Halloween, twenty-fifteen.

I am not sure who enjoyed Halloween more this year, Arlo or Erik and I.  This year was everything that I hoped the Halloween experience would be as parents of a little one.  Last year was fun dressing Arlo up in his fuzzy little caterpillar costume, but he was still far too young to go trick-or-treating and appreciate all the things that kids (and adults - lets be honest here) love about this time of the year.  Although he is still too young for candy (we will be riding this train as long as we can) we still took him trick-or-treating and he had so much fun.  This whole post is going to be total picture overload, so consider yourself warned.

The Halloween decorations came out way early for us this year.  My parents visited us at the beginning of  September, bringing with them boxes of Halloween decor that my Mom always put out when my sister and I were little kids.  Seeing all the pumpkins and little figurines I hadn't seen in years brought back many memories, and I am so lucky my parents hung on to everything for so long, and even luckier that they passed them along them to us.  I decided that instead of hauling everything up to the attic only to bring it back down a month later, I would just go ahead and decorate early.  I don't usually have seasonal decorations up before the stores even put them out, but this year I won.  Take that, Target.

Our neighbors also got into the Halloween spirit somewhat early.  At the beginning of October, the house two doors down put up these giant inflatable ghosts and a grim reaper in their front yard.  It became our daily ritual to stop at this house and look at all the decorations on our morning walks.  If I forgot, Arlo would point and yell "ghost! ghost!"  It didn't take me long to learn that we were stopping there everyday, no matter what.

As I mentioned in my last post, the weekend before Halloween we visited a pumpkin patch in the mountains where we took some photos and picked up some fresh apple cider and local apples.  Arlo was a bit pumpkin obsessed this year, so he was thrilled to be in a field full of them.  It was on this trip that we scored Arlo's costume at a kids consignment store, an adorable monkey suit that we couldn't resist.  Last week, I took Arlo to a Halloween-themed story time at our local library and he got to wear the costume for the first time.  All the kids and even the librarians had on Halloween costumes, and after story time everyone went trick-or-treating through the library.  At first Arlo was confused and seemed to wonder if it was okay to take random things from strangers, ha!  He didn't care at all about the candy but loved the tiny bottle of bubbles they passed out and thought the pumpkin hand stamp was pretty cool too.

That night, we kept the Halloween spirit going and carved our pumpkins.  I can't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin before this year.  It was a long time ago, that's for sure.  Even though we obviously were not going to let Arlo play with sharp carving tools, he had a blast scooping out the pumpkin guts and watching Erik and I do the carving.  I let Arlo pick out the stencil design from the book that came with the carving tools.  No surprise here, he picked the ghost.  Erik was a little more hard core with his carving process.  He printed out a stencil from online, cut it out with a razor, and then busted out the power tools to carve his Grateful Dead pumpkin.  It was worth all the extra steps, his pumpkin turned out awesome. 

When we were finished carving, I put the pumpkins in the foyer, lit candles inside them, and turned off the lights.  Arlo came running in, stopped dead in his tracks, inhaled sharply, and let out a big "wow!"  I only wish I had recorded it on video.

On Friday Erik's office hosted a trunk-or-treat in their parking lot.  Arlo decided to take a super long nap that day so we missed the outdoor activities, but we still stopped by to show off his little monkey suit.  Everyone loved having him visit, and many of Erik's coworkers found a little trinket or two from their desks to put in Arlo's pumpkin basket.  He received some very random items: pumpkin stickers, zip ties, a happy meal toy, a foam dumbbell, and a monster truck.  Someone tried to give him a full-sized candy bar and Erik quickly put the kibosh on that, ha. 

The three of us left Erik's office together and headed to a little village of shops near our house that was hosting a big trick-or-treating event.  Every store was participating and handing out candy.  We got there right when it started and it was packed!  By this point Arlo was getting pretty good at his candy collection skills and walked right up so he could get candy put in his basket.  When he got to choose his own candy, he took only one piece and always picked a pack of whoppers.  We ate dinner in the village and then headed home to rest up, for the next day was Halloween!

Last year we were living in a not-at-all trick-or-treating friendly neighborhood.  There were not many kids in our area and the houses were rather far apart.  So, in addition to enjoying their company and the fact that their daughter is one of Arlo's besties, we decided to spend Halloween with our friends in their much more kid-friendly neighborhood.  Even though this year we are now in a family-friendly neighborhood ourselves, we decided that we cared more about hanging with our friends and letting the kids play together than passing out candy at our own house, so we went over to John & Rhianna's house again.  The kids had so much fun together and I think Arlo would have trick-or-treated for hours if we had let him.  We decided to just stay on their street, and went to maybe seven or eight houses.  Arlo can say trick-or-treat ("tick teet") but in the usual toddler fashion, didn't want to perform on command.  He did say "tanks" after he was given candy though which was completely adorable.  He wasn't at all shy about going up to get candy, and he even hung around one house probably hoping to score more.  He kept looking at their candy bowl and showing them his loot, and they commented on what a social little guy he is. 

Erik and I were originally not going to dress up, but he was able to score a free "Scream" costume at a yard sale a few weeks ago, and I decided to just be a devil again - it was like my third or fourth time wearing that costume but it's the only one I had on hand.  They all worked out well though because they were warm costumes and it was a chilly evening, and hey, you can't beat free.  Arlo's little friend Lyra went as Minnie Mouse, and she was super cute as always.  Can you see the pigtails in the photo of them together?!

Now can we also just take a second to look back at last years Halloween photo?  I barely recognize these tiny babies!

And now back to present day...

group shot photo credit goes to Rhianna and her new camera!

And to address the question that I have been asked many times already, and will likely have to answer for years to come - "how do you do halloween as vegans?" 

This year was easy.  Arlo doesn't eat candy yet and doesn't even know what it is, so he just thought he was collecting "things" as we trick-or-treated, and didn't even miss them when I dumped them in the big candy bowl back at the house.  We did of course hang on to the mini jar of play-doh - he was super happy to have received that.  I was prepared in case he wasn't so easy going about giving up his treats, and had bought mini packets of organic graham crackers, fruit ropes, and a Halloween matchbox car.  However, I forgot all about those treats until we were leaving for home as there was never any need to get them out.  Arlo was more interested in snacking on the baby carrots and tortilla chips when we were done going house to house.  Next year will probably be something similar in terms of how we address the non-vegan candy situation.  I will have a bag of health(ier) treats to swap out after we make the rounds, and can hopefully do it without him noticing.  I realize as he gets older this won't be such an easy task, but I hope by that point I can explain why we eat the way we do and he will more or less understand.  And it's not all about the products being vegan, even vegan candy is often unhealthy and a really unnecessary part of a kids diet.  I get it, I get it, it's only one day of the year.  And we all ate it growing up.  So, maybe when he's much older I won't care so much about avoiding things like "hydrogented palm oil, potassium sorbate, and red 40" but right now, well, I just do.

And in case there is any worry that Arlo has been missing his favorite ghost at the neighbors house, not to fear.  The day after Halloween, the ghosts and grim reaper disappeared and were replaced by a giant inflatable turkey.

Thanksgiving twenty-fifteen, we are ready for ya.

rain all morning = sleepy turkey  ;)