Last Night's Halloween Memories

The children were all excited about Halloween. For an entire week I told them that they would be ringing bells and saying, "Trick or Treat" and that they would get candy in return. The girls were even saying "Trick or Treat" by the end of the week.

My original plan was to feed them lunch and then leave so they could nap in the car, however, my day started out later than I orginally planned so while they were eating breakfast at 10 am I decided to pack their stuff up and drive to my parents house since it is an hour ride. Naomi was a bit clingy and cried and cried until I sat with her holding her for about 10-15 minutes before she allowed me to pack up their stuff so we could go. Well, we were off in the car by 12. Arriving at my parents at 1. We then picked up my grandmother and off to lunch we went. We went to Nathons for hotdogs. The kids had a great time as we sat right near the big screen tv where they had the movie Elf playing. They each got a balloon on the way out.

Then back to my parents house where my grandfather met us while we changed the kids into their costumes. My girls were chearleaders and my son was a football player. Lots of photos were taken and the kids got lots of oohs and ahhs from all the grandparents. Then my sister arrived with my niece Amanda who was an indian. She looked so cute. Off to trick or treat on my mothers block. The kids did really well walking to each house holding our hands while in the street. Victoria wanted to take more than one piece of candy and kept saying "OPA" which means Open in her language. After doing my mother's block we went to my sisters block where it was jammed packed with kids. They seem to have children bussed into her development. It was so packed that there was hardly any parking left. I did manage to get a spot across the street from my sisters house.

The houses on her block were all decorated. There were 2 houses that were decorated like haunted houses and had sound effects that were amazing. My sister said that they compete with each other every year. As it got darker and darker the lights on the houses were amazing. At one house there was a woman dressed like Michael Meyers and the strobe light on the house really made it look spookey. The children were afraid to go to that house.

My children were in the wagon being dragged from house to house which really got tiring. My son was with his cousin Amanda while Uncle Steve pulled them along. My mom or I pulled the girls along. The costumes of most of the children and adults were cute except for some which were extremely scarey. Some costumes made my son scream and cry. The girls didn't cry but later that night Naomi had a hard time sleeping. She would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. I'm assuming she was having some bad nightmares of the monsters she saw that night. She would up sleeping in my bed which kept me up most of the night. At about 6pm my son had had enough and started to tantrum. It was due to no nap and no dinner. My mom had to carry him back to the house while the rest of us continued down the block. We finally arrived back to my sisters house around 6:30 where we ordered Pizza for dinner.

My goal for next year is to not to plan anything for the next day so we could have a sleep over at my sisters house. We had to return home because my son had a doctor's appointment the next day. Driving home exhausted was not very fun.