Happy Halloween

When I was young, there were different factors that meant we didn’t do traditional trick or treating. There was that scare in the 80s with people putting needles in apples or ground glass in other candy — I’m still not sure why that happened and it certainly left a scar since I inspect everything very carefully to this day. Plus, we were neck deep in a religious organization that frowned on pagan things. So, we didn’t do much collecting candy or dressing up other than religious characters for private parties.

Now that we have kiddos, we’ve tried to give them different experiences. Where we live, people drive in to our neighborhood to trick or treat, so we have options. Most years, we just sit on the front porch and hand out candy. It’s a good way to see neighbors and interact without having to walk so much.

As I do many different times of the year, I went back through some of my old pictures to see how the boys have grown and changed … here’s some of my favorites!

Halloween 2013 and our first little guy was pretty confused about what was going on. We didn’t last long, but he was the cutest Tigger since he loved to jump and jump and jump at this age!

Halloween 2015 and little guy #2 was just as confused as his brother was at that age, but he also had big brother to show him the ropes. Some candy was collected, but mostly they just looked cute.

Halloween 2016 and you can see the personalities coming through! The cutest Winnie the Pooh with his little side smile and our astronaut (that costume is still in our “dress up box”!) had to inspect each piece of candy.

2017 and our first Halloween in Miami. Paw Patrol was a big favorite for both of the boys at his age and the little guy decided to be his favorite, the one with the fire truck, but also stole some parts of his big brother’s astronaut costume!

Here’s 2018 and the appearance of Minecraft characters and costumes. We did collect candy although they didn’t eat much of it, per usual. The light up swords were the biggest hit.

2019 was the first and last year we had a family costume. Most of it lasted for a bit, but then someone had to go to the bathroom and we were done for the night.

It was 2020 and while Covid was surging and affected so many things, we met up with some friends at the park to hang out, exchange bags of candy and run around a bit. The dinosaur and the Minecraft costume were joined by my butterfly to hang out.

This year, the boys both chose some rather spooky costumes for trick or treating …

The boys also participated in the book character parade at school …

Malcolm’s dinosaur made a reappearance from years past and Liam was Perseus from his Greek mythology unit. Regardless of their costume, these boys just jump in with both feet to whatever is going on and make it so much fun.

Thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me!