Halloween 2014

Our Halloween was one for the books.  All three children chose their own costumes - Bennett was a vampire, Emory wanted to be Minnie Mouse for the third year in a row but I nixed that as well as "princess" only because she is a princess every day with dress up, so she chose butterfly and I ran with it, and Jacob was the first to decide with Aubie.

Bennett's school has a Halloween parade around the lower school that dates back to long before I even participated in it a quarter of a century ago.  I wasn't going to go "all in" for his parade but he insisted on the makeup and "blood" so I gave in.  He never broke character.

Our supper club also decided to go all out and for our gathering this month we dressed the part - we so cray cray #thirtysomethingsactingtwentysomething.

 Bob Ross and his painting/happy little tree ;)

This year we also joined some dear friends for trick or treating in their quaint old Mobile neighborhood {aka my dream neighborhood}.  Where we live, the lots are large and the houses are ranch style.  We are on a hill and the road is a cut through.  It serves us well on so many accounts but, for trick or treating, it is definitely not ideal.

We started the night early at our friends annual neighborhood Halloween party, then went out from there.  The neighborhood is a great mix of young and old families, so almost every house had at least one parent/adult home for the trick or treaters.  There were even some spooky "haunted" alleyways in the mix and we might or might not have almost lost our resident vampire in one of them...

It was such a fun magical night and the kids were so happy it made me almost like Halloween again.  Admittedly, it used to be one of my favorite holidays - as a child and then as a teenager/young adult.  Looking back I really think it was because of the time of year - its one of my favorite months, it's usually growing cooler, the days are still long before the time change, football - fires - leaves - not to mention the whole spooky aspect of it - I was always a sucker for scary movies and haunted houses.  These days it is definitely more stressful and busy, with so many events and parades and festivals and parties crammed into one week of school that it sucks all the fun out of it.  Now that the kids are a little bit older and are able to individually, and independently, enjoy Halloween... I find myself doing the same again :)