This year everything about Halloween seemed up in the air. The pandemic is still raging on, the weather looked questionable at best, and our normal Halloween plans were no longer an option. All that added up to a big question mark about how we were going to spend the holiday. Nothing new there, I guess. Every holiday for the past almost two years now has been a mix of disappointment and change, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
By this point in the month, we’d pretty much crossed all of our Halloween activities off our list, besides the actual Trick or Treating. We’d gone to pumpkin patches and apple orchards. We’d carved those pumpkins and made pies out of the apples. (We also made a pumpkin pie, but I’m not crazy - that pumpkin came from a can!) We’d worn matching PJs, gone on Halloween scavenger hunts, painted spiderwebs and decorated every inch of our house, inside and out.
So there wasn’t much left to do the Saturday before Halloween. The weather forecast told me there was about a 100% chance of rain every hour of the day, so the one thing I was looking forward to that day was out of the question. I told the kids that we’d try on our costumes at some point, and if they let me take pictures, we’d celebrate by eating cookies.
However, when nap time was over I happened to look out the window and noticed it wasn’t raining. I checked the radar and it looked like we might have an hour or two without the constant downpours. I asked Tom if we’d be crazy to try a last minute change of plans. The children were confused and skeptical, but we decided to throw everyone in the car and see what happened.
We headed to a local school down the street that was doing a Trunk or Treat event. It turned out perfect - since both E & G needed some practice around Trick or Treating. Usually they just follow the lead of their more outgoing friend, but since we won’t get to see them this year, E & G needed some prompting.
We didn’t stay very long (and still got way more candy than we need) but I think they had fun. While we were there, they were both completely in shock and overwhelmed. I had to remind them both how to walk and push them along from station to station. Luckily they’re cute and everyone was obsessed with their fuzzy costumes. As soon as we got back to the car they started talking again and we got a few “That was so fun!” exclamations out of them, although they both admitted they had been a bit nervous too.
Once we got home they obviously had candy for dinner, and then ran off all their energy chasing the helium balloons we’d gotten at the event. (Aka magic balloons!) F was mostly just along for the ride - literally, she stayed in the stroller the whole time and was pushed behind them.
So once Sunday came around I wasn’t very excited. We’d already gotten candy, I already had pictures of everyone in their costumes, and I didn’t have plans to see friends that night. I realized those were all the reasons for a parent to look forward to Halloween. Plus, the kids were going CRAZY. There is definitely a reason we usually run them around outside with their friends before trick or treating. Emotions were high, tantrums were frequent, and everyone was exhausted.
Finally I just decided to throw everyone into the car and drive around until it was late enough to start trick or treating. Tom and I got to decompress a bit, and the kids were excited to find Halloween decorations out the window. It seemed to work, although the kids caught on a bit when we headed home later in the night. “How come the ride home was so much shorter!?” they wanted to know.
In the end we stayed close to home, and probably only went to about ten houses, but picked a good neighborhood - those houses filled their buckets to the top. After every house G would announce “Now we go to the next house!” and E would say “And we do not walk on their grass!” I’m pretty sure they had a lot of fun and we even got to visit Oscar - one of Abby’s kittens!
Now I’m going to go parent-tax some full sized candy bars and be very thankful I’ve got a year before I need to do this again. Bets on if baby F will be walking next year? (She’ll be 14 months - for reference, E was walking at 14 months but G was not)
