"Thank you, God, for trick-or-treat!"

I know that we're rounding the corner towards Christmas as I'm getting my Halloween recap posted, however, that late October holiday is still front and center in our lives so I figured I could still get away with a belated post. 

We recently started asking Cael to contribute to his bedtime prayers by telling God what he is thankful for each day.  While he includes a lot of sweet references to friends and family on a varying basis, the ONE constant in his prayers EVERY night is:

"Thank you, God, for trick-or-treat!"

We knew he had fun on Halloween but had no idea that all of that fall excitement would leave such an impression on our child!  We kicked off the Halloween prep with a visit to the pumpkin farm.  He had a very busy morning jumping in a bounce house,

riding in the train,

 

wrestling with big pumpkins,

 



hauling loads of little pumpkins

and checking out anything and everything that was towed by a tractor.

While the pumpkin farm was a lot of fun, the big excitement was building based on Cael's costume.  Last year, weeks were spent trying to negotiate Cael into his costume.  This year, I thought we were headed down the same path until he announced that he knew what he wanted to dress up as for Halloween:  Sulley.

Sulley is the big blue monster from Pixar's "Monsters, Inc." and Cael has loved him since first watching (an edited version of) that movie.  I initially protested this idea for several reasons:

1. I did not want to picture my sweet baby dressed up as a monster (regardless of how appropriate that may be given his 2-year-old tantrums).
2. I might work in marketing but I am not a fan of my child promoting anybody's brand.
3. I was not excited about the blue, furry, highly flammable Sulley costumes that I found at first pass.

Over the course of a week I continued to throw out other costume suggestions but Cael stood firm on his desire to be Sulley.  This culminated in a run to Toys R Us for costumes since there was nothing less "mass produced" to be found on-line.  We brought home two costumes to try on and he was not very happy in the first one.

I hoped this might be my easy way out of the blue monster costumer and back to a cute little chef or firefighter.  That was until he put on the second costume (and my least favorite of the two) ... that little kid just lit up as he caught his image in the mirror and I knew in that moment that he was right all along.

For the next couple of weeks Cael wore parts of his costume at random times and would disappear into our closet only to come back out roaring at us as Sulley.

Finally, the big day arrived and Cael kicked off his Halloween celebration with Trunk or Treat at school.

My sister and her family came over for Halloween dinner and the long-awaited trick-or-treating fun.  Sulley got to hang out with one of his Disney brethren, Buzz Lightyear (also known as Grayson).

These two hit the road in the wagon which they literally got in and out of at every house ... EVERY house.  At least they were having fun :)

Even Scrappy got in on the trick-or-treating fun ... she's always a hit in her little pumpkin costume!

The guys made out like bandits and we're still working through Cael's candy.  We definitely get a kick out of his nightly thankfulness for "trick-or-treat."  I like to think that maybe he's thankful for the quality time with family or the nice long walk we took outside but in reality, he's just his mom's kid and it was all about the candy ;)