Happy Halloween 2008!

After the beginning of the week, with temps in the 30's and snow dusting the ground, I was dreading what our Halloween weather might have in store, but it turned out to be unbelievable - 60 and sunny! Hooray!

The boys were hesitant this year about dressing up and hitting the trick or treat trail. Xavier was the first one out with us. Bennett could not be coaxed into his costume no matter how hard we tried, so we let him sit in the house for quite awhile until he was ready to get dressed and make an appearance.

Xavier let us get him dressed, but was pretty whiny, so I really didn't get any good photos. Here's one our neighbor shot of Nick, Xavier, and I just before the hords of children made their appearance.

And me and Xavier. I kept telling Xavier, "Its Halloween! You love Halloween! All the kids are going to come and you get to give them candy." He whined at me until the first group arrived, and after that, he realized what was happening. The clapping and giggling started and never seemed to stop :-)


Ben FINALLY put his costume on with help from Papa Paul, and he made his way out of the house with some gentle coaxing from me. After sitting on the porch with us for about 10 minutes passing out candy, he got over his anxiety and asked Nick to walk with him around our neighborhood.

Nick said he did a fabulous job. He said "Happy Halloween!" instead of "trick or treat" (that's what he told Nick he prefered to say!) and then "thank you" after each piece of candy was dropped in his pumpkin.

When he came back, he was so excited to show me his candy. Ben rarely gets candy, so the poor kid doesn't know what common candy items are. He held up a Reeces cup and said, "Mommy, what is this?" I explained what it was, and he said, "but can you eat it?!" I said, "yes!" He did that with nearly all his candy, taking inventory of all the pieces, lining them all up to see. At the end, was a snacksize bag of pretzels, to which he said, "I know what these are! They're pretzels! Can I eat them please, Mommy?" Of course my answer was yes. How funny that among all that chocolatey goodness he chose something he eats nearly everyday. There's comfort and happiness for him in familiarity, I suppose. :-)

Finally caught all 4 of us together, me, Nick, and 2 Spideys! :-)

Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!!