Halloween is generally not my favorite holiday. Unfortunately, it seems unavoidable. And now that I have kids, I'm a huge Scrooge if I ignore the day. The neighbors softened me up this year by Booing us on Tuesday night (They leave a bucket of treats on your front porch and then you hang a sign saying that you've been booed. Then you, likewise, Boo 2 neighbors who don't have signs in their windows until most of the neighborhood has ghost signs in the window. I've been informed that when they do this at Christmastime you get "elfed." Super fun!). Once the Boo thing happened, I kind of decided that Halloween might be a good chance to be neighborly. And I confess that I actually enjoyed last night--although there were car loads of kids getting dropped off in our neighborhood from who-knows-where and we ran out of our 6 bags of candy pretty quickly!
Since this was Baby G's first Halloween, I really wanted to dress my entire gang up as the characters from Peter Pan. I thought it would be so cute to have a little Tinker Bell, a Captain Hook, and a Peter Pan! Unfortunately, my boys did not share this vision. The 5 year old was amenable to the idea of dressing as a pirate, but neither were thrilled at the thought of being dressed in green and the 3 year old told me he didn't want to dress up at all. (I really should have forced them to watch a little more Peter Pan and Hook this summer.) So only 1/3 of my wish came true--I got my little Tinker Bell! I actually purchased her costume last year before she was born and it fit perfectly. Somehow, my intuition proved right as Baby G's personality made her the perfect Tink. She had a blast!
Choosing costumes for the boys was an entirely different story. They're not really into super heroes or Disney characters. Instead, when they play "dress up" they pretend to be actual men--Daddy going to work, a fireman on duty, a football player on game day, a coach instructing his football team, etc. So when I found my costumes this year, I knew I had scored.
All the neighbors loved my little Marine and Navy Pilot. Of course, the boys saluted and said cute little things as they went from door to door too. And as expected, this morning they were dressed up in their little ensembles all over again! Today they pretended that they were going to war in the backyard. Looks like we'll get plenty of use out of this year's costumes--although I confess that I let my oldest sleep in last year's shark costume from time to time too so the shark costume wasn't a complete loss either. Nothing like getting your money's worth out of things.
Halloween is still not my favorite holiday, but as a mommy I'm learning that some things just aren't about me. Sometimes you've just got to loosen up for your kids and for your neighbors. Gotta enjoy these years while I've got them.
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