The Week of Costumes.

I hated titling this post "Halloween", as we really don't celebrate Halloween in a traditional sense. Trying to avoid Halloween altogether seems near impossible, so we just use it as a fun way for our guys to dress up and get free candy. We've had a few talks this year about some of the evil that Halloween stands for; Brayden's taken the talks in stride, but I can't say I haven't held my breath in fear that he might tell someone that THEY are evil for dressing up like a goblin or skeleton.

this is the only half decent picture I got of Tyler dressed up as a baby monkey. Poor third child....

Every year we get together with our friends during the week of Halloween for a costume party. This year we forgot to take a picture until most of the kids were out of their costumes... it's amazing how much everyone has grown since the first year we did this 4 years ago!!!

This was the first year I would say that Brayden was EXTREMELY excited about everything. Last year he got excited about it once he realized he was getting candy, but that was the extent. This year he's been talking about what he was going to wear and where he was going to trick-r-treat for MONTHS. Thank goodness I got a back up to Batman, because at the last minute Brayden decided that being the Dark Knight was not in his plans afterall, and he'd much rather sport Captain America. I'm not really sure what we would have done without the backup plan. I'm also grateful I get the costumes used... having to purchase a costume at full retail would have killed us this year with the indecisiveness of a four year old. ;)

Captain America and Buzz before going trick-r-treating at Daddy's work

Brayden was happy to find another Captain America. I'm not really sure how it happened, but he looks SO grown up.

our little fam trick-r-treating at one of our neighbors houses. Connor was obviously still on a candy high (in fact, I'm not quite sure he's come down from it, as I had to chase him through the parking lot today with Tyler on my hip. We can mark that moment down as one of my least favorite times as a mom).

We ended up just doing one loop around our neighborhood for trick-r-treating. This year we had SO many trick-r-treaters, and I think the boys had more fun giving away candy to everyone than going door to door (plus they didn't quite understand why they couldn't take unlimited handfulls of peoples candy when they rang the door bells). We also had the added bonus of running into our friends while we were out, and we had them over to help us hand out candy.

A few of my favorite halloween moments this year:
- Connor, hyped up on candy after we had visited Drew at work. He ran down the hall, yelling as loud as his little voice would carry:

"TRICK-R-TREAT! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!!" 

I'll be honest- it was a bit embarrassing during the moment. But looking back on it, it was such a sweet moment. He was absolutely filled to the brim with excitement, and lost in character. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and even Buzz Lightyear has let downs.
- A bonus of halloween is working on good manners when you are given something. We focused especially on saying Thank you and looking someone in the eyes. Drew added a "God Bless You" to the equation after candy was given. So B learned how to ring the door bell, wait patiently, express gratitude for the gift and then threw in a "Happy Halloween, God Blesses you!" to the equation. Pretty cute.
- Connor liked asking what everyone was while we were trick-r-treating. At one house a kid came up dressed as some sort of goblin (I'm honestly not really sure what he was, only that he was kind of spooky). Connor went up to him and inquisitively asked "are you batman?!" The kid looked at Connor perplexed, and then said, "ummm.... NO." Connor, without missing a beat, said, "Oh, OK. I Buzz Lightyear!" And ran off.
- at one house there were little kids giving out candy. They kept loading B's basket, so B said, "well, here, you can have some of mine." And he gave them some of his candy too. :)

(I think the biggest horror of Halloween is that the candy must stop at some point.)

Until next year....