It was a Halloween miracle ...

Last year as we prepared for Halloween, Cael certainly seemed to like the idea of the holiday.

His feelings, however, changed as soon as it came time to sport his costume.

In fact, we only had a cooperative puppy when he finally went to sleep.

This year I thought we would have an easier time with the costume since we could talk about it with Cael.  We first tried a monkey costume that we thought would be an easy winner since Cael really likes monkeys and carries one to bed with him each night.  We were wrong.  He was hysterical during his brief time in the monkey costume and now will only walk by the costume and point at it.

We thought that a firefighter costume would be a great idea because Cael loves fire trucks.  After showing him the new costume and seeing that we was not interested at all in being a firefighter, we decided that we needed to "sell" him on the firefighter idea.

We decided that firefighter books were the way to go.  We smoothly introduced a few new stories into his rotation that allowed us to talk at length about firefighters putting on their hats, coats and boots.  We tried the costume again ... he immediately removed the hat, cried as soon as the boots were on and wouldn't even get near the jacket.

We continued reading and talking about firefighters over the next few days but suddenly it was 10/30 and we were not any closer to getting him in the costume.  I had to step up my game and I decided what better way than to sport a similar costume myself.

This idea resulted in me serving Cael breakfast while wearing my raincoat, Cael's firefighter hat and my rain boots (they're leopard print which made for quite the finishing touch on the look).  He was very intrigued by the overall look but immediately started pulling the rain coat off me as soon as he got out of his high chair.

My desperation to get him in his costume was good for a laugh and I finally gave up knowing that he would have a good time regardless of what he decided to wear.

We showed up at Cael's school this afternoon for his parade and party and waited for him to appear wearing a t-shirt and sneakers.  We finally caught a glimpse of him and saw ...

BOOTS!

A few more seconds passed and there he was ...

Our little fire fighter was fully dressed ... it was a Halloween miracle!

All it took was the patience of Cael's 2 wonderful teachers and the gentle nudge of interest that resulted from watching all of his buddies put on costumes.  He had a great time at his parade and party but the real fun was going to be an evening of trick-or-treating with Grayson!

Grayson was an adorable golfer!

Cael's initial interest was only in pushing around the truck that he decided to bring along.

But he finally started following Grayson around and found himself warming up to the idea of trick-or-treating.

He truly enjoyed the evening and walked all over our neighborhood collecting candy, saying "thank you" and STILL WEARING HIS COSTUME!!!

It was a very Happy Halloween in Denton!