I’ve never been super “in” to Halloween. It’s just not my thing. Take it or leave it, whatever. But I AM into my kids and I know kids like the opportunity to dress up, act silly and get a free pass for a day on a little sweetness. So, you know…

Sporty Boys!

Cooper was a baseball player and Chase was a basketball player. I had in mind a couple little extra things for their costumes, but it didn’t quite work out! (Bad planning on my part!) So, this is what we got. Chase was much happier than he looks in this picture….it’s just hard to get both of them to smile AND look at me at the same time. By the way, the shirt that Chase is wearing was worn by both Cooper and Jeremy! I love that shirt!

A Happier Chase

So the morning of Halloween we really just did our normal Saturday gig. The boys went down for naps a tad early and then once they woke up, we headed out to Puyallup to hang out downtown.

The Puyallup Mainstreet Association hosts this super fun thing every year where the kiddos can trick-or-treat around to all the local businesses. For all you STL peeps who have no idea what Puyallup is (say it like Pew-Al-IP), it’s kinda like main street old St. Charles, but smaller and square.

There were a TON of people there! It was so fun! And even more fun was the success of my church, Renovo, and our outreach event. Renovo hosted a carnival-style gig complete with Jake’s band The Reaching playing a few sets, a bounce house, a cup cake walk and vaious other carnival elements. There were A LOT of people there and it was so awesome to see our church having the most popular thing down there! How great to let people know that we are IN the community and A PART of the community -to let them know we care about them and want to play too!

Krista with some funny sounding gilatto

My friend, Krista, was in town so she hung with me and the boys. After hanging at the carnival and a little trick-or-treating, we stopped at Forza for some hot chocolate, gilatto and coffee! It was good times. Krista and I laughed about the prevalence of coffee shops in Washington and how much we always miss that when we go back home. Seriously, in the 1 block radius of the coffee shop we were in, there were at least 4 other coffee shops. And we’re talkin’ cute coffee shops-not just chains.

So after that fun it was a little after 5 pm. I wanted to get back home with the kids so that we could hand candy out to the trick-or-treaters who would be ravishing my house. Guys, if you ever in your life live near an Army base or military installation of any kind-go trick or treating there! WHEW! TONS of kids came to the house. We stopped and grabbed a pizza on our way out of Puyallup (gotta love Take N Bake!) and then headed home to meet our kiddos.

On the way home, I explained to Cooper what was about to go down. He was SO excited to help me give candy out to the kids. I had 7 bags of candy and I told him that once it was gone, that was it! The deal was that he could give 2 pieces of candy to each kiddo and he couldn’t let the kids just grab their own candy (cause holy cow kids are greedy!).

Cooper was so excited that he waited at the front door with his nose pressed against the glass door. He kept opening the door, popping his head out and yelling back at me, “MOM! THERE’S NOBODY COM’IN!”. It was so funny. Finally, a little after 6 pm, we started to get some kids. Cooper just got more and more excited. He could hardly stand it and he was so adorable. He DID NOT want me to help, “I got it Mom, I got it, I can do it myself”. The poor trick or treaters crowded up my front steps and eagerly waited as Cooper SLOWLY counted 2 pieces of candy out to each kid.

While he did this, he was so sweet; he said to various kids, “Oh hi, I like your costume!” and “here ya go!” and “happy halloween!”. It was slaying me. Finally, after about a half hour of candy giving, he was so excited that he put his shoes on and just kept going outside with the candy bowl and cheering people to come to our house. He was outside YELLING “Hey kids! Come over here, we’ve dot TANDY!”

I must have told him a dozen times to stop calling people over, that they would get to our house eventually because they were working their way down the rows of houses, but it was no use. Too many kids would just barrel past their parents when they heard Cooper’s call…it was like the call of the Sirens or something!

After only one-hour of an open house, I was out of candy. And I don’t keep candy in the house…so I didn’t even have like a back up stash. That was it! We closed our door and turned off our light and dreamed of years to come. It was quite an exciting night for all of us.

I told Jeremy this story already and afterwords, we talked about years to come. I told him that when we move home I want a fire pit so we can roast hot dogs in the front yard, set up big jugs of hot chocolate and sit in lawn chairs outside and let our kids dress up and hand candy out to people instead of go trick-or-treating. It was so fun to see Cooper so excited to give to other kids…even if it was something that wasn’t great for them. He even got his candy out when we ran out and started giving his candy away because he was so sad we ran out! What a precious boy!

Here’s a few parting pictures.

Sleepy baby all bundled up, ready to do a quick pass!

Ooooh! A picture of Mommy!

Cooper and his BF, Braydon at the Carnival

Krista and I