Not the Halloween we expected

We had a really wonderful Halloween weekend. The best weekend I've had in a while, and it defied all expectations. I had made plans and I had ideas about the things we would do. And most of those things didn't happen, but things turned out great anyways.

Friday night we got busy soon after we all got home. Mike and I had been putting off Greyson's costume for too long. So... we went out to run some errands. Grabbed a burger for dinner, visited Michael's which has aisles way too narrow for a grabby toddler, and spent some time with a Thomas the Train table at Toys R Us. Mike and I wondered if we had such a magical table at home if Greyson would spend that much time playing quietly by himself every day. Just imagine what we could accomplish! Shopping done, we returned home and put the kid to bed. That's when the real fun started! We got out the paints, brushes, rulers, pencils, tape, and kids' books and set to work designing Greyson's fire truck. It's amazing that for over a month he insisted that he was going to be a fire truck for Halloween and he never wavered.

Mike and I had a great time painting, and we had a finished product before bed. Ta daaaa!

That night I fretted and fantasized about what Halloween would be like with our little fire truck. We had plans to go to a church festival up the street (for entirely non-religious people we sure do visit a lot of churches this time of year!) and maybe even enter The Goose in a costume contest.

In the morning, we let Mikey sleep in a little while we checked out the truck. I tried to put it over G's head to see how long the "suspenders" should be, but he wasn't having it. I didn't push, just let him inspect the truck and get to know it a little. He wanted to push it along the ground, and didn't seem to understand why the wheels weren't rolling. At one point he even asked me if it "needs batteries??" !!

After visiting our pumpkins out front (a daily ritual), Mike was up and we started to plan our day. Greyson still didn't want anything to do with wearing his truck, but he tried on his fire man jacket and hat and boots and seemed to like those just fine. We got our things together and were on our way to the church festival for pony rides and visits with fire men!

Well, the ponies never showed up, and Greyson was such a fussbucket that he wouldn't set foot on the ground - insisting that we carry him everywhere. It was very warm (upper 80's on Halloween!) so we didn't make him wear his heavy, fleecy costume. We took a few photos with the fire truck at the festival, but Grey didn't want to sit in it at all. It was turning out to be a bummer of a morning. Poor Goose was in a bad mood and I was slowly joining him.

Then Mike's last-minute phone calls started to pay off. Chuck arrived with Ally, Madi, and Veronica. Clay and Marina arrived with Nikolai and Anton, Chris and Randi arrived with Truman and Lennon. Even without ponies, the festival got more fun :-) Greyson was still a cranky pants, but we had more kids to play with and we all went out for lunch. That seemed to cheer Greyson up (all he needed was a taco!?) and we had a nice nap in the afternoon, followed by a romp in the sprinklers on this record-breakingly hot day.

We made one last attempt to get the fire truck on him in the evening, but it was still a no-go. So we dressed him up as a fireman and went to visit our neighbors. Of course they all oohed and aaahed over the little firefighter, and we got some candy to put in his little bucket. Then we headed home to drop off his truck and pick up the stroller. We thought we might stroll the neighborhood, see if there were any gobblins out and about, admire the decorations and costumes. We ended up trick-or-treating half the neighborhood!

The first house we stopped at was decorated, and we could see the family in the front window. We know them casually so we figured we could stop by. Greyson accepted some candy, and then walked right into the house to visit the family dog. Oops! Of course when someone opens the door for him, he thinks he's invited in :-)

We stopped at a few houses that had candy buckets out by the front door, then some decorated homes that were obviously expecting trick-or-treaters. We ended up on the busiest street in the neighborhood where we did run into a few packs of kids and parents. Our neighborhood is pretty well lit with streetlights, but also full of large mature oak trees, so it can still be dark in spots. We got to a very dark street and decided to head back home. By this point, Greyson was hot and tired and hopped back into his stroller to enjoy some ice water and a ride home. We took off his coat and hat and realized just how sweaty he was underneath it all. What a trooper, he never complained a bit - I guess all that "chocklick" he ate along the way kept him happy despite the heat.

Back at home Greyson gulped down some milk and went right to bed, a little later than usual, but we were hoping that might help us combat the "fall back blues" - I was really worried that Grey would pop up ready to play at 6:30am instead of his weekend-typical 7:30. Tomorrow I'll continute the saga of our wonderful Halloween weekend. Will Greyson sleep in? Will he wake up at sunrise? Stay tuned to find out...