Halloween Hijinks

Happy belated Halloween! I hope you all had a festive holiday weekend - once again, I'm a little late in posting pictures of our holiday fun.

I have to preface this post by noting that I am NOT a huge fan of Halloween, never really have been. I'm not sure why this is, but even as a child I quit trick or treating fairly early, whereas my younger sister was known to still go out and collect candy during her pre-teen years! In college, we would have Halloween date parties with the sorority but I was generally the one (a) not in costume, or (b) wore a headband with devil horns and called it a day. I know, I sound like a total Grinch (oops, wrong holiday!). Now that we have a little one, I'm getting more into all of the holidays again, including Halloween - it's wonderful to experience everything for the first time through the eyes of your toddler!

We were invited this year to attend an engagement party for some really good friends that happened to be Halloween eve and costumes were mandatory. I put Ryan in charge of costumes, telling him I wanted something that I could move around in easily and didn't require me to cover my skin in body paint. Let me tell you, there is a pretty limited selection of Halloween costumes for pregnant gals. Here's a few of the options online - see what I mean?


Actually, the middle one ("the bun in the oven") is kind of cute, but not all that practical when you consider the number of trips your average pregnant woman makes to the little girl's room during any given period of time!

So....with our limited options....we finally decided on something. We could go as a pair, and it met the aforementioned requirements. It's a little twisted, but hopefully you all will see the humor in it (and not be offended)!


I loved how creative our friends were with their costumes. Amy and Nick were Super Girl and Captain America (I love how she is holding out her cape and staring up at the sky in the traditional superhero pose!):


Andy and Amanda were everyone's favorite trashy reality stars - Snookie and The Situation (Andy kept referring to himself as "The Special Occasion" as opposed to The Situation!):


Melissa and Mark were Sookie and Bill from "True Blood" - check out the realistic-looking bite marks:


The Frisch's Big Boy even made an appearance!


Needless to say, we had a very good time, though I'm not sure if I'll do another costume again anytime soon!

Sunday night we geared up for trick or treating. Alexandra usually takes a 2-3 hour nap on weekends but for some reason decided to veto the nap on the afternoon of Halloween - I warned her that was probably not going to turn out well! This was the first year we really went door to door (we accompanied the girls who live next door and their friend). I wasn't sure what to expect, and thought we might only hit up a few houses. Much to my surprise, we circled the ENTIRE neighborhood! At times it got a little stressful - Alexandra wanted to either run or to be held by her mommy, so here I was with my pregnant belly, holding her on one hip and holding her pumpkin in my other hand, and ringing doorbells. Needless to say, I got a workout that evening! She did great, though - with a little prompting (we're in a bit of a shy stage), she'd say "Hi," "Trick or Treat", "Happy Halloween", "please" and "thank you." I was very proud of my little munchkin, and despite the nap she did really good with relatively few meltdowns.

Here's the little diva in her Minnie Mouse costume and a pair of hot pink sunglasses that belonged to one of the neighbor girls - before we left, she picked them up, plunked them on her face and said, "ooohh, FANCY!" This child always cracks me up!



We tried to get a family photo - it's a little fuzzy, but our neighbor did a pretty good job with it being his first time using a DSLR and the fact that it was in Manual setting. It's difficult when you have a DSLR camera to get in any shots yourself!


I didn't get as many pictures this year as I was carrying around Alexandra most of the night, but I did manage to get a few:








I learned that some people hand out some very odd treats (such as the can of Big K orange creme soda we received at one house, which weighed down the entire pumpkin), and that Alexandra ADORES suckers but can't seem to enjoy one without making a mess of her face, her hair, her hands, MY hair, etc.

All in all, a very successful, candy-filled night!