Halloween 2011

I was so prepared for Halloween to bite.

Let me back up. We have a HORRIBLE Halloween track record. Sophie was 10 months old on her first Halloween and was sick. No cute baby pictures of a confused pumpkin or pea pod. The second Halloween we had a 22 month old daughter and a 3 month old son. Both were sick. I started to wonder if Halloween really was cursed.

Finally last year, both children were germ-free! I was pregnant but could waddle along to the Fall Festival. That's what you do in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. You go to church-run Fall Festivals where the kids can play games to earn their candy.



Yoda and the Prima Donna Ballerina were not amused. Neither of them like candy, the games confused them and it was way past their bedtime. We lasted maybe 30 minutes.

This year we had three little monsters. Warily, I procured costumes. Did you know that NO ONE ON EARTH makes a Daisy Duck costume for kids?! Daisy is Sophie's favorite Disney character. So we went with Minnie instead and she carried her best friend.



Minnie is a little bit of a ham.



Gideon was a race car driver. In true 2-year old form, he took great offence at being dressed up and paraded about.



So Ben decided that he was Kurt Busch.

Milly was supposed to be an adorable little kitty cat in a tutu.


(image from Party City)

Cute, right?



Milly grew. So we put her in a tutued long sleeved dress and called her a ballerina-princess-cute-baby.

We got to the Fall Festival and my spirits (har!) were lifted when Sophie successfully played a beanbag game. I just have to teach her to pick the good kind of candy. She just grabs indiscriminately. We played beanbag toss games, basketball and a game where the kids grabbed a plastic duck out of a small pond. Gideon wanted the duck more and actually got one foot in the pool before I caught him.

Did I mention that none of my kids like candy?

There was a petting zoo and pony rides. We knew that Gideon would lose his diaper if we put him on a moving animal so I took him into the petting zoo instead. He just stood back and stared at the goats. He screamed in protest whenever I encouraged him to actually, you know, PET the animals. Then, after a short line, we were able to see just what would happen if you put Sophie on a horse.



She actually liked it! She kept saying GINNUP! and HOESEY! and whenever we passed her Daddy with the camera she would yell CHEEEEESE! The only downside was that Mama picked poorly and put her on the LARGEST pony there. Sophie kept leaning towards me and I was honestly afraid that she would tumble right off. It didn't help that I couldn't convince her to hold onto the durn saddle. She had fun but a horsewoman she is not.

When we left, not one child was crying. In fact, they were all smiling. This counts as a Win in the Dyer book. We finally won a Halloween!