a friend there right next to you I think. The biggest downfall of those rides was the $4 pricetag - per kid, per ride. Ugh... money flies that way. I imagine it only gets more expensive as you get into the bigger rides. We didn't even touch on the games, as that was a whole different expense that we didn't think the kids would even care about. We also did not ride the Eye of Texas or whatever the big ferris wheel is called. I'm pretty sure that would have cost significantly more!

We didn't try a lot of food. The food is also pretty expensive. I think we got an $11 corn dog that was a foot long or so and just all shared it, and then some bottles of water. But of course, you can friend anything you want, just as long as you know where to find it!

We did take advantage of some of the free activities & shows for kids. We went to the animal barnyard where you could see, pet, and feed a variety of animals. We saw giraffes, cows of all kinds, goats, pigs (so cute!), llamas, a zebra looking thing, donkeys, and even an ostrich! The girls liked feeding the animals even though the animals didn't seem all that into being fed. We also went to the Mother Goose story time this year, which the girls also enjoyed. That was kind of relaxing for us because we just sat back and watched for 20-30 minutes while Mother Goose with a deep southern accent read and sang with the kids. We also saw the Budweiser Clydesdale horses in their stables, which the girls thought were pretty fun to see up close. Oh, and of course we saw Big Tex!

Justin and I took turns trying the virtual reality glasses on, but otherwise we stuck to stuff for the girls. There was a lot more to see and do. I feel like we hardly scratched the surface of things we could look at and experience, but we ran out of time really fast. Someday soon we will be able to take the girls places for longer than a few hours at a time!

Until next year, State Fair of Texas!