Holloween - she GETS it!

Well, this was the first year that I figured Kelly would start to "get" Halloween - and I was right!! I was probably more excited than anyone this year to share some traditions with her. We started out by visiting our local pumpkin patch. She ran around yelling "PUNKINZ, PUNKINZ MOMMY!!!" for the first 10 minutes. The pumpkin patch attendee was in stitches. I told her to pick her own pumpkin - she finally settled on one of the tiniest pumpkins in the patch. And it wasn't even orange, it was white. Guess she's gotta be different! (mommy's wallet was happy too) Then I told her to pick one out for mommy. She picked out one that was just a little bigger and was orange. Picking out the perfect pumpkins - CHECK!!

On the actual day of Halloween, she got to wear her costume to Preschool. I pulled out the ladybug costume, hoping she would cooperate and wear it! With the princess costume well hidden and out of mind for days, she was actually very excited and seemed to like being a ladybug... all except for the hood (I should have learned from the crying bee last year that she is just not gonna do anything that involves a hat, hood, or anything touching her head & hair.) They had a Halloween parade at school and the teachers said she had a lot of fun. Cute costume and Halloween fun at school - CHECK!

To culminate our Halloween, we decided to join the Loys and trick-or-treat in their very family oriented neighborhood of Rancho Penasquitos. We had a nice dinner, then started to get the kids costumes on - with Nicole dressed in her pretty princess outfit, Kelly was having NONE of her LadyBug costume. Luckily I brought her own princess costume as a backup, and out they went, along with Tommy the Power Ranger.

Kelly rarely gets to eat sweets or candy, but she definitely knows what it is when she sees it now. So once Kelly received a few goodies in her pumpkin, started munching on one of them (before mommy saw her doing so!) and realized it came from those strange people at the front doors that I was hurrying her around to, it was clear that she would know from now on how to do this Halloween trick-or-treat thing!

Next year, I'm certain that she'll be up to speed with Tommy & Nicole! (they RAN from door to door while Kelly lollygagged behind a bit). Trick-or-treating with friends - CHECK!

...and giving all your loot to mommy - CHECK! You can bet Kelly won't allow that to be a part of next year's tradition! But that is when she will learn about a new tradition that I will adopt from the Loys called the Halloween Weasel. As it goes, the Halloween Weasel comes 2 nights after Halloween and takes all the candy to give to other children who don't have any - brilliant! We'll definitely look forward to Halloween again next year (and NO hooded costumes!!!) :-)