Halloween

This little piggy went trick or treating....

Little Red Riding Hood and Benton the Terrible pirate, ready to trick or treat.

I usually detest Halloween. It's my least favorite day. The only redeeming thing about Halloween is that when it is over, my favorite season of all starts. I love the Thanksgiving through Christmas season--the music, the food, the red cups at Starbucks, all of it. But this year, I was pleasantly surprised by a wonderful Halloween.

We started celebrating Saturday with a neighborhood fall social. The kids enjoyed playing with their friends, and so did the adults. Kate retired early to head to bed, which worked out great for David who needed to get home to watch a miserable Ole Miss game.

Sunday we had our church fall festival, and oh my, our church knows how to throw a fall festival. There were big bouncy inflatables, two little carnival rides, every fall game you can imagine, crafts, balloon animals (or sword and flower for my two), and even an area for infants to play in a miniature ball pit and get their pictures made for a craft. The organizers truly thought of everything.

At this point, I thought my kids would have had enough of Halloween and would be content to go to our neighbor's house to trick or treat then call it a night (it worked last year). Oh, how mistaken I was. We met up with a gaggle of toddlers and their parents at the Halls' house and followed the toddlers around the neighborhood. They were little and they were cute, but they were serious about some trick or treating. Kate hung out in the pouch with me and the other adults. Benton went to the first house, said "twick or tweat" with his adorable toothless smile, and scored some loot. He ran to me and said "Mommy! Her gave me a tweat!" He then realized he was behind the crew who had already headed to the next door, so he took off running and caught up with them. Then he ran back to me and said, "Mommy! Her gave me a tweat too!!" He was amazed that the people kept giving him treats. And some of the ladies were charmed by his adorable toothless grin and gave him handfuls of candy. Once we made it around the front loop, it was dark and getting cold, but the kids would not be shaken. One of our friends drove up on his four wheeler with a hayride attached to the back, so the kids and dads hopped on and headed to the back loop for more candy.

dads pulling the kids uphill. I was walking with a baby attached to me, so I did not pity them.

Now we have retired the well-worn costumes and are flipping through the Toys R Us catalog anticipating what Santa will bring