This was our first Halloween in this house. This made me a little anxious because it is new territory. Every neighborhood has a "normal" time that they start hitting the streets and knocking on doors. In my old neighborhood it was what I would consider kinda early. Before the sun went down. I wonder if that was because we lived in a kind of ghetto neighborhood and people didn't want to be out much after dark. Just after the sun started to go down we went out to the front yard to try to get a feel for what was going on. There was almost no one on the street. We ended up hanging out and letting the kids play in the yard for a bit before all the other kids started coming out to make the rounds.
This was also the first Halloween that we passed out candy. In the previous 5 years, we would pack up Monkey and Bug and drive down the street to my parents' house. Like I said before, we lived in a not so great neighborhood, and weren't really keen on the idea of going door to door. Needless to say, we weren't home, and therefore we didn't pass out candy. This year I took the kids around as Bear hung out in the front yard with the pumpkins and passed out candy. He said that he was kind of disappointed in the number of kids that came by. We chalked it up to the fact that we kinda live in the corner of our little neighborhood, and the kids probably didn't make the effort to go out of the main area for candy. At the end of the night, we probably got about 25 kids by the house. Not bad, but not great compared to the number of kids that were running around.
This was Bug's first Halloween that she could actually participate in. Last year she was only 15 months old. She was a little ladybug that got pushed around in a stroller all night. This year she was at the front of the line at every house yelling "TRICK TREAT PEASE!"
And finally, this was Monkey's first Halloween after starting school. Just after we left our house, we ended up seeing one of Monkey's friends from school. The two of them decided that they wanted to walk around and trick or treat together. We let Monkey, Bug, and Minnie Mouse (the friend's costume) lead the way while her dad and I kept them on track and moving. Monkey and Minnie we chatty and loud 6 year olds and Bug was more concerned with holding Minnie's hand. If she stopped holding her hand, Bug would run up to her with her hand extended and call out to get her attention. "Minnie! (yes she actually said Minnie and not the girl's real name) Minnie! Hand!" The girl would hold her hand out and walk hand in hand with Bug while talking with Monkey. We also ran into a few other kids that Monkey knew. Little Miss Social would run over to them, hug them, tell them what great costumes they had, tell them bye, and run back over to us.
All in all, this Halloween was really good. We learned a lot about the neighborhood. We saw no aftermath of shenanigans. No toilet papered houses. No smashed pumpkins in the middle of the street. Now that that is over, we have Monkey's 6th birthday in a week and Thanksgiving just a couple weeks after that. Then Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's all lumped up together. It's gonna get busy quick, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
So cute!
ReplyDelete