Halloween

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Halloween 2023

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It’s currently after Thanksgiving and I still haven’t loaded Halloween pictures on my computer yet, which shows you how behind on everything I am. I have 7 Christmas trees up in my house, at least, so some priorities are in tact.

Like the rest of the year has been, October was super rainy. We missed out on a couple Halloween events because it was raining, which was too bad. We still managed to have fun and dress in costumes a few times, and I’m not sure the kids misses anything since we added a few new events.

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3 Tigers and a Horse with a Purple Nose

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As tired and overwhelmed as I am, there’s one thing I am throwing all my energy into. Making magic for the kids. I have a bunch of unread emails I keep meaning to reply to, and projects half done or not started, but I already have two Christmas events booked and ready for us, and I think Halloween went pretty well too!

There’s a thing we have to do as parents, where we decide what events to go to and what events to skip. We had a lot of extra events we decided to pass on this year because they were too late at night or going to be too crowded or long, and we decided it was going to be overwhelming for the kids. They got plenty of magic, though. Pumpkin patches, corn mazes, trunk or treats, and plenty of candy. We wore our matching PJs and did crafts, but of course the main event was Halloween night!

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More Fall Fun

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Okay we’re going to ignore how tired Tom and I are and how never ending life seems, and pretend life is all candy corn and pumpkin spice instead, just like my coffee.

We’ve been indulging the kids and doing all the fall activities lately. We’ve made mummy brownies and bat cookies. We’ve painted decorations, carved pumpkins and made monsters with popsicle sticks, cotton ball ghosts and Halloween sand art crafts.

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Trick or Treat

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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.

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Halloween Halloween!!

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I’m actually shocked that Halloween is still so far away. We’ve been leaning heavy into all the fall/Halloween activities for a while now, so I’m having a hard time believing we’ve still got over a week to go. The kids are loving it, though, and we still have a lot of fun things coming up. Now that we have three kids, I’m afraid I’ve found my weakness in matching PJs. I’ll admit it’s a bit too early to pull out the Christmas PJs, so I’m going all in with Halloween ones.

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Making Magic

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You’d think that sleeping less would mean you’d have more hours in the day to, well.. do more? And maybe it’s true, but all those things you want to do, you need to figure out a way to do them without your hands. Occasionally it works - I read an entire book the other day. But most of the time I’m struggling to accomplish one thing that needs to get done that day.

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A Final Note on Halloween

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Look, we all know 2020 has all but turned into an expletive. There have been a lot of cancelled plans, a lot of things we’ve missed out on, and a lot of fear. But Halloween seemed like something we could do, albeit with a few modifications. So we made plans for an outdoor scavenger hunt, and as much fun as we could.

And then we had a record breaking October snow storm.

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Halloween Costumes!

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As a parent of two toddlers (I need to stop calling the big one a toddler, huh?), I’m always looking for ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Holidays are times where those things come to a peak. There are big expectations, a lot of excitement and emotions. So instead of trying really hard to get a good picture of them in their costumes when all they want to do is get candy and everyone is tired and tantruming, I did it a little different.

The week before Halloween.

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The Halloween Post

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I’ve realized there are a lot of people with a lot of strong opinions about Halloween. And most of them (or at least the loud ones) believe that Trick or Treating should always be on October 31st, after dark, regardless of the weather. It could be a hurricane, tornado, ten feet of snow, and they expect children to put on their costumes and ring their bells. The thought of moving it to a Saturday when parents don’t have to work and cars don’t need to be on the road is the dumbest idea anyone has ever had.

Maybe because my Saturdays usually aren’t that busy, or maybe because I have an hour commute home and actually had to take time off of work to make sure I could be all the places I wanted to be on Halloween, but I would LOVE Saturday Trick or Treating. In fact, I’d love it from 3- 5:00 in the evenings if you’re asking.

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN

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A more detailed post with costumes coming (get excited!), but I’ll give you a special treat for today.

I’m not sure why I didn’t do this with E. Probably because I was an overwhelmed first time parent and this was too much work, but it definitely would have been easier. Mostly because E was only 5 months old at his first Halloween and small for his age, and G… isn’t.

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October Things!

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October. The month that says summer is finally over, and it’s time to embrace fall. Pumpkin lattes, crisp leaves, sweaters and pumpkins. You can either spend your time mourning the end to a fun summer, or you can have some fall fun.

Which is probably why whenever I look at my phone I see all of my friends at apple orchards and petting zoos and pumpkin patches. It looks like a ton of fun and makes me want to do it too. But it also seems like a lot, and sometimes it stresses me out. Am I making plans because it’s fun, or because I’ll feel like I’m missing out if I don’t?

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Not the Best Holiday Track Record

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Remember Easter this year?

I actually didn’t. Just the other day I was asking Tom if we made it to sunrise service on Easter, and couldn’t remember why we didn’t. Oh yeah, we were all super sick. We’ve actually been doing really well since then, even managing to dodge a few outbreaks of hand, foot, mouth at daycare!

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Stretching Out the Holidays

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Is November 7th too late to still be talking about Halloween?  

I can't remember the last time I've spent so much time talking about this holiday, but having a kid will do that to you I guess.  

It does make me really excited for the upcoming months.  E's also really enjoying looking at bright lights lately, so you know I'm already counting the days until I can put up Christmas lights.  He's going to freak out.  It's going to be amazing!

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E's First Halloween!

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Just because the theme with parenting seems to be "Nothing ever goes according to plan," our Halloween plans changed last minute due to a wind storm that knocked out power across New England, and caused trick-or-treating to be postponed in a few local towns (including the one we were going to visit). 

Or another way to look at it is that our Halloween celebrations are going to be extended!  (and probably cause Thanksgiving to sneak up on us...).  So while we haven't gone trick-or-treating yet, we'll get to it soon.  

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Holiday Expectations

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As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I became obsessed with future holidays.  They'd be so much more fun to experience with children!  When Easter rolled around, I was so jealous of friends who had babies already.  I felt like I was missing out!  

And so I set my sights on Halloween. We'd have a baby and it would be amazing.  I couldn't wait to make it fun.  

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Our First Halloween Here

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Last night was our first Halloween in our new house.  We weren't expecting much, but still I made sure we were prepared.  It's true we live in a sparsely populated area of the town, and it's true that we don't even have sidewalks or street lights - two usual requirements for trick-or-treaters, but I chose to be optimistic. I wasn't expecting hundreds of kids, but maybe we'd get tenish? And in case we did, I made sure we had a variety of candy, including full sized candy bars. FULL SIZED!