Bogle Family Blog: Halloween

I have said for a while now that Lily has an impressive memory. For the last TEN months, Lily has been talking about the giant inflatable Christmas decorations that people in our neighborhood put up in their yards last December. For entertainment, we would drive or walk around the neighborhood looking at her favorites…the Santa making his naughty/nice list, the reindeer popping out of the chimney, etc. For months after they were taken down (okay, for the almost YEAR after they were taken down) Lily would ask if we could go look for Santa decorations. So, it was not surprising that when inflatable Halloween decorations began popping up this year, Lily was thrilled. Since the beginning of October, we have watched the delightfully tacky decorations spring up all over our neighborhood, often making nighttime neighborhood tours to see her favorites…especially the Mickey Mouse pumpkin and the vampire popping out of a gravestone (her vampire impression is hilarious in that it involves her playing peekaboo…we saw no need this year to correct her misunderstanding of these blood-sucking monsters of lore).

I have always said I would never put one of those tacky inflatables in MY yard.

Here’s the part where I eat my words.

I mean come on, people, it was a CAT. How could I resist???

Lily was a big fan of Jasper, as he came to be known. I do want to publicly state that in spite of my lapse in good taste here, I am thankfully still aware that the 10ft Santa Mickey that Lily covets at Lowe’s would be a bit too much.

However, I see a lot of field trips to Lowe’s over the next two months. Playdate at Lowe’s anyone?

Aside from Jasper, our Halloween decorations consisted of two pumpkins. One Lily and I did a couple of weeks ago with a cute Mr. Potato head cowboy kit…

…and one that Michael and I carved with her yesterday (Michael’s first-ever pumpkin-carving apparently!):

How cute are they?

_______________________________

Halloween this year also included our 2nd Annual playgroup Halloween party and group photo.

To refresh your memory…oh, dang. Seems like I never posted last Halloween’s picture. In that case, introducing Halloween 2010! Only 1 year late!

Hmmm…they don’t seem to be as thrilled as we were about their adorableness.

Here’s a photo a friend took:

Uh oh. Here’s a close-up of the little lady on the end:

That was one sad owl.

So, did this year go any better, you ask?

Well, the party was great. Kristi hosted again, and Seri planned some great crafts that Lily loved.

The picture, on the other hand, involved about the same mix of cuteness and tears. Lily was able to hold it together during the photo shoot prep (i.e. 6 mommies wrangling 9 kids into costumes and then trying to get them to agree to sit on the sofa together).

When everyone was mostly in place, though, she started to want to get down and got a little red-eyed. Almost all the kids were a little overwhelmed and some were not so happy to be in costume, but at least we got our photo!

Don’t they put the HAPPY in Happy Halloween?

Oh, in case you hadn’t noticed, Lily was a cat this year for Halloween. She toyed with a few other ideas (e.g. Roo from Winnie the Pooh), but kept coming back to wanting to be a kitty, so that’s what we went with.

Okay?

If anyone asks, she was a cat.

That’s what she asked to be, and that’s what I got her.

A cat.

Umm…with leopard print.

Okay, so I only LATER realized that she may have actually been a leopard for Halloween, and somehow I never noticed.

If you tell her, we are no longer friends.

Note to adult Lily reading this sometime in the distant future: I’m sorry, sweetie…I didn’t realize it until it was too late, and you didn’t want to wear a costume anyway because you don’t like hoods (or headbands), so there was no point in buying another costume. Please just send Mommy the therapy bill.

Finally (oh, rats…forgot about her school Halloween party…will have to cover that separately), there was the main event – trick-or-treating tonight in our neighborhood. Michael got stuck in traffic on the way home, so Lily and I sat on the front porch and prepped treat bags and glow bracelets while waiting for Daddy.

She was very excited to give the trick-or-treaters their candy, and was a bit perturbed they didn’t show up until it started to get dark.

Then, Daddy came home!

I figured Lily wouldn’t really want to visit many houses for trick-or-treating, but after the first one, she was pretty excited, and visited 8 or 10 houses on our block. Then she decided that she wanted to go back home and see what she had in her bucket. The rest of the evening, we mostly hung out on the porch, and she eagerly handed out bags of candy to all the trick-or-treaters. Once she got too cold to stay outside and came inside, she charged for the door every time the bell rang, and stared longingly through the windows, continuously voicing her hope for more visitors.