Halloween House of Horrors

Well, our night ended in a tantrum, melt-down cry-fest. Happy Halloween, everybody. At least Leo's open mouth screaming gave me good access for brushing his teeth before bed. Whoever established the Halloween traditions obviously didn't have a toddler. Loads of candy and scary stuff? Oh brother.

It was so tough for Leo to wait for Halloween activities to start. But after nap, we loaded up and headed to our local farm for the Halloween Hoedown.

Here are my skeleton ballerina and skeleton witch riding the wagon to the farm.
Tom is Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba. This homemade shirt will be making an appearance at the live Gabba show in a few weeks.
Here's Muno for a point of reference.
At the farm, Leo got to feed the chickens some kale.
He really enjoyed it.
Loading up for the hay ride.
On the ride. So much tractor activity recently has really thrilled Leo.

Mom's turn on the hay ride.
Daddy and Leo.
Mommy and the kids. I'm Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba.
The real Plex.
Family shot.
Beautiful girl and her daddy.
After dinner, Leo was itching to trick-or-treat, but he had to wait for it to get dark. Here he his right before we left the house. Check out his monster treat bag and cool witch's broom. I ended up having to carry that broom and hat. No surprise.
Hitting his first house with Colleen, who is a total pro and showed Leo the ropes.
Julia (dressed as Athena) helped Leo along as well.
As much fun as all these Halloween events have been, I'm glad it only comes around once a year. Leo trick-or-treated at less than a dozen houses and still brought home quite a loot. Despite our best efforts, Tom and I only made a slight dent in the stash. I'm not sure how tomorrow will go with Leo painfully aware of all the candy in the house.

Halloween Eve

The excitement for Halloween is building around here. Today, Leo visited the bounce houses at the pumpkin patch down the street.
Here he is on a creepy alien slide.
Having fun with Aunt Maggie and Grandma Carrie.
After nap, it was time to carve pumpkins.
Poor Serafina only got to watch. Maybe if she was more washable, I'd let her get down and dirty with the pumpkin guts. Oh well, next year.
Leo made a happy face pumpkin.

We gave them a test run tonight. Actually, we did it twice because Leo loved them so much and had to see them again.

We tried to get a group shot with Aunt Maggie. Didn't go too well.

First steps (for the second time)

And of course, Leo has to knock her down.

Halloween Party

We had our moms group Halloween party today. We moved it indoors since there was rain in the forecast.

Little Bear Maia and Chicken Penny commiserate on how their cruel their moms are for dressing them up like this. Recognize that chicken suit? That was Leo's costume when he was a one year old.
Gathering for a group shot.
This is right before Maia crawled away and Penny fell off the couch.
Riley is pretty unhappy about the whole situation.
Leo was good at cooperating. Maybe it was all the experience from preschool.
From left: Leo, Addison, Daisy, Sophia and Doug
Here are some of those kids last year.

Addison adds an apron and fireman's hat to her fairy princess costume.
Serafina really liked her Halloween card from her Nana. I'm not sure why she decided to read it in the laundry basket.

Halloween Costume Parade

It was Leo's first school Halloween party and parade. I stayed for the first part of the morning (as did almost every parent) to take some pictures.

Here he is arriving at school in his skeleton witch costume. When the teacher asked what he was, he answered "The Wicked Witch". She told me he didn't seem to wicked with that adorable grin.

Gathering for circle time.
Each kid stood in the middle of class to tell the class about his/her costume. Here's Brielle presenting her Candy Corn Witch costume. She was pretty thrilled to see that Leo was also a witch.
Here's little video of Leo presenting his costume.


Three of the boys were Spiderman and one Iron Man. Three princess girls, one cat and one witch.

Getting ready to march in the parade.
The other class joins in.
Serafina joins in the fun.
Parading into the kindergarten classroom.
And back out.
All done and ready to head back to the classroom.
It was really fun to see and Leo had a blast. He came home with a bag full of treats. But the best treat was when he got up from nap, his Grandma Carrie and Aunt Maggie were here. They are staying through Sunday and both kids are loving the attention.

Swing search

Today my friends were awesome as always and drove south into San Jose to visit a park with an adaptive swing. A couple years ago, there was a philanthropist in the South Bay who pledged to put adaptive playground equipment in over 30 San Jose area parks. I'm not sure what ever came of her efforts since there is no comprehensive list of parks with adaptive equipment. It's actually kind of frustrating. My friend Katie remembered seeing the swing when we visited this park a long time ago. It's actually a pretty nice park and even after the cast time is over, we'll probably go back.

Here's Serafina on a big teeter-totter. She really like it.

"Look at me, guys." Oh brother.
Swinging.


At this point, I'm pretty tired of answering strangers questions. I happened to be at the children's shoe store where I bought Serafina's sneakers and when the owner asked, "what happened to her leg?" I told him, "your shoes did it." He laughed and said, "oh stop it." I was only sort-of kidding.